Product: Portable Data Storage Device Developers: Dov Moran Company: M-Systems Start of Development: 1999
Technological innovations and inventions are a frequent occurrence. Only a handful of these are granted official recognition by the Academy of the Hebrew Language. The DiskOnKey was awarded this distinction, when it was assigned the term ‘Hechsen Nayad’, Hebrew for portable storage.
M-Systems was founded in 1989 as a manufacturer of flash drives. Entrepreneur Dov Moran, CEO of M-Systems, explains that the idea came to him when he was trying to deliver a presentation. Due to technical difficulties, he was unable to access the presentation on his PC. The file could not be transferred to the on-site computer, because it was too large for the floppy disk commonly used at the time.
Moran’s invention entered the development phase at M-Systems and was patented. In late 2000, the revolutionary product was introduced – a flash drive with an integrated USB interface.
It was named DiskOnKey, a name which caught on instantly, becoming the generic name for flash drives in Israel.
The original marketable USB flash drives provided a storage capacity of 8, 16 and 32 megabytes. At first, some people in the tech industry claimed that the drive was too expensive and that it had limited functionality. Nevertheless, M-Systems insisted on forging ahead in its marketing campaign, steadily lowering the price of the drive while simultaneously increasing its storage capacity. Within a few years, the USB flash drive had become the global standard for removable storage devices.
Other data storage devices available at the time were expensive and had limited storage capacity, which in turn limited their ability to transfer data online. The flash drive offered users the ability to store and back-up data outside of the computer, and to smoothly and easily transfer data from computer to computer.
Over the years, flash memory technology has continued to advance, while prices have dropped and the storage capacity of flash-based products has increased to 1 terabyte and more.
In 2006, M-Systems was acquired by US-based SanDisk for 1.55 billion dollars. In 2016, it was acquired by Western Digital, while continuing its operations in Israel.
