whats the differance between flash and hard drive systems on an MP3 player and which is better.?

Answer 1

Hard drives have a higher capacity and are normally faster to copy music to, but they aren't as resilent to shock, pressure, moisture etc and can skip or fail.

If you treat it properly, hard drive is probably a better choice, but if you know your player is going to get some punishment, go for flash!

Answer 2

In a nutshell, hard drive systems have moving parts in them where there is a disc with memory inside that rotates inside. They are subseptible to breaking if there is shock or from wear and tear. I have had many usb powered small external hard drives fail on me due to controllers failing or the disc becoming corupt.

Like the above poster mentioned, hard drives are higher capacity yet consume more power and have a higher probability of failing/losing memory.

Right now Apple has one of the highest mp3 players using flash memory (8 gb). For me I need more than 20 gb to hold on my music, so I'm not in the market for flash memory. However if you frequently swap your music and don't need to have your whole library, then I would go with flash memory.
Flash memory is solid state memory where there are no moving parts. This can include sd cards, compact flash cards used in digital cameras and placed within the mp3 player. Players like the Nano have built in flash memory where there are no moving parts. They are pretty stable especially if you are going to run a lot.

Answer 3

The second poster is spot-on. Hard drives have moving parts which can and do break eventually. They are susceptible to impact damage and adverse effects to magnetism.

Flash is completely digital memory that uses zero moving parts. Unlike the first poster stated, flash memory is actually FASTER and more reliable than hard drive memory. The downside is that, right now, flash memory is usually alot more expensive.