document_title: Insecure (TV series)

question_text: how many episodes does insecure season 2 have

text: Insecure (TV series)

text: Background[edit]

text: In 2013, Rae began working on a comedy series pilot (in which she would star) along with Larry Wilmore. The show was planned to be about the awkward experiences of a contemporary African-American woman; the pair eventually settled on the current title of Insecure.[14] HBO picked up the pilot in early 2015, and it was subsequently greenlit for production.[15]

text: At HBO's 2016 Television Critics Association session, which featured Rae, showrunner Prentice Penny, and executive producer Melina Matsoukas, Rae explained that the series will examine "the complexities of 'blackness' and the reality that you can’t escape being black." Rae also said, in regard to the potential mainstream reaction to the series:

text: We’re just trying to convey that people of color are relatable. This is not a hood story. This is about regular people living life.[16]

text: Raphael Saadiq created original music for the first season. Solange Knowles served as music consultant; she was introduced to Rae by Matsoukas, who directed the music video for Knowles's song "Losing You". [17]

text: Plot[edit]

text: The eight-episode first season explores the black female experience from the perspective of the two female protagonists, Issa (Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji) who have been best friends with each other since their college days at Stanford.[18] They are both in their late 20s, career and relationship experiences are explored. Issa works at a non-profit that benefits middle-school students of color. Issa has a long-term relationship with Lawrence (Jay Ellis).[19] Molly is a successful corporate attorney who has career success but difficulty with dating men. The half-hour series explores social and racial issues that relate to the contemporary black experience.[20]

text: Cast[edit]

text: Main[edit]

text:
Issa Rae as Issa Dee
Jay Ellis as Lawrence Walker
Yvonne Orji as Molly Carter
Lisa Joyce as Frieda
Natasha Rothwell as Kelli (recurring season 1; season 2–present)[21]
Amanda Seales as Tiffany DuBois (recurring season 1; season 2–present)
Y'lan Noel as Daniel King (recurring season 1; season 2-present)

text: Recurring[edit]

text:
Wade Allain-Marcus as Derek DuBois
Catherine Curtin as Joanne
Maya Erskine as Diane Nakamura
Neil Brown Jr. as Chad
Dominique Perry as Tasha
Gail Bean as Rasheeda
Heather Mazur as Hannah Richards-Foster
Sujata Day as Sarah
Veronica Mannion as Kitty
Mason McCulley as Ken
Kathreen Khavari as Patricia
L. Scott Caldwell as Cee Cee Carter
Langston Kerman as Jared Oliver (season 1)
Ivan Shaw as Justin (season 1)
Denise Dowse as Dr. Rhonda (season 2)
Jean Elie as Ahmal Dee (season 2)
Spencer Garrett as John Merrill (season 2)
Lil Rel Howery as Quinton (season 2)
David Hull as Travis Moore
Sarunas J. Jackson as Alejandro 'Dro' Peña (season 2)
Leon Thomas as Eddie (season 2)
Jasmine Kaur as Aparna (season 2)

text: Guest[edit]

text:
Brandon Bell as Michael Peete (season 1)
Jidenna as Chris (season 1)
Ty Dolla Sign as himself (season 1)
Regina Hall (season 2)
Sterling K. Brown as Lionel (season 2)
Hayley Kiyoko as Miko (season 2)

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
Season
Episodes
Originally aired

First aired
Last aired

1
8
October 9, 2016 (2016-10-09)
November 27, 2016 (2016-11-27)

2
8
July 23, 2017 (2017-07-23)
September 10, 2017 (2017-09-10)

text: Season 1 (2016)[edit]

text:
No.
overall
No. in
season
Title
Directed by
Written by
Original air date
U.S. viewers
(millions)

1
1
"Insecure as Fuck"
Melina Matsoukas
Issa Rae & Larry Wilmore
October 9, 2016 (2016-10-09)[a]
0.371[22]

After a disappointing 29th birthday, Issa Dee starts doubting her relationship with her unemployed boyfriend, Lawrence. Her successful best friend, Molly, is struggling with being single. When Issa hears from an old ex, Daniel, she takes Molly with her to an open mic-night in the hopes of reconnecting with her old flame. Molly meets Jared, whose brother is performing at the open mic-night. Issa performs the rap “Broken Pussy”, based on Molly’s romantic life, to impress Daniel which causes a fight between the friends. After leaving the club, Issa gets a text from Daniel and decides to meet up with him despite Molly’s disapproval. Issa and Daniel kiss but he lets her know that he is not looking for a relationship after she brings the subject up.

2
2
"Messy as Fuck"
Cecile Emeke
Issa Rae
October 16, 2016 (2016-10-16)
0.458[23]

While Issa decides to become the “No Fucks” version of herself, Molly decides to treat herself to a day of pampering. Lawrence continues to worry about Issa’s absence as she ignores him and even has an awkward encounter with her at Rite Aid while she is buying a pack of underwear. The next day, Issa botches her work presentation that she failed to prepare for but later comes up with a beach clean-up event with her coworker Frieda. Molly later runs into Jared, the cute guy she met at the open mic-night, after a disappointing date and makes a connection with him. Issa returns home and apologizes to Lawrence for ignoring him.

3
3
"Racist as Fuck"
Melina Matsoukas
Dayna Lynne North
October 23, 2016 (2016-10-23)
0.469[24]

Lawrence and Issa have a hard time returning to their old ways. Lawrence learns that he might have to take a lower-entry job and Issa overhears her coworkers badmouthing her beach day event behind her back. Molly brings Jared to a party to meet her friends and finds out that he never attended college, unlike her and her group of friends. Jared admits his interest in Molly after the party. Molly later decides to end things with Jared when she gets accepted into “The League”, a highly exclusive dating app. Issa’s beach clean-up event is a huge success and proves her coworkers wrong. When Issa returns home, she finds Lawrence cooking dinner and begins to reminisce about the good times they shared in the apartment. They finally share official apologies to each other.

4
4
"Thirsty as Fuck"
Kevin Bray
Laura Kittrell
October 30, 2016 (2016-10-30)
0.348[25]

Issa and Lawrence are now on good terms which is shown on their shopping trip for a new couch. Molly quickly finds a new date from “The League” after scaring off Michael, her first suitor from the app. Daniel shows up at Issa’s job to apologize for how things left off. She later asks him to present at her Career Day when their speaker for the arts drops out. Molly sparks a connection with her new date by explaining how her bosses asked her to speak to a black intern. Daniel tells Issa’s class about her rapping talent and they find a YouTube video of her rapping “Broken Pussy”.

5
5
"Shady as Fuck"
Melina Matsoukas
Ben Dougan
November 6, 2016 (2016-11-06)
0.329[26]

Issa freaks out about the kids discovering her video and enlists help to take it down. Molly is enjoying her new guy, Chris, and invites him to her coworker’s engagement party for the evening. While Molly calls Jared to find out who posted the video, Issa visits Daniel to do the same. Chris arrives at the party but upsets Molly when he admits that he only came because she “needed a win.” Daniel encourages Issa to attempt a freestyle in his studio, professes his feelings for her, and they proceed to have sex. Molly shows up to Jared’s apartment drunk after the party and spends the night on his couch.

6
6
"Guilty as Fuck"
Debbie Allen
Amy Aniobi
November 13, 2016 (2016-11-13)
0.388[27]

Issa is struggling with her guilt for sleeping with Daniel, and has flashbacks of being with him while trying to be intimate with Lawrence. Molly mends fences with Chris. Issa overcompensates in her relationship due to the guilt of cheating and works on ignoring Daniel. At work, Issa manages to get her boss to agree to hold a fundraiser in their city instead of Malibu. Molly informs Issa that she and Jared are now back together. While Issa and Lawrence are out for their date night, Lawrence takes her to a jewelry store to try on engagement rings, triggering more flashbacks to her night with Daniel. Jared and Molly take turns sharing stories from their past and he admits that he has been with a man in the past. Molly informs her friends about her concerns about Jared's past and Issa tries to ease Molly's worries. However, Molly is unable to cope with Jared's past and breaks up with him. Issa informs Molly about her and Daniel. Molly advises her to move on. Issa goes home and has sex with Lawrence. On his way to the bathroom, Lawrence discovers Issa's phone and sees a text from Daniel.

7
7
"Real as Fuck"
Kevin Bray
Prentice Penny
November 20, 2016 (2016-11-20)
0.382[28]

Issa goes out shopping for a fundraiser dress with Molly, and informs her that she is going to be more focused on her work and her relationship. Molly runs into an old friend who discloses that she has been going to therapy and has been working on fixing herself and how she values herself. Lawrence goes on an interview and gets a job offer. Lawrence informs Issa about the job offer but also confides his idea to not take the job in order to continue working on his app "Woot-Woot." Issa tells him to take the job offer and work on programming his app at night. Molly helps Issa set up for her fundraiser and tells her about running into Crystal and the conversation she had with her. Molly knocks therapy, and Issa makes an argument that Molly may benefit from therapy. Issa is successful at her fundraiser, while Molly’s behavior is questionable. Daniel arrives at the fundraiser and is intercepted by Molly. Issa tries to make Daniel leave and is seen by Lawrence. Molly and Issa get in a fight at the fundraiser and Molly leaves. Molly shows up at Jared’s house and tries to mend fences. Lawrence asks Issa about Daniel and leaves after she admits to the affair.

