USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and allows peripheral devices like printers and cameras to "talk" to your computer. It used to be that there were very specific ports on the back of a personal computer to connect things like a monitor or printer. Sometimes you needed a special cable or adapter in order to connect a device, and there was a lot of hunting around for compatible connectors. Now that USB is available, manufacturers use this technology to ensure that their devices can be connected to every computer with the use of one standard cable. How convenient!
USB has been around for a while and is a huge improvement over the old connectors used for monitors and printers. The first version of the USB protocol (USB 1.0) only allowed connections of a certain speed; USB 2.0 is faster and handles more data, and thus supports a wider variety of devices. Your MacBook comes with at least one and as many as three USB 2.0 ports, as this is the current standard.
You can still use USB 1.0 devices in these ports but you will experience reduced data transfer speeds. USB 3.0 was recently announced but I wouldn't recommend that you run right out and purchase a device with it. You won't receive the benefits of USB 3.0 until MacBooks are available with ports that support it.
One of the more common uses for a USB port is to connect a portable mass storage device, frequently called a flash or jump drive. These drives come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and storage capacities. Flash drives are handy if you want to back up documents, photos, or video or transfer them to other computers.
You can store work or school documents on your flash drive and then open them on any computer you happen to be using by plugging in the flash drive. Save your changed document to your flash drive and you've always got the most recent copy available at your fingertips.
Another way to gain more storage by using your USB port is to connect an external hard drive. External hard drives are larger and more expensive than flash drives but they can hold a lot more data. External drives are great if you download or create a lot of music or movies, take tons of photos, or collect other space-intensive files. You can also use an external drive to back up your system to transfer to another computer or restore your laptop in the event of a system failure.
Using a USB storage device is easy. If your USB drive requires external power, plug it in and then plug the USB connector into the port; your MacBook will take care of the rest. It installs any drivers that it needs to be able to recognize the device and then formats the drive if necessary. Once it's installed, you can drag and drop your files onto the drive.
After you've loaded onto your USB device the files you want to store on it, do not pull the drive out of the port without first "ejecting" it via software. This ensures that your MacBook has a chance to wrap up any unfinished tasks. If you don't give it this chance, it will warn you that the disk was not ejected properly. There are two ways to eject a USB drive from your Mac:
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