Data Loading onto USB Sticks – Boring, Boring, Boring!

Someone has to do it but whoever gets the short straw is not going to be happy because there can be fewer more tedious and mind numbingly dull things in life than copying data onto hundreds of promotional USB memory sticks one at a time. Life’s just too short to be wasting it doing this.

Unfortunately if you’re buying USB sticks to giveaway then loading data onto them is just one of the things that has to be done. Given the core product is designed to store and carry data it’s a wasted opportunity if you don’t use the storage available to you to put something onto the sticks before you hand them out. With most promotional USB sticks now being 2GB, 4GB or 8GB there is after all loads of data storage space to play with!

USB Data Loading Machines

Obvious candidates to load onto the flash drives are sales brochures, web links, product sheets, press releases, conference notes/slides, and videos. But, remember the more you load onto them the longer it’s going to take to sit and load each one!

Because putting data files onto any flash drive you hand out is a “no brainer” the simple solution is to get the company that supplies you with the USB sticks to load the data onto them for you before they are delivered. Most suppliers will pre-load up to several hundred megabytes of data free of charge – just check before you confirm your order.

If you’re expecting your supplier to do the data-loading for you then you will need to get organised and have your data ready. Don’t expect to be able to just drop the data on them the day before delivery is due because it’s unlikely to get done! Most suppliers will want the data with the order.

Companies that offer a data-loading service will usually use commercial and automatic USB data duplication equipment that costs thousands of pounds. Whilst expensive this kit not only allows them to load the USB stick quickly but they will be able to validate every stick to make sure its ok and they’ll be able to check the data loaded onto them has copied over correctly. These professional data-loading systems are rack mounted, they manage tens or hundreds of USB sticks at a time and the systems can be expanded to meet demand.

At USB2U we have invested in a number of professional data-loading machines which gives us the capacity to load thousands of USB sticks every day. It’s still a tedious job for someone to run these machines but it’s nowhere near as bad as having to load them one at a time on a PC!