8
8
"Broken as Fuck"
Melina Matsoukas
Issa Rae
November 27, 2016 (2016-11-27)
0.565[29]

Issa tries to apologize to Lawrence, who rejects her. Molly is still not talking to Issa. The four girls go to Malibu. Lawrence goes out with his friends. Kelli and Tiffany both gang up on Molly about her love life, but Issa defends her. Tiffany outs Issa on her relationship with Lawrence. Lawrence, while at the strip club, finally calls Issa and says they should talk. Molly and Issa mend fences when she drives Issa back home to see Lawrence. Issa arrives home to discover that Lawrence packed his things and left his key behind.

text: Jump up ^ The first episode was released online on September 23, 2016, two weeks before the series premiere.

text: Season 2 (2017)[edit]

text:
No.
overall
No. in
season
Title
Directed by
Written by
Original air date
U.S. viewers
(millions)

9
1
"Hella Great"
Melina Matsoukas
Issa Rae
July 23, 2017 (2017-07-23)
1.118[30]

Picking up a few months after the events of the previous season Issa starts going on dates through different dating apps but daydreams about reconciling with Lawrence. Molly is seeing a therapist. Lawrence is dating Tasha, the bank teller, but only spends weekends with her. During the week, he stays with his friend Chad while he hunts for an apartment. Issa and her coworkers are having a diificult time getting students at a new school assignment interested in their after-school program. Molly accidentally receives her white colleague, Travis' paystub and learns he is paid way more. Molly questions if the partners value her at the law firm. Issa checks the mail and Lawrence has a jury duty notice. She texts him and he responds he will be by after work to get it. Issa plans an impromptu 'winedown' party so Lawrence can see she is doing good without him. Lawrence takes Tasha out on a real date. He texts Issa to mail the jury notice to him. Kelly invites Issa's neighbors to the party and a fire starts in her kitchen. The next day while Issa and Freida are set up in the library, two students show up and ask questions to distract while other students steal the snacks. Later that night, Lawrence shows up to Issa's apartment to get his mail and they proceed to have sex.

10
2
"Hella Questions"
Melina Matsoukas
Amy Aniobi
July 30, 2017 (2017-07-30)
1.293[31]

Issa tries to make sense of the encounter with Lawrence. Lawrence tells Tasha he slept with Issa. After her therapist gives Molly some harsh truths, Molly attempts to join the office "boys club". Issa and Freida meet with the school's vice principal and while he recruits students to fill the program, Freida has concerns he is racist against the latino students and only wants the black students to receive help and resources.

11
3
"Hella Open"
Marta Cunningham
Dayna Lynne North
August 6, 2017 (2017-08-06)
1.158[32]

Issa becomes sexually frustrated. Molly meets a potential match while on a girls' night out with Issa. Lawrence leaves Tasha's family cookout and chooses to spend all day with his work colleagues.

12
4
"Hella LA"
Prentice Penny
Laura Kittrell
August 13, 2017 (2017-08-13)
1.300[33]

Issa runs into Daniel at a day party. Also, the guy, Felix, she was supposed to meet up with at the day party is not into her at all. Molly's childhood friend, Dro, tells her he has an open marriage and propositions her for sex. Kelly meets a man at the day party and tells Molly and Issa they are meeting back up at a restaurant. Issa sees Daniel at the restaurant but does not speak. While Kelly is being fingered underneath the table, Daniel texts Issa and Issa moves to sit next to him. Lawrence makes an illegal u-turn and is pulled over by the cops. He drops his card while getting out his driver's license so when he checks out at the grocery store, he does not have a card to pay for his groceries. The two women behind him in line offer to pay and take him to their apartment for a threesome. When he can't get hard fast enough for the second woman, they berate him and he leaves. He stops by Issa apartment building but drives off instead of going up to her apartment.

13
5
"Hella Shook"
Tina Mabry
Ben Dougan
August 20, 2017 (2017-08-20)
1.322[34]

Issa continues to be about her "hoe"tation and dates different men. She butts heads with Freida during their work retreat. Molly finds out her father cheated on her mother at her parents' vow renewal ceremony. Distraught, Molly has sex with Dro. Issa wrecks her car while looking at a 'dick pic' her neighbor sent to her cellphone. Daniel gives Issa a ride home after the accident. She asks if they are cool and on the same page with seeing other people. Lawrence finds out Issa is still hanging out with Daniel and blocks Issa on Facebook.

14
6
"Hella Blows"
Kevin Bray
Regina Y. Hicks & Ben Corey Jones
August 27, 2017 (2017-08-27)
1.331[35]

Dro calls Molly and she ends the call when her mother calls but declines her mother's call as well. Issa goes to her neighbor Eddie's apartment unannounced to have sex but he is with another woman. Lawrence gets a rude awakening at work after pitching his app when the owners are overly polite but disinterested. His coworker explains tells that his app is outdated and if the owners were interested they would have asked questions but they seem afraid to offend Lawrence. Molly worries sex will ruin her friendship with Dro. Issa gets a $5500 estimate to get her car repaired. Molly has sex with Dro again after telling him their last encounter was a one-time thing. She asks how their arrangement will work and if his wife knows. He tells her it was his wife's idea to see other people. Later, he leaves Molly in the hotel room when his wife texts him that she is locked out of the house. Issa tried to seduce Niko but he wants to get to know her better and she just wants sex. Tiffany teaches the ladies the power in giving blow jobs during the 'Sexplosion' event. Issa gives Daniel a blow job and he comes on her face. Irate, Issa storms out.

15
7
"Hella Disrespectful"
Kevin Bray
Prentice Penny
September 3, 2017 (2017-09-03)
0.788[36]

Tensions run high when Issa and Lawrence are both invited to Derek's birthday party. Issa accepts Daniel's call and cuts him out of her life when he says they are even and now she knows how he felt. Molly rethinks her future and breaks things off with Dro after he brings his wife to the party. Issa realizes the vice principal is discriminating against the latino students and makes amends with Frieda. Issa and Lawrence exchange heated words as Issa is waiting on her ride. Issa snaps and flips all her furniture over in her apartment.

16
8
"Hella Perspective"
Melina Matsoukas
Issa Rae
September 10, 2017 (2017-09-10)
0.806[37]

Over the course of one pivotal month, Issa, Molly, and Lawrence face choices impacting their work and personal lives, with each considering whether to embrace a new future or look back to the past.

text: Reception[edit]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: Season 1[edit]

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has a rating of 100% based on 52 reviews, with an average rating of 8.05/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Insecure uses star Issa Rae's breakout web series Awkward Black Girl as the basis for an insightful, raunchy, and hilarious journey through the life of a twentysomething black woman that cuts through stereotypes with sharp wit and an effusive spirit."[10] On Metacritic, the season has a score of 84 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[38]

text: Eric Deggans of NPR wrote that "Rae has produced a series that feels revolutionary just by poking fun at the life of an average, twentysomething black woman."[39] Greg Braxton of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "The half-hour series explores the friendship between two African American women who deal with their sometimes stormy relationship while also grappling with conflicts inside and outside black culture. Much of the humor has a raw flavor, and does not hold back on sexually frank situations and dialogue."[16]

text: Season 2[edit]

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 100% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Insecure displays title-defying confidence in its second season, upping the comedy and deepening the relationships between its talented ensemble."[11] On Metacritic, the season has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[40]

text: Accolades[edit]

text:
Year
Award
Category
Recipients
Outcome

2017

AAFCA Awards
AAFCA Top Ten TV Shows
Insecure
Won

Golden Globe Award[41]
Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy
Issa Rae
Nominated

48th NAACP Image Awards[42]
Outstanding Comedy Series
Insecure
Nominated

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
Issa Rae
Nominated

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Yvonne Orji
Nominated

Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series
Melina Matsoukas
Nominated

Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series
Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore
Nominated

Prentice Penny
Nominated

Dorian Awards
TV Comedy of the Year
Insecure
Nominated

NAMIC Vision Awards
Comedy
Won

Best Performance - Comedy
Issa Rae
Won

MTV Movie & TV Awards
Show of the Year
Insecure
Nominated

Next Generation
Issa Rae
Nominated

TCA Awards
Individual Achievement in Comedy
Nominated

BET Awards
Best Actress
Nominated

2018

Satellite Awards
Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Series
Nominated

49th NAACP Image Awards[43]
Outstanding Comedy Series
Insecure
Nominated

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
Issa Rae
Nominated

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Yvonne Orji
Nominated

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Jay Ellis
Won

Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series
Issa Rae (for "Hella Great") and (for "Hella Perspective")
Nominated

Guild of Music Supervisors Awards
Best Music Supervision in a Television Comedy or Musical
Kier Lehman
Won
[44]

