USB Mass-storage Device Class
The USB mass storage device class, otherwise known as USB MSC or UMS, is a protocol that allows a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device to become accessible to a host computing device, to enable file transfers between the two. To the host device, the USB device appears similar to an external hard drive, enabling drag-and-drop file transfers.
The USB mass storage device class comprises a set of computing communications protocols defined by the USB Implementers Forum that run on the Universal Serial Bus. The standard provides an interface to a variety of storage devices.
Some of the devices that are connected to computers via this standard include:
- external magnetic hard drives
- external optical drives, including CD and DVD reader and writer drives
- portable flash memory devices
- solid-state drives
- adapters bridging between standard flash memory cards and USB connections
- digital cameras
- digital audio players and portable media players
- card readers
- PDAs
- mobile phones
Devices which support this standard are referred to as MSC (Mass Storage Class) devices. While MSC is the official abbreviation, UMS (Universal Mass Storage) has become common in online jargon.
Read more about USB Mass-storage Device Class: Operating System Support, Device Access
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