From the perspective of capacity, flash memory has a smaller capacity than hard disk types, but the flash memory has a faster reading speed than hard disk memory. Flash memory also has much stronger resistance to damage from vibrations. If you are only listening to songs, it is recommended to buy a flash memory type, which does not require too much capacity. But if you want to record and watch a movie, it is recommended to use a hard disk, to assure you have enough memory to save the entire movie.
What do laptop solid-state drives and flash memory mean?
A Solid-State Drive (SSD) is a hard disk storage solution that uses flash memory as the storage medium. The biggest difference from a computers regular memory is that Flash memory, (similar to hard drive) will not lose data after the power is turned off. The world’s largest flash memory supplier is Samsung. Flash memory products are now widely used in numerous products including, mobile phones, cameras, camcorders, etc. The general capacity of flash memory is 4G, 8G, ...to 256G while the capacity of a hard disk is generally 256 gigabytes to one or more terabytes.
What is the difference between memory and a hard drive?
The internal memory and external memory of the computer are not defined by the computers physical casing, but refer to the computer’s internal system architecture. The hard disk drive is the “external memory” of the computer, while the “memory” is memory inside the computer (on the motherboard), which is used to store data and calculations during the running of CPU operations. These data are sometimes then saved onto the hard disk. At present, the memory of desktop and notebook computers is generally 8G, 16G 32G, etc. The size of the hard disk drives is 256G, 512G, 1T, 2T etc.
What is the difference between flash memory and a hard drive?
Flash memory is a storage chip. It cannot write files directly, but needs the main control to write the files. U disks, various memory cards, and solid-state hard drives are storage devices that contain one or more flash memory to achieve storage.
Solid-state hard drives have multiple flash memories and achieve read and write functions through a master that has 2 channels, 4 channels, 8 channels or more. The more channels, the faster the speed. Multi-channel flash memory chips are similar to hard disk RAID0, and the speed is faster.
Flash memory chips are cut to the standard capacities, but the resulting chips are of different qualities. Manufacturers make the high-quality chips into SSD, and some of the poor-quality chips are sold to small manufacturers of SSD or supplied to the manufacturers of U disks or memory cards. Because U disk and so on do not require high stability, lowest quality chips are used for making U disks. Most U disks have a large volume of bad blocks, and a small number of unstable sectors are also often cannot reach the nominal capacity of the U disk.
The difference between ordinary hard drives and solid-state drives and flash drives:
SSD solid-state hard drives are solid-state storage devices that use flash memory. They have a long service life, are not easily damaged, and have strong shock resistance. The disadvantages are that they are expensive and have small storage capacity compared to mechanical hard disk drives.
In an ordinary hard disk, there is a disk which uses high-speed rotation to read and write information. It is very sensitive to of vibration and easy to damage. The advantages are they use a mature technology so are low priced, and have a large capacity, so are highly popular.
In addition to having a faster reading speed than ordinary hard drives, SSD solid-state drives can improve computer performance. If you install an SSD solid-state drive as a system disk, the startup time is more than 20% faster than normal. The speed of opening applications is also notably faster.
Flash disk is a mobile storage product that can be used to store data files in any format and easily exchange data between computers. The flash disk adopts flash memory storage media (Flash Memory) and universal serial bus (USB) interfaces, which are light and delicate, easy to use, easy to carry, large in capacity, safe and reliable, and fashionable. The hard disk commonly used in daily life is a mechanical hard disk, which is composed of a magnetic head, a disc, a motor, and a control circuit. The disc is rotating at a high-speed during work, and the head moves and seeks to read and write data on the disc. The performance is determined by the speed, the capacity of a single disc, and the cache. At present, the mechanical hard disk technology is very mature, the price is low, and the capacity is large. The disadvantage is that the shock resistance is not good and the speed is relatively slow.
The solid-state drive is composed of multiple flash memory chips, and its performance is determined by the number of flash memory chips and the number of channels. It has good shock resistance and fast speed. But the technology is not mature yet, the cost is high, the capacity is small, the more data stored, the more severe the performance degradation, and the theoretical read and write life is only 5000 times. At present, it is not suitable as a data storage disk, but it can still improve system performance as a system disk.
What is flash memory?
Flash memory is a non-volatile memory that will not lose data even if the power is turned off. Flash memory is usually used for saving setting information. It is equivalent to a set of chips, has relatively fast access, has no noise, and has low heat dissipation.