Best Song/Recording Created for Television
"Quicksand"
Won


document_title: Cloud on title

question_text: a defect or a cloud on title of a property is best cured by

root

text: Cloud on title

text: This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

tag: table

text: In United States property law, cloud on title or title defect refers to any irregularity in the chain of title of property (usually real property) that would give a reasonable person pause before accepting a conveyance of title. According to Investopedia, a cloud can be defined as: "Any document, claim, unreleased lien or encumbrance that might invalidate or impair the title to real property or make the title doubtful. Clouds on title are usually discovered during a title search."[1] Clouded title can thus be contrasted with a clear title, which indicates that a property is unencumbered.

tag: p

text: A cloud on title may reduces the value and marketability of property because any prospective buyer aware of the cloud will know that they are buying the risk the grantor may not be able to convey good title. Often, the discovery of a cloud on title will provide the grantee a reason to back out of a contract for the sale of real property. Some documents that affect title may be considered clouds, but nonetheless are unlikely to affect marketability or resale, such as with covenants, conditions and restrictions in a homeowner's association or subdivision.[2]

text: Examples of clouds on title include a property's address being misspelled in a deed conveying title, a mortgage lien whose repayment hasn't been officially recorded, a deed which has been signed but hasn't been properly recorded, an easement that has not been properly recorded, unpaid property taxes, a failure to transfer property rights (such as mineral rights) to a former owner of the property, and a pending lawsuit before a court of law over ownership to the property. The usual remedy for a cloud on title is to file a civil action to quiet title which resolves the outstanding or unresolved cloud.


document_title: National Invitation Tournament

question_text: who won the nit basketball tournament this year

text: National Invitation Tournament

text: History[edit]

text: Founding[edit]

text: The post-season National Invitation Tournament was founded in 1938 by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association, one year after the NAIA Tournament was created by basketball's inventor Dr. James Naismith, and one year before the NCAA Tournament. The first NIT was won by the Temple University Owls over the Colorado Buffaloes.

text: Responsibility for the NIT's administration was transferred in 1940 to the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Committee, a body of local New York colleges: Fordham University, Manhattan College, New York University, St. John's University, and Wagner College. This became the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) in 1948.

text: Originally the tournament invited a field of 6 teams, with all games played at Madison Square Garden in downtown Manhattan.

text: The field was expanded to 8 teams in 1941, 12 in 1949, 14 in 1965, 16 in 1968, 24 in 1979, 32 in 1980, and 40 from 2002 through 2006. In 2007, the tournament reverted to the current 32-team format.[3][4]

text: Early advantages over the NCAA Tournament[edit]

text: In its early years, the NIT offered some advantages over the NCAA tournament:

text:
There was limited national media coverage of college basketball in the 1930s and '40s, and playing in New York City provided teams greater media exposure, both with the general public and among high school prospects in its rich recruiting territory.
The NCAA tournament selection committee invited only one team each from eight national regions, potentially leaving better quality selections and natural rivals out of its field, which would opt for the NIT.[5][6]
Some conferences, such as the Southeastern Conference, were racially segregated, making hosting non-segregated early round games on their campuses problematic.[citation needed]

tag: ul

text: Preeminence[edit]

text: From its onset and at least into the mid-1950s, the NIT was regarded as the most prestigious showcase for college basketball.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] All-American at Princeton and later NBA champion with the New York Knicks and United States Senator Bill Bradley states:

text: In the 1940's, when the NCAA tournament was less than 10 years old, the National Invitation Tournament, a saturnalia held in New York at Madison Square Garden by the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association, was the most glamorous of the post-season tournaments and generally had the better teams. The winner of the National Invitation Tournament was regarded as more of a national champion than the actual, titular, national champion, or winner of the NCAA tournament.

text: Several teams played in both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year, beginning with Colorado and Duquesne in 1940. Colorado won the NIT in 1940 but subsequently finished fourth in the NCAA West Region.[19] In 1944, Utah lost its first game in the NIT but then proceeded to win not only the NCAA tournament, but also the subsequent Red Cross War Charities benefit game in which they defeated NIT champion St. Johns at Madison Square Garden. In 1949, some Kentucky players were bribed by gamblers to lose their first round game in the NIT.[20] This same Kentucky team went on to win the NCAA.[21] In 1950, City College of New York won both the NIT and the NCAA tournaments in the same season, coincidentally defeating Bradley University in the championship game of both tournaments, and remains the only school to accomplish that feat because of a rule change in the early 1950s prohibiting a team from competing in both tournaments.

text: The champions of both the NCAA and NIT tournaments played each other for a few years during World War II. From 1943 to 1945, the American Red Cross sponsored a postseason charity game between each year's tournament champions to raise money for the war effort.[22] The series was described by Ray Meyer as not just benefit games, but as "really the games for the national championship".[23] The NCAA champion prevailed in all three games.[24]

text: The Helms Athletic Foundation retroactively selected the NIT champion as its national champion for 1938 (Temple), and chose the NIT champion over the NCAA champion once, in 1939 (Long Island).[25] More recently, the mathematically based Premo-Porretta Power Poll published in the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia retroactively ranked teams for each season prior to 1949, with the NIT champion finishing ahead of the NCAA champion in 1939 and 1941.[26] Premo-Porretta ranks four NCAA champions as the best for each season, the rest being non-championship winning teams. Between 1939 and 1970, when teams could compete in either tournament, only DePaul (1945),[27] Utah (1947),[28], San Francisco (1949)[29] and Holy Cross (1954) [30] claim or celebrate national championships for their teams based solely on an NIT championship,[31][32][33][34] although Long Island recognizes its selection as the 1939 national champion by the Helms Athletic Foundation,[35] made in 1943.[36][37]

text: In 1943 the NCAA tournament moved to share Madison Square Garden with the NIT in an effort to increase the credibility of the NCAA Tournament.[23] In 1945, The New York Times indicated that many teams could get bids to enter either tournament, which was not uncommon in that day.[38] In any case, since the mid-1950s, the NCAA tournament has been popularly regarded by most individuals as the major post season tourney, with conference champions and the majority of the top-ranked teams participating in it.[18][23]

text: Nevertheless, as late as 1970, Coach Al McGuire of Marquette, the 8th-ranked team in the final AP poll of the season, spurned an NCAA at-large invitation because the Warriors were going to be placed in the NCAA Midwest Regional (Fort Worth, Texas) instead of closer to home in the Mideast Regional (Dayton, Ohio).[39] The team played in the NIT instead, which it won. This led the NCAA to decree in 1971 that any school to which it offered a bid must accept it or be prohibited from participating in postseason competition, reducing the pool of teams that could accept an NIT invitation.[40]

text: Decline[edit]

text: As the NCAA over time expanded its field to include more teams, the reputation of the NIT suffered. In 1973, NBC moved televised coverage of the NCAA championship from Saturday afternoon to Monday evening,[40] providing the NCAA Tournament with prime-time television exposure the NIT could not match. Even more crucially, when the NCAA eliminated the one-team-per-conference rule in 1975, its requirement that teams accept its bids relegated the NIT to a collection of teams that did not make the NCAA grade.

text: Compounding this, to cut costs the NIT moved its early rounds out of Madison Square Garden in 1977, playing games at home sites until the later rounds. This further harmed the NIT's prestige, both regionalizing interest in it and marginalizing it by reducing its association with Madison Square Garden.[40] By the mid-1980s, its transition to a secondary tournament for lesser teams was complete.[40]

text: NCAA takes control[edit]

text: In 2005, the NCAA purchased 10-year rights to the NIT from the MIBA for $56.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit, which had gone to trial and was being argued until very shortly before the settlement was announced. The MIBA alleged that compelling teams to accept invitations to the NCAA tournament even if they preferred to play in the NIT was an illegal use of the NCAA's powers. In addition, it argued that the NCAA's expansion of its tournament to 65 teams (68 since 2011) was designed specifically to bankrupt the NIT. Faced with the very real possibility of being found in violation of federal antitrust law for the third time in its history, the NCAA chose to settle. (The first two violations were related to restrictions on televising college football and capping assistant coach salaries.) As part of the purchase of the NIT by the NCAA, the MIBA disbanded.

text: Reputation[edit]

text: The status of the post-season National Invitation Tournament as a "consolation" fixture has led to somewhat of a stigma in the minds of many fans. When teams with tenuous hopes of an NCAA Tournament berth lose away from home late in the season, opposing fans may taunt the players in the closing seconds with chants of "NIT! NIT!". This is done regardless of whether the home team is headed for the NCAA Tournament or not. Irv Moss, a journalist for the Denver Post, once wrote of such a taunt to a defeated team, "The three-letter word... was far more cutting than any four-letter word they could have hollered." [41]

text: Because the post-season NIT consists of teams that failed to receive a berth in the NCAA Tournament, the NIT has been nicknamed the "Not Invited Tournament", "Not Important Tournament", "Never Important Tournament", "Nobody's Interested Tournament", "Needs Improvement Tournament", "No Important Team", "National Insignificant Tournament," or simply "Not In Tournament".[1] It has also been called a tournament to see who the "69th best team" in the country is (since there are now 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament).

