PLCs have long been used for data collection. However, while the PLC may be good at collecting data, sharing that data with external devices traditionally has been a cumbersome task to varying degrees. Fortunately, removable storage media can help bring flexibility to data collection and recipe storage applications in PLCs. For instance, for data collection, the PLC no longer needs to communicate directly to an external device, but can operate stand-alone, storing data to the removable memory device—only to be retrieved at a later date. This brief white paper discusses techniques for using USB or flash memory devices to achieve this goal. A direct link is at http://tinyurl.com/ybu6las.