Flash Drive vs SSD

Someone explain to me how these are different.

Why can't I buy a 32GB flash drive for like $25, hook it directly to my MB, and boot my OS from it? I obvi don't wanna boot from the flash drive cause it'll be limited to the USB speed.

SSD's use sata ports an have much faster write speeds.

i recommend the Crucial M4 or something from the Corsair Force series. OCZ sucks

please read OP before responding

Someone explain to me how these are different.

Why can't I buy a 32GB flash drive for like $25, hook it directly to my MB, and boot my OS from it? I obvi don't wanna boot from the flash drive cause it'll be limited to the USB speed.

I'm not quite sure I understand your question, Seems like you already answered it yourself.

Oh nvm reading it agian your specifing, why ssd is better than flash. its simple and you already know the answer. But I will do my best to explain it real quick.

Flash drives data transfer rate is slower than that of a ssd, hence why ssd are more sought after and more expensive. Just the drive itself is slower, not even concerning the rate of transfer from the flash drive through usb, which isnt the case for you.

its not uncommon for a flash drive to only have a transfer rate of about 5 MB/sec. some may have higher depends on which one you buy. like up to 25MB/sec mabye.

Compare that to a SSD transfer rate which ranges from 60MB/sec to 130MB/sec roughly...you could just imagine on that alone why ssd would by loads faster and better.

There is more to it than that, reasons why ssd is better than flash memory (pen drives), but that would take a bit longer to explain lol.

EDIT: I didnt even know it was possible to put a usb flash drive directly into your mobo...without putting it into the usb port, no idea how you would go about doing that. I guess you could put a flash drive into a hdd and then connect it via sata or w/e, but what I wrote above would still apply.

Edited by Something New, 05 January 2012 - 06:33 AM.

You could, SSD are nice for OS. Cheapest newegg has is $44ish though.

In addition to the faster and more expensive SATA interface, SSD's also have better controllers, which means more efficient resource allocation which improves performance and reliability. They also have DRAM which allows for faster random data access.

There is also the quality and security issue. Simple flash drives will fail after a given number of writes to it. Cheap and cheerfull flash drives do not have the error correction to quarantine failed sectors, so when they do fail, they will become entirely unusable.

And as others have said, USB2 isn't all that fast compared to SATA which internal SSD units use.

If your motherboard supports USB3 however, it starts getting more interesting. USB3 pen-drives can reach in excess of 200mb/s. Not even close to SATA SSDs that easily reach 500mb/s, but it is faster than even high performance 10k RPM traditional hard-disks which struggles to reach 150mb/s. Slower but more common 7.2k RPM drives reach perhaps 100mb/s on a good day.

Even so, I would not trust a USB3 pen-drive to hold my OS. But a good 64mb/128mb one (or several) could work very well for installing and storing games on. Or to import/store raw data and project files on for say video, photo or audio work. One project, one pen drive.

edit: As for hooking up directly to the MB, you'll need a special cable. The USB sockets on the MB, do not come in the standard flat-plug variety you're used to. Instead it is a 4+5 socket for 2xUSB2 and 10+9 socket for 2xUSB3. And no, they don't come in singles. Such sockets on the MB are always dual. Most well equipped PC parts outlets should have cables for you though. Usually these end up in a front-panel for a 3.5" bay, but there is no law saying you _must_ mount the panel in a 3.5" bay facing outwards. You could just as well leave it internally. I'd just mount it backwards so the ports face inwards. Must not just leave it to dangle freely. That may cause harm to other components.

Edited by Zylark, 05 January 2012 - 09:42 AM.

Wait... how are you plugging a flash drive into your mobo without using a usb bus...? I mean... if you're talking about the front panel connectors you see on your mobo that you hook a cable to, you're aware that those still use a usb bus right? Has something new been developed that I've missed?

Aside from that, everyone else has it down. Better controllers, more stable, and the sata bus is a lot faster than even usb3.