text: David Thompson, an All-American player from North Carolina State, called the NIT "a loser's tournament" in 1975. NC State, which had been the previous year's NCAA champion, refused to play in the tournament that year, following the precedent set by ACC rival Maryland the previous season after losing the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game to the top-ranked Wolfpack. In succeeding years, other teams such as Oklahoma State, Louisville, Georgia Tech, Georgetown, and LSU[42][43] have declined to play in the NIT when they did not make the NCAA tournament. One such team was Maryland; after being rejected by the NCAA selection committee in 2006, head coach Gary Williams announced that 19-11 Maryland would not go to the NIT, only to be told that the university had previously agreed to use Comcast Center as a venue for the NIT. The Terrapins were eliminated in the first round by the Manhattan College Jaspers. In 2008, however, Williams announced that if invited, the Terps would play, because it would serve as a chance to further develop six freshman players on his squad and to give senior forward James Gist more exposure.[44] At UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, there are individual championship banners for all 11 NCAA titles, various other banners touting many other NCAA and other tournament championships for other sports, but no mention of UCLA's 1985 NIT championship.

text: For other teams, however, the NIT is perceived as a step up in a program climbing from mediocrity or obscurity, and the response is more enthusiastic. For example, at the University of Tulsa, which won the NIT in 1981 and 2001, the Golden Hurricane's NIT "championship tradition" is viewed with pride and as a "lure" for players to join the program.[45] The University of Connecticut also regards the NIT as the beginning of its success.[46] The NIT is also held in generally higher regard than the three newer tournaments that have debuted since 2008 (the Vegas 16, College Basketball Invitational and CollegeInsider.com Tournament); Saint Bonaventure, a school that has a policy of refusing to play in those three tournaments (the school, tiny by Division I standards, is unwilling to spare the expense of participating in those tournaments), still accepts bids to the NIT if it is invited.[47]

text: The NIT Season Tip-Off carries none of the postseason tournament's stigma, and is one of many popular season-opening tournaments held every year around the country (alongside events such as the Maui Invitational and the Great Alaska Shootout).

text: Selection process[edit]

text: In the past, NIT teams were selected in consultation with ESPN, the television home of the NIT.[48] The goal of the NIT was to sustain the MIBA financially. Therefore, schools selected to play in the NIT were often major conference teams with records near .500 that had large television fan bases and would likely have a respectable attendance for tournament games on their home court. The latter is one reason why New Mexico was invited virtually every year — the Lobos often had a winning season but failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament.[49] Seeding considerations and home court advantage included the number of fans willing to show up to each game. In an effort to maintain some quality, a rule saying that a team must have a .500 or better record[clarification needed] to qualify for the NIT was imposed.

text: The NCAA announced a revamped selection process starting with the 2006 tournament. The main highlights are:

text:
Teams are no longer required to have .500 or greater records[clarification needed] to receive bids.
Similar to the automatic bids the NCAA Tournament grants for all conference tournament champions, all teams that won regular-season conference championships but failed to earn NCAA tournament bids are guaranteed places in the NIT.

text: In addition, the selection process was changed. ESPN no longer had a hand in the selection of the teams. Instead, a committee of former NCAA head coaches, chaired by Newton, and including Gene Keady (Purdue), Don DeVoe (Tennessee), Rudy Davalos, Les Robinson (NC State), Reggie Minton (Air Force), John Powers, and Carroll Williams among others, prepared a list of potential teams in advance.[50]

text: Beginning with the 2016 NIT, the committee makeup was restructured; committee members will serve a maximum four-year term, and the committee will feature a mix of current athletics administrators who are actively working at NCAA schools or conferences and former head college basketball coaches. Previously, the NIT Committee had eight members, all of whom had been former head college basketball coaches or athletics directors. The previous structure had no term limits or succession plan.[51]

text: ESPN continues to provide television coverage of the tournament. In 2011 the NCAA and ESPN agreed to a $500 million agreement through 2023–24 for rights to cover championships in several sports, including the NIT;[52] this compares with the 11-year, $6.2 billion TV contract with CBS for the NCAA tournament.

text: These changes are intended to encourage participation by good college teams that would rather stay home than play in the NIT – to make it the "Little Dance" instead of the "loser's tournament". Former NIT Committee chair and former Alabama and Vanderbilt head coach C. M. Newton stated, "What we want to have is a true basketball event, a real tournament, one where there's no preconceived ideas of who gets to New York. We'd love to have great crowds, but this is not a financial consideration. We want good television coverage, but we're not going to play this thing for television and move games around". [53] Another consideration is that a number one-seeded team that goes to the semifinals will have three home games, which helps ticket sales.

text: Since the 2007 tournament, the 32-team field used from 1980 through 2001 is the same, eliminating the eight-game "play-in" opening round where teams played to qualify for second round games against the top eight seeds used 2002–2006. The tournament features four eight-team regions. The format won't affect the NIT's automatic bid to any regular-season conference champion that do not make the NCAA's field of 68, since 2011. Seven teams earned an NIT bid that way in 2006.

text: A new attendance record for an NIT game was set at Syracuse University's Carrier Dome on March 19, 2007, at the Syracuse-San Diego State game. Syracuse won the game 80–64 with an attendance total of 26,752. The previous record of 23,522 was set by Kentucky in 1979.

text: Women's tournaments[edit]

text: From 1969 to 1996, a National Women's Invitational Tournament (NWIT) existed; the tournament was resurrected under the same name in 1998, and has been known as the Women's National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) since 1999. The original NWIT was an eight-team tournament held in Amarillo, Texas throughout its history. The revived tournament began with 16 teams, expanded to 32 in its second season, and has since expanded further to 40, 48, and (since 2010) 64 teams. However, the WNIT is affiliated with the NIT in name only. Neither the NWIT nor WNIT was connected with MIBA, and the WNIT was not purchased by the NCAA.

text: Men's postseason NIT champions[edit]

