If I would have been thinking, I would have been smart and backed up the data on my computer to an external device. Unfortunately, my computer crashed the other day, and I lost my whole thesis I was working on for graduate school. I was crying to one of my friends about losing all of my hard work and having to start over and he asked me a question. The question he asked me was whether or not I had a 1gb USB flash drive. I said that I did not. He told me that this was a very simple way to back up data to an external source. Before I start over on my thesis, I am going to purchase a flash drive.