text:
Year
Champion
Runner-up
MVP

2018
Penn State
Utah
Lamar Stevens, Penn State

2017
TCU
Georgia Tech
Kenrich Williams, TCU

2016
George Washington
Valparaiso
Tyler Cavanaugh, George Washington

2015
Stanford
Miami (FL)
Chasson Randle, Stanford

2014
Minnesota
SMU
Austin Hollins, Minnesota

2013
Baylor
Iowa
Pierre Jackson, Baylor

2012
Stanford
Minnesota
Aaron Bright, Stanford [54]

2011
Wichita State
Alabama
Graham Hatch, Wichita State

2010
Dayton
North Carolina
Chris Johnson, Dayton

2009
Penn State
Baylor
Jamelle Cornley, Penn State

2008
Ohio State
Massachusetts
Kosta Koufos, Ohio State

2007
West Virginia
Clemson
Frank Young, West Virginia

2006
South Carolina
Michigan
Renaldo Balkman, South Carolina

2005
South Carolina
Saint Joseph's
Carlos Powell, South Carolina

2004
Michigan
Rutgers
Daniel Horton, Michigan

2003
Vacated [note 1]
Georgetown
Vacated [note 2]

2002
Memphis
South Carolina
Dajuan Wagner, Memphis

2001
Tulsa
Alabama
Marcus Hill, Tulsa

2000
Wake Forest
Notre Dame
Robert O'Kelley, Wake Forest

1999
California
Clemson
Sean Lampley, California

1998
Vacated [note 3]
Penn State
Vacated [note 4]

1997
Vacated [note 5]
Florida State
Vacated [note 6]

1996
Nebraska
Saint Joseph's
Erick Strickland, Nebraska

1995
Virginia Tech
Marquette
Shawn Smith, Virginia Tech

1994
Villanova
Vanderbilt
Doremus Bennerman, Siena

1993
Minnesota
Georgetown
Voshon Lenard, Minnesota

1992
Virginia
Notre Dame
Bryant Stith, Virginia

1991
Stanford
Oklahoma
Adam Keefe, Stanford

1990
Vanderbilt
Saint Louis
Scott Draud, Vanderbilt

1989
St. John's
Saint Louis
Jayson Williams, St. John's

1988
Connecticut
Ohio State
Phil Gamble, Connecticut

1987
Southern Miss
La Salle
Randolph Keys, Southern Miss

1986
Ohio State
Wyoming
Brad Sellers, Ohio State

1985
UCLA
Indiana
Reggie Miller, UCLA

1984
Michigan
Notre Dame
Tim McCormick, Michigan

1983
Fresno State
DePaul
Ron Anderson, Fresno State

1982
Bradley
Purdue
Mitchell Anderson, Bradley

1981
Tulsa
Syracuse
Greg Stewart, Tulsa

1980
Virginia
Minnesota
Ralph Sampson, Virginia

1979
Indiana
Purdue
Butch Carter and Ray Tolbert, Indiana

1978
Texas
North Carolina State
Jim Krivacs and Ron Baxter, Texas

1977
St. Bonaventure
Houston
Greg Sanders, St. Bonaventure

1976
Kentucky
Charlotte
Cedric Maxwell, Charlotte

1975
Princeton
Providence
Ron Lee, Oregon

1974
Purdue
Utah
Mike Sojourner, Utah

1973
Virginia Tech
Notre Dame
John Shumate, Notre Dame

1972
Maryland
Niagara
Tom McMillen, Maryland

1971
North Carolina
Georgia Tech
Bill Chamberlain, North Carolina

1970
Marquette
St. John's
Dean Meminger, Marquette

1969
Temple
Boston College
Terry Driscoll, Boston College

1968
Dayton
Kansas
Don May, Dayton

1967
Southern Illinois
Marquette
Walt Frazier, Southern Illinois

1966
Brigham Young
NYU
Bill Melchionni, Villanova

1965
St. John's
Villanova
Ken McIntyre, St. John's

1964
Bradley
New Mexico
Levern Tart, Bradley

1963
Providence
Canisius
Ray Flynn, Providence

1962
Dayton
St. John's
Bill Chmielewski, Dayton

1961
Providence
Saint Louis
Vin Ernst, Providence

1960
Bradley
Providence
Lenny Wilkens, Providence

1959
St. John's
Bradley
Tony Jackson, St. John's

1958
Xavier
Dayton
Hank Stein, Xavier

1957
Bradley
Memphis State
Win Wilfong, Memphis State

1956
Louisville
Dayton
Charlie Tyra, Louisville

1955
Duquesne
Dayton
Maurice Stokes, St. Francis (Pa.)

1954
Holy Cross
Duquesne
Togo Palazzi, Holy Cross

1953
Seton Hall
St. John's
Walter Dukes, Seton Hall

1952
La Salle
Dayton
Tom Gola and Norm Grekin, La Salle

1951
Brigham Young
Dayton
Roland Minson, Brigham Young

1950
CCNY
Bradley
Ed Warner, CCNY

1949
San Francisco
Loyola
Don Lofgran, San Francisco

1948
Saint Louis
NYU
Ed Macauley, Saint Louis

1947
Utah
Kentucky
Vern Gardner, Utah

1946
Kentucky
Rhode Island
Ernie Calverley, Rhode Island

1945
DePaul
Bowling Green
George Mikan, DePaul

1944
St. John's
DePaul
Bill Kotsores, St. John's

1943
St. John's
Toledo
Harry Boykoff, St. John's

1942
West Virginia
Western Kentucky
Rudy Baric, West Virginia

1941
Long Island
Ohio
Frankie Baumholtz, Ohio

1940
Colorado
Duquesne
Bob Doll, Colorado

1939
Long Island
Loyola
Bill Lloyd, St. John's

1938
Temple
Colorado
Don Shields, Temple

text:
Jump up ^ St. John's won the 2003 NIT title, but later vacated the title due to an ineligible player.
Jump up ^ Marcus Hatten of St. John's was the MVP of the 2003 tournament, but vacated the award with St. John's title.
Jump up ^ Minnesota won the 1998 NIT title, but later vacated the title due to academic fraud.
Jump up ^ Kevin Clark of Minnesota was the MVP of the 1998 tournament, but vacated the award with Minnesota's title.
Jump up ^ Michigan won the 1997 NIT title, but later vacated the title and forfeited its entire 1996-97 schedule due to ineligible players.
Jump up ^ Robert Traylor of Michigan was the MVP of the 1997 tournament, but was later declared ineligible and his award vacated.

tag: ol


document_title: USB flash drive

question_text: when did the first usb flash drive appear on the retail market

question_tokens: when did the first usb flash drive appear on the retail market

text: USB flash drive

text: History[edit]

text: M-Systems, an Israeli company later acquired by SanDisk, filed the first patent for a USB flash drive in April 1999, known as a DiskOnKey.[1][6] Later in 1999, IBM filed an invention disclosure by one of its employees.[1] Flash drives were sold initially by Trek 2000 International, a company in Singapore, which began selling in early 2000. IBM became the first to sell USB flash drives in the United States in 2000.[1] The initial storage capacity of a flash drive was 8 MB.[6] Another version of the flash drive, described as a pen drive, was also developed. Pua Khein-Seng from Malaysia has been credited with this invention.[7] Patent disputes have arisen over the years, with competing companies including Singaporean company Trek Technology and Chinese company Netac Technology, attempting to enforce their patents.[8] Trek won a suit in Singapore,[9][10] but has lost battles in other countries.[11] Netac Technology has brought lawsuits against PNY Technologies,[12] Lenovo,[13] aigo,[14] Sony,[15][16][17] and Taiwan's Acer and Tai Guen Enterprise Co.[17]

text: Technology improvements[edit]

text: Flash drives are often measured by the rate at which they transfer data. Transfer rates may be given in megabytes per second (MB/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s), or in optical drive multipliers such as "180X" (180 times 150 KiB/s).[18] File transfer rates vary considerably among devices. Second generation flash drives have claimed to read at up to 30 MB/s and write at about half that rate, which was about 20 times faster than the theoretical transfer rate achievable by the previous model, USB 1.1, which is limited to 12 Mbit/s (1.5 MB/s) with accounted overhead.[19] The effective transfer rate of a device is significantly affected by the data access pattern. [20]

text: By 2002, USB flash drives had USB 2.0 connectivity, which has 480 Mbit/s as the transfer rate upper bound; after accounting for the protocol overhead that translates to a 35 MB/s effective throughput.[21] That same year, Intel sparked widespread use of second generation USB by including them within its laptops.[22]

text: Third generation USB flash drives were announced in late 2008 and became available in 2010.[citation needed] Like USB 2.0 before it, USB 3.0 dramatically improved data transfer rates compared to its predecessor. The USB 3.0 interface specified transfer rates up to 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s), compared to USB 2.0's 480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s).[citation needed] By 2010 the maximum available storage capacity for the devices had reached upwards of 128GB.[6] USB 3.0 was slow to appear in laptops. As of 2010, the majority of laptop models still contained the 2.0.[22]

text: In January 2013, tech company Kingston, released a flash drive with 1TB of storage.[23] The first USB 3.1 type-C flash drives, with read/write speeds of around 530 MB/s, were announced in March 2015.[24] As of July 2016, flash drives within the 8 to 256 GB were sold more frequently than those between 512 GB and 1 TB units.[2][3] In 2017, Kingston Technology announced the released of a 2-TB flash drive.[25]

text:
Internals of a typical USB flash drive

1

USB Standard-A, "male" plug

2

USB mass storage controller device

3

Test point

4

Flash memory chip

5

Crystal oscillator

6

LED (Optional)

7

Write-protect switch (Optional)

8

Space for second flash memory chip

text: On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single Standard-A USB plug; some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices.[26]

text: Technology[edit]

text: On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single Standard-A USB plug; some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices.

text: Inside the plastic casing is a small printed circuit board, which has some power circuitry and a small number of surface-mounted integrated circuits (ICs).[citation needed] Typically, one of these ICs provides an interface between the USB connector and the onboard memory, while the other is the flash memory. Drives typically use the USB mass storage device class to communicate with the host.[27]

text: Flash memory[edit]

text: Flash memory combines a number of older technologies, with lower cost, lower power consumption and small size made possible by advances in microprocessor technology. The memory storage was based on earlier EPROM and EEPROM technologies. These had limited capacity, were slow for both reading and writing, required complex high-voltage drive circuitry, and could be re-written only after erasing the entire contents of the chip.

text: Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken up into smaller "fields" that could be erased individually without affecting the others. Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved copying the entire field into an off-chip buffer memory, erasing the field, modifying the data as required in the buffer, and re-writing it into the same field. This required considerable computer support, and PC-based EEPROM flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this.

text: The development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB made semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems. Serial access requires far fewer electrical connections for the memory chips than does parallel access, which has simplified the manufacture of multi-gigabyte drives.

text: Computers access modern[update] flash memory systems very much like hard disk drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is actually stored. The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are, however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above.

text: Many low-cost MP3 players simply add extra software and a battery to a standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional flash drive, for storing files of any type.

text: Essential components[edit]

text: There are typically five parts to a flash drive:

text:
Standard-A USB plug –  provides a physical interface to the host computer. Some USB flash drives use USB plug that does not protect the 4 contacts, with the possibility of plugging it into the USB port the other way around.
USB mass storage controller –  a small microcontroller with a small amount of on-chip ROM and RAM.
NAND flash memory chip(s) –  stores data (NAND flash is typically also used in digital cameras).
Crystal oscillator –  produces the device's main 12 MHz clock signal and controls the device's data output through a phase-locked loop.
Cover –  typically made of plastic or metal, protecting the electronics against mechanical stress and even possible short circuits.

text: Additional components[edit]

text: The typical device may also include:

text:
Jumpers and test pins – for testing during the flash drive's manufacturing or loading code into its microcontroller.
LEDs – indicate data transfers or data reads and writes.
Write-protect switches – Enable or disable writing of data into memory.
Unpopulated space – provides space to include a second memory chip. Having this second space allows the manufacturer to use a single printed circuit board for more than one storage size device.
USB connector cover or cap – reduces the risk of damage, prevents the entry of dirt or other contaminants, and improves overall device appearance. Some flash drives use retractable USB connectors instead. Others have a swivel arrangement so that the connector can be protected without removing anything.
Transport aid – the cap or the body often contains a hole suitable for connection to a key chain or lanyard. Connecting the cap, rather than the body, can allow the drive itself to be lost.
Some drives offer expandable storage via an internal memory card slot, much like a memory card reader.[28][29]

text: Size and style of packaging[edit]

text: Most USB flash drives weigh less than 30 g (1 ounce).[30] While some manufacturers are competing for the smallest size[31] with the biggest memory,[32] some manufacturers differentiate their products by using elaborate housings, which are often bulky and make the drive difficult to connect to the USB port. Because the USB port connectors on a computer housing are often closely spaced, plugging a flash drive into a USB port may block an adjacent port. Such devices may carry the USB logo only if sold with a separate extension cable. Such cables are USB-compatible but do not conform to the USB standard.[33][34]

text: USB flash drives have been integrated into other commonly carried items, such as watches, pens, and even the Swiss Army Knife; others have been fitted with novelty cases such as toy cars or Lego bricks. USB flash drives with images of dragons, cats or aliens are very popular in Asia.[35] The small size, robustness and cheapness of USB flash drives make them an increasingly popular peripheral for case modding.

text: File system[edit]

text: Most flash drives ship preformatted with the FAT32, or exFAT file systems. The ubiquity of the FAT32 file system allows the drive to be accessed on virtually any host device with USB support. Also, standard FAT maintenance utilities (e.g., ScanDisk) can be used to repair or retrieve corrupted data. However, because a flash drive appears as a USB-connected hard drive to the host system, the drive can be reformatted to any file system supported by the host operating system.

text: Longevity[edit]

text: The memory in flash drives is commonly engineered with multi-level cell (MLC) based memory that is good for around 3,000-5,000 program-erase cycles,[39] but some flash drives have single-level cell (SLC) based memory that is good for around 100,000 writes. There is virtually no limit to the number of reads from such flash memory, so a well-worn USB drive may be write-protected to help ensure the life of individual cells.

text: Estimation of flash memory endurance is a challenging subject that depends on the SLC/MLC/TLC memory type, size of the flash memory chips, and actual usage pattern. As a result, a USB flash drive can last from a few days to several hundred years.[40]

text: Regardless of the endurance of the memory itself, the USB connector hardware is specified to withstand only around 1,500 insert-removal cycles.[41]

text: Counterfeit products[edit]

text: Counterfeit USB flash drives are sometimes sold with claims of having higher capacities than they actually have. These are typically low capacity USB drives which are modified so that they emulate larger capacity drives (for example, a 2 GB drive being marketed as a 64 GB drive). When plugged into a computer, they report themselves as being the larger capacity they were sold as, but when data is written to them, either the write fails, the drive freezes up, or it overwrites existing data. Software tools exist to check and detect fake USB drives,[42][43] and in some cases it is possible to repair these devices to remove the false capacity information and use its real storage limit.[44]

text: File transfer speeds[edit]

text: Transfer speeds are technically determined by the slowest of three factors: the USB version used, the speed in which the USB controller device can read and write data onto the flash memory, and the speed of the hardware bus, especially in the case of add-on USB ports.

text: USB flash drives usually specify their read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MB/s); read speed is usually faster. These speeds are for optimal conditions; real-world speeds are usually slower. In particular, circumstances that often lead to speeds much lower than advertised are transfer (particularly writing) of many small files rather than a few very large ones, and mixed reading and writing to the same device.

text: In a typical well-conducted review of a number of high-performance USB 3.0 drives, a drive that could read large files at 68 MB/s and write at 46 MB/s, could only manage 14 MB/s and 0.3 MB/s with many small files. When combining streaming reads and writes the speed of another drive, that could read at 92 MB/s and write at 70 MB/s, was 8 MB/s. These differences differ radically from one drive to another; some drives could write small files at over 10% of the speed for large ones. The examples given are chosen to illustrate extremes....′[45]

text: Uses[edit]

text: Personal data transport[edit]

text: The most common use of flash drives is to transport  and store personal files, such as documents, pictures and videos. Individuals also store medical information on flash drives for emergencies and disaster preparation.

text: Secure storage of data, application and software files[edit]

text: With wide deployment(s) of flash drives being used in various environments (secured or otherwise), the issue of data and information security remains important. The use of biometrics and encryption is becoming the norm with the need for increased security for data; on-the-fly encryption systems are particularly useful in this regard, as they can transparently encrypt large amounts of data. In some cases a secure USB drive may use a hardware-based encryption mechanism that uses a hardware module instead of software for strongly encrypting data. IEEE 1667 is an attempt to create a generic authentication platform for USB drives. It is supported in Windows 7 and Windows Vista (Service Pack 2 with a hotfix).[46]

text: Computer forensics and law enforcement[edit]

text: A recent development for the use of a USB Flash Drive as an application carrier is to carry the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) application developed by Microsoft. COFEE is a set of applications designed to search for and extract digital evidence on computers confiscated from suspects.[47] Forensic software is required not to alter, in any way, the information stored on the computer being examined. Other forensic suites run from CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, but cannot store data on the media they are run from (although they can write to other attached devices, such as external drives or memory sticks).

text: Updating motherboard firmware[edit]

text: Motherboard firmware (including BIOS and UEFI) can be updated using USB flash drives.  Usually, new firmware image is downloaded and placed onto a FAT16- or FAT32-formatted USB flash drive connected to a system which is to be updated, and path to the new firmware image is selected within the update component of system's firmware.[48]  Some motherboard manufacturers are also allowing such updates to be performed without the need for entering system's firmware update component, making it possible to easily recover systems with corrupted firmware.[49]

text: Also, HP has introduced a USB floppy drive key, which is an ordinary USB flash drive with additional possilibility for performing floppy drive emulation, allowing its usage for updating system firmware where direct usage of USB flash drives is not supported.  Desired mode of operation (either regular USB mass storage device or of floppy drive emulation) is made selectable by a sliding switch on the device's housing.[50][51]

text: Booting operating systems[edit]

text: Most current PC firmware permits booting from a USB drive, allowing the launch of an operating system from a bootable flash drive. Such a configuration is known as a Live USB.[52]

text: Original flash memory designs had very limited estimated lifetimes. The failure mechanism for flash memory cells is analogous to a metal fatigue mode; the device fails by refusing to write new data to specific cells that have been subject to many read-write cycles over the device's lifetime. Premature failure of a "live USB" could be circumvented by using a flash drive with a write-lock switch as a WORM device, identical to a live CD. Originally, this potential failure mode limited the use of "live USB" system to special-purpose applications or temporary tasks, such as:

text:
Loading a minimal, hardened kernel for embedded applications (e.g., network router, firewall).
Bootstrapping an operating system install or disk cloning operation, often across a network.
Maintenance tasks, such as virus scanning or low-level data repair, without the primary host operating system loaded.

text: As of  2011[update], newer flash memory designs have much higher estimated lifetimes. Several manufacturers are now offering warranties of 5 years or more. Such warranties should make the device more attractive for more applications. By reducing the probability of the device's premature failure, flash memory devices can now be considered for use where a magnetic disk would normally have been required. Flash drives have also experienced an exponential growth in their storage capacity over time (following the Moore's Law growth curve). As of 2013, single-packaged devices with capacities of 1 TB are readily available,[53] and devices with 16 GB capacity are very economical. Storage capacities in this range have traditionally been considered to offer adequate space, because they allow enough space for both the operating system software and some free space for the user's data.

text: Operating system installation media[edit]

text: Installers of some operating systems can be stored to a flash drive instead of a CD or DVD, including various Linux distributions, Windows 7 and newer versions, and macOS. In particular, Mac OS X 10.7 is distributed only online, through the Mac App Store, or on flash drives; for a MacBook Air with Boot Camp and no external optical drive, a flash drive can be used to run installation of Windows or Linux.

text: However, for installation of Windows 7 and later versions, using USB flash drive with hard disk drive emulation as detected in PC's firmware is recommended in order to boot from it. Transcend is the only manufacturer of USB flash drives containing such feature.

text: Furthermore, for installation of Windows XP, using USB flash drive with storage limit of at most 2 GB is recommended in order to boot from it.

text: Windows ReadyBoost[edit]

text: In Windows Vista and later versions, ReadyBoost feature allows flash drives (from 4 GB in case of Windows Vista) to augment operating system memory.[54]

text: Application carriers[edit]

text: Flash drives are used to carry applications that run on the host computer without requiring installation. While any standalone application can in principle be used this way, many programs store data, configuration information, etc. on the hard drive and registry of the host computer.

text: The U3 company works with drive makers (parent company SanDisk as well as others) to deliver custom versions of applications designed for Microsoft Windows from a special flash drive; U3-compatible devices are designed to autoload a menu when plugged into a computer running Windows. Applications must be modified for the U3 platform not to leave any data on the host machine. U3 also provides a software framework for independent software vendors interested in their platform.

text: Ceedo is an alternative product, with the key difference that it does not require Windows applications to be modified in order for them to be carried and run on the drive.

text: Similarly, other application virtualization solutions and portable application creators, such as VMware ThinApp (for Windows) or RUNZ (for Linux) can be used to run software from a flash drive without installation.

text: In October 2010, Apple Inc. released their newest iteration of the MacBook Air, which had the system's restore files contained on a USB hard drive rather than the traditional install CDs, due to the Air not coming with an optical drive.[55]

text: A wide range of portable applications which are all free of charge, and able to run off a computer running Windows without storing anything on the host computer's drives or registry, can be found in the list of portable software.

text: Backup[edit]

text: Some value-added resellers are now using a flash drive as part of small-business turnkey solutions (e.g., point-of-sale systems). The drive is used as a backup medium: at the close of business each night, the drive is inserted, and a database backup is saved to the drive. Alternatively, the drive can be left inserted through the business day, and data regularly updated. In either case, the drive is removed at night and taken offsite.

text:
This is simple for the end-user, and more likely to be done.
The drive is small and convenient, and more likely to be carried off-site for safety.
The drives are less fragile mechanically and magnetically than tapes.
The capacity is often large enough for several backup images of critical data.
Flash drives are cheaper than many other backup systems.

text: Flash drives also have disadvantages. They are easy to lose and facilitate unauthorized backups.  A lesser setback for flash drives is that they have only one tenth the capacity of hard drives manufactured around their time of distribution.

text: Audio players[edit]

text: Many companies make small solid-state digital audio players, essentially producing flash drives with sound output and a simple user interface. Examples include the Creative MuVo, Philips GoGear and the first generation iPod shuffle. Some of these players are true USB flash drives as well as music players; others do not support general-purpose data storage. Other applications requiring storage, such as digital voice or sound recording, can also be combined with flash drive functionality.[56]

text: Many of the smallest players are powered by a permanently fitted rechargeable battery, charged from the USB interface.  Fancier devices that function as a digital audio player have a USB host port (type A female typically).

text: Media storage and marketing[edit]

text: Digital audio files can be transported from one computer to another like any other file, and played on a compatible media player (with caveats for DRM-locked files). In addition, many home Hi-Fi and car stereo head units are now equipped with a USB port. This allows a USB flash drive containing media files in a variety of formats to be played directly on devices which support the format. Some LCD monitors for consumer HDTV viewing have a dedicated USB port through which music and video files can also be played without use of a personal computer.

text: Artists have sold or given away USB flash drives, with the first instance believed to be in 2004 when the German punk band Wizo released the Stick EP, only as a USB drive. In addition to five high-bitrate MP3s, it also included a video, pictures, lyrics, and guitar tablature.[57] Subsequently, artists including Nine Inch Nails and Kylie Minogue[58] have released music and promotional material on USB flash drives. The first USB album to be released in the UK was Kiss Does... Rave, a compilation album released by the Kiss Network in April 2007.[59]

text: Brand and product promotion[edit]

text: The availability of inexpensive flash drives has enabled them to be used for       promotional and marketing purposes, particularly within technical and computer-industry circles (e.g., technology trade shows). They may be given away for free, sold at less than wholesale price, or included as a bonus with another purchased product.

text: Usually, such drives will be custom-stamped with a company's logo, as a form of advertising. The drive may be blank, or preloaded with graphics, documentation, web links, Flash animation or other multimedia, and free or demonstration software. Some preloaded drives are read-only, while others are configured with both read-only and user-writable segments. Such dual-partition drives are more expensive.[60]

text: Flash drives can be set up to automatically launch stored presentations, websites, articles, and any other software immediately on insertion of the drive using the Microsoft Windows AutoRun feature.[61] Autorunning software this way does not work on all computers, and it is normally disabled by security-conscious users.

text: Arcades[edit]

text: In the arcade game In the Groove and more commonly In The Groove 2, flash drives are used to transfer high scores, screenshots, dance edits, and combos throughout sessions. As of software revision 21 (R21), players can also store custom songs and play them on any machine on which this feature is enabled. While use of flash drives is common, the drive must be Linux compatible.

text: In the arcade games Pump it Up NX2 and Pump it Up NXA, a specially produced flash drive is used as a "save file" for unlocked songs, as well as for progressing in the WorldMax and Brain Shower sections of the game.

text: In the arcade game Dance Dance Revolution X, an exclusive USB flash drive was made by Konami for the purpose of the link feature from its Sony PlayStation 2 counterpart. However, any USB flash drive can be used in this arcade game.

text: Conveniences[edit]

text: Flash drives use little power, have no fragile moving parts, and for most capacities are small and light. Data stored on flash drives is impervious to mechanical shock, magnetic fields, scratches and dust. These properties make them suitable for transporting data from place to place and keeping the data readily at hand.

text: Flash drives also store data densely compared to many removable media. In mid-2009, 256 GB drives became available, with the ability to hold many times more data than a DVD (54 DVDs) or even a Blu-ray disc (10 BDs).[62]

text: Flash drives implement the USB mass storage device class so that most modern operating systems can read and write to them without installing device drivers. The flash drives present a simple block-structured logical unit to the host operating system, hiding the individual complex implementation details of the various underlying flash memory devices. The operating system can use any file system or block addressing scheme. Some computers can boot up from flash drives.

text: Specially manufactured flash drives are available that have a tough rubber or metal casing designed to be waterproof and virtually "unbreakable". These flash drives retain their memory after being submerged in water, and even through a machine wash. Leaving such a flash drive out to dry completely before allowing current to run through it has been known to result in a working drive with no future problems. Channel Five's Gadget Show cooked one of these flash drives with propane, froze it with dry ice, submerged it in various acidic liquids, ran over it with a jeep and fired it against a wall with a mortar. A company specializing in recovering lost data from computer drives managed to recover all the data on the drive.[63] All data on the other removable storage devices tested, using optical or magnetic technologies, were destroyed.

text: Comparison with other portable storage[edit]

text: Tape[edit]

text: The applications of current data tape cartridges hardly overlap those of flash drives: on tape, cost per gigabyte is very low for large volumes, but the individual drives and media are expensive. Media have a very high capacity and very fast transfer speeds, but store data sequentially and are very slow for random access of data. While disk-based backup is now the primary medium of choice for most companies, tape backup is still popular for taking data off-site for worst-case scenarios and for very large volumes (more than a few hundreds of TB). See LTO tapes.

text: Floppy disk[edit]

text: Floppy disk drives are rarely fitted to modern computers and are obsolete for normal purposes, although internal and external drives can be fitted if required. Floppy disks may be the method of choice for transferring data to and from very old computers without USB or booting from floppy disks, and so they are sometimes used to change the firmware on, for example, BIOS chips. Devices with removable storage like older Yamaha music keyboards are also dependent on floppy disks, which require computers to process them. Newer devices are built with USB flash drive support.

text: Optical media[edit]

text: The various writable and rewritable forms of CD and DVD are portable storage media supported by the vast majority of computers as of 2008. CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R can be written to only once, RW varieties up to about 1,000 erase/write cycles, while modern NAND-based flash drives often last for 500,000 or more erase/write cycles. DVD-RAM discs are the most suitable optical discs for data storage involving much rewriting.

text: Optical storage devices are among the cheapest methods of mass data storage after the hard drive. They are slower than their flash-based counterparts. Standard 12 cm optical discs are larger than flash drives and more subject to damage. Smaller optical media do exist, such as business card CD-Rs which have the same dimensions as a credit card, and the slightly less convenient but higher capacity 8 cm recordable MiniCD and MiniDVD. The small discs are more expensive than the standard size, and do not work in all drives.

text: Universal Disk Format (UDF) version 1.50 and above has facilities to support rewritable discs like sparing tables and virtual allocation tables, spreading usage over the entire surface of a disc and maximising life, but many older operating systems do not support this format. Packet-writing utilities such as DirectCD and InCD are available but produce discs that are not universally readable (although based on the UDF standard). The Mount Rainier standard addresses this shortcoming in CD-RW media by running the older file systems on top of it and performing defect management for those standards, but it requires support from both the CD/DVD burner and the operating system. Many drives made today do not support Mount Rainier, and many older operating systems such as Windows XP and below, and Linux kernels older than 2.6.2, do not support it (later versions do). Essentially CDs/DVDs are a good way to record a great deal of information cheaply and have the advantage of being readable by most standalone players, but they are poor at making ongoing small changes to a large collection of information. Flash drives' ability to do this is their major advantage over optical media.

text: Flash memory cards[edit]

text: Flash memory cards, e.g., Secure Digital cards, are available in various formats and capacities, and are used by many consumer devices. However, while virtually all PCs have USB ports, allowing the use of USB flash drives, memory card readers are not commonly supplied as standard equipment (particularly with desktop computers). Although inexpensive card readers are available that read many common formats, this results in two pieces of portable equipment (card plus reader) rather than one.

text: Some manufacturers, aiming at a "best of both worlds" solution, have produced card readers that approach the size and form of USB flash drives (e.g., Kingston MobileLite,[64] SanDisk MobileMate[65])  These readers are limited to a specific subset of memory card formats (such as SD, microSD, or Memory Stick), and often completely enclose the card, offering durability and portability approaching, if not quite equal to, that of a flash drive. Although the combined cost of a mini-reader and a memory card is usually slightly higher than a USB flash drive of comparable capacity, the reader + card solution offers additional flexibility of use, and virtually "unlimited" capacity. The ubiquity of SD cards is such that, circa 2011, due to economies of scale, their price is now less than an equivalent-capacity USB flash drive, even with the added cost of a USB SD card reader.

text: An additional advantage of memory cards is that many consumer devices (e.g., digital cameras, portable music players) cannot make use of USB flash drives (even if the device has a USB port), whereas the memory cards used by the devices can be read by PCs with a card reader.

text: External hard disk[edit]

text: Particularly with the advent of USB, external hard disks have become widely available and inexpensive. External hard disk drives currently cost less per gigabyte than flash drives and are available in larger capacities. Some hard drives support alternative and faster interfaces than USB 2.0 (e.g., Thunderbolt, FireWire and eSATA). For consecutive sector writes and reads (for example, from an unfragmented file), most hard drives can provide a much higher sustained data rate than current NAND flash memory, though mechanical latencies seriously impact hard drive performance.

text: Unlike solid-state memory, hard drives are susceptible to damage by shock (e.g., a short fall) and vibration, have limitations on use at high altitude, and although they are shielded by their casings, they are vulnerable when exposed to strong magnetic fields. In terms of overall mass, hard drives are usually larger and heavier than flash drives; however, hard disks sometimes weigh less per unit of storage. Like flash drives, hard disks also suffer from file fragmentation, which can reduce access speed.

text: Obsolete devices[edit]

text: Audio tape cassettes and high-capacity floppy disks (e.g., Imation SuperDisk), and other forms of drives with removable magnetic media, such as the Iomega Zip and Jaz drives, are now largely obsolete and rarely used. There are products in today's market that will emulate these legacy drives for both tape and disk (SCSI1/SCSI2, SASI, Magneto optic, Ricoh ZIP, Jaz, IBM3590/ Fujitsu 3490E and Bernoulli for example) in state-of-the-art Compact Flash storage devices – CF2SCSI.

text: Encryption and security[edit]

text: As highly portable media, USB flash drives are easily lost or stolen. All USB flash drives can have their contents encrypted using third-party disk encryption software, which can often be run directly from the USB drive without installation (for example, FreeOTFE), although some, such as BitLocker, require the user to have administrative rights on every computer it is run on.

text: Archiving software can achieve a similar result by creating encrypted ZIP or RAR files.[66][67]

text: Some manufacturers have produced USB flash drives which use hardware-based encryption as part of the design,[68] removing the need for third-party encryption software. In limited circumstances these drives have been shown to have security problems, and are typically more expensive than software-based systems, which are available for free.

text: A minority of flash drives support biometric fingerprinting to confirm the user's identity. As of mid-2005[update],[needs update] this was an expensive alternative to standard password protection offered on many new USB flash storage devices. Most fingerprint scanning drives rely upon the host operating system to validate the fingerprint via a software driver, often restricting the drive to Microsoft Windows computers. However, there are USB drives with fingerprint scanners which use controllers that allow access to protected data without any authentication.[69]

text: Some manufacturers deploy physical authentication tokens in the form of a flash drive. These are used to control access to a sensitive system by containing encryption keys or, more commonly, communicating with security software on the target machine. The system is designed so the target machine will not operate except when the flash drive device is plugged into it. Some of these "PC lock" devices also function as normal flash drives when plugged into other machines.

text: Controversies[edit]

text: Criticisms[edit]

text: Failures[edit]

text: Like all flash memory devices, flash drives can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before the drive fails.[70][unreliable source?][71] This should be a consideration when using a flash drive to run application software or an operating system. To address this, as well as space limitations, some developers have produced special versions of operating systems (such as Linux in Live USB)[72] or commonplace applications (such as Mozilla Firefox) designed to run from flash drives. These are typically optimized for size and configured to place temporary or intermediate files in the computer's main RAM rather than store them temporarily on the flash drive.

text: When used in the same manner as external rotating drives (hard drives, optical drives, or floppy drives), i.e. in ignorance of their technology, USB drives' failure is more likely to be sudden: while rotating drives can fail instantaneously, they more frequently give some indication (noises, slowness) that they are about to fail, often with enough advance warning that data can be removed before total failure. USB drives give little or no advance warning of failure. Furthermore, when internal wear-leveling is applied to prolong life of the flash drive, once failure of even part of the memory occurs it can be difficult or impossible to use the remainder of the drive, which differs from magnetic media, where bad sectors can be marked permanently not to be used.[73]

text: Most USB flash drives do not include a write protection mechanism. This feature, which gradually became less common, consists of a switch on the housing of the drive itself, that prevents the host computer from writing or modifying data on the drive.  For example, write protection makes a device suitable for repairing virus-contaminated host computers without the risk of infecting a USB flash drive itself.  In contrast to SD cards, write protection on USB flash drives (when available) is connected to the drive circuitry, and is handled by the drive itself instead of the host (on SD cards handling of the write-protection notch is optional).

text: A drawback to the small size of flash drives is that they are easily misplaced or otherwise lost. This is a particular problem if they contain sensitive data (see data security). As a consequence, some manufacturers have added encryption hardware to their drives, although software encryption systems which can be used in conjunction with any mass storage medium will achieve the same result. Most drives can be attached to keychains or lanyards. The USB plug is usually retractable or fitted with a removable protective cap.

text: Storage capacity[edit]

text: Storage capacity of USB flash drives in 2013 was up to 1 TB while hard disk can be as large as 10 TB.[74] As of 2011, USB flash drives were more expensive per unit of storage than large hard drives, but were less expensive in capacities of a few tens of gigabytes.[75]

text: Robustness[edit]

text: Most USB-based flash technology integrates a printed circuit board with a metal tip, which is simply soldered on. As a result, the stress point is where the two pieces join. The quality control of some manufacturers does not ensure a proper solder temperature, further weakening the stress point.[76][77] Since many flash drives stick out from computers, they are likely to be bumped repeatedly and may break at the stress point. Most of the time, a break at the stress point tears the joint from the printed circuit board and results in permanent damage. However, some manufacturers produce discreet flash drives that do not stick out, and others use a solid metal uni-body that has no easily discernible stress point.  SD cards serve as a good alternative to USB drives since they can be inserted flush.

text: Security threats[edit]

text: BadUSB[edit]

text: Flash drives may present a significant security challenge for some organizations. Their small size and ease of use allows unsupervised visitors or employees to store and smuggle out confidential data with little chance of detection. Both corporate and public computers are vulnerable to attackers connecting a flash drive to a free USB port and using malicious software such as keyboard loggers or packet sniffers.

text: For computers set up to be bootable from a USB drive, it is possible to use a flash drive containing a bootable portable operating system to access the files of the computer, even if the computer is password protected. The password can then be changed, or it may be possible to crack the password with a password cracking program and gain full control over the computer. Encrypting files provides considerable protection against this type of attack.

text: USB flash drives may also be used deliberately or unwittingly to transfer malware and autorun worms onto a network.

text: Some organizations forbid the use of flash drives, and some computers are configured to disable the mounting of USB mass storage devices by users other than administrators; others use third-party software to control USB usage. The use of software allows the administrator to not only provide a USB lock but also control the use of CD-RW, SD cards and other memory devices. This enables companies with policies forbidding the use of USB flash drives in the workplace to enforce these policies. In a lower-tech security solution, some organizations disconnect USB ports inside the computer or fill the USB sockets with epoxy.

text: Some of the security measures taken to prevent confidential data from being taken have presented some side effects such as curtailing user privileges of recharging mobile devices off the USB ports on the systems.

text: USB killer[edit]

text: In appearance similar to an USB flash drive, an USB killer is a circuit that charges up capacitors to a high voltage using the power supply pins of a USB port then discharges high voltage pulses onto the data pins. This completely standalone device can instantly and permanently damage or destroy any host hardware that it is connected to.[78]

text: "Flash drives for freedom"[edit]

text: Flash drives with American movies and television shows were smuggled into North Korea by the Human Rights Foundation to spread pro-Western sentiment there in 2016.[79][80]

text: Naming[edit]

text: In 2005, Microsoft was using the term "USB Flash Drive" as the common name for these devices when they introduced the Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager.[81] Alternative names are commonly used, many of which are trademarks of various manufacturers.[a]

text: Current and future developments[edit]

text: Semiconductor corporations have worked to reduce the cost of the components in a flash drive by integrating various flash drive functions in a single chip, thereby reducing the part-count and overall package-cost.

text: Flash drive capacities on the market increase continually. High speed has become a standard for modern flash drives. Capacities exceeding 256 GB were available on the market as early as 2009.[62]

text: Lexar is attempting to introduce a USB FlashCard, which would be a compact USB flash drive intended to replace various kinds of flash memory cards. Pretec introduced a similar card, which also plugs into any USB port, but is just one quarter the thickness of the Lexar model.[82] Until 2008, SanDisk manufactured a product called SD Plus, which was a SecureDigital card with a USB connector.[83]

text: SanDisk has also introduced a new technology to allow controlled storage and usage of copyrighted materials on flash drives, primarily for use by students. This technology is termed FlashCP.