Can you please tell me about , "flash drive" and "floppy disk"?

Question

What can I do with them?

Answer 1

Flash Drive
A flash drive, related to a solid state drive, is a storage device that uses flash memory rather than conventional spinning platters to store data. Unlike a USB flash drive or keydrive, flash drives tend to physically imitate conventional hard drives in size, shape, and interface so that they may act as a replacement for hard drives.
A Flash drive in a standard drive form factor.
A Flash drive in a standard drive form factor.

These products are typically used as low power, rugged replacements for hard drives, especially in installations exposed to extreme conditions. The flash memory cells tend to fail after around a million writes which made early devices unsuitable for storage which is often updated in place, such as swap files. To address this problem, some flash disk vendors have introduced wear-levelling techniques that track usage and transparently relocate the data in highly utilized extents of storage to extents that have been less utilized. Unlike solid state drives, flash drives do not generally require backup battery systems.

Another use for flash drives is running light weight operating systems designed specifically for turning general-purpose PCs into network appliances comparable to more expensive routers and firewalls. In this situation, a write protected flash drive containing the whole operating system is used to boot the system. A similar system could boot from CD, floppy disk or a traditional hard drive but flash memory is a good choice because of very low power consumption and failure rate.

As of 2006, limited quantities of consumer electronics (such as notebook PCs) have become available including flash drives in place of conventional hard drives[1]. It is widely assumed that this trend will increase over time as the cost of flash drives decreases and the performance needs of consumer electronics continue to increase.

Floopy Disk
A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible ("floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive or FDD, the initials of which should not be confused with "fixed disk drive", which is another term for a hard disk drive. Developed in 1969 by IBM, floppy disks in both 3.5" and 5.25" formats enjoyed many years as a popular and ubiquitous form of storage, from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. However, they have now been largely superseded by Flash and optical storage devices.

Answer 2

They are both data storage devices.
Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive and the capacity of the floppy disk usually comes with only 1.4 MB.
In the other side, A flash drive, related to a solid state drive, is a storage device that uses flash memory rather than conventional spinning platters to store data. Unlike a USB flash drive or keydrive, flash drives tend to physically imitate conventional hard drives in size, shape, and interface so that they may act as a replacement for hard drives.

Answer 3

Floppy disks need a floppy drive, which most computers nowadays do not have. They also have limited storage, which can really hinder their value in today's digital age. A flash drive, however, has greater storage and the convenience of being able to hook up to ANY computer that has a USB drive. Flash drives are also easier to find nowadays, as many stores have discontinued their supply of floppy disks.

Answer 4

A Flash Disk is usually in form of a USB disk drive which acts like a small hard disk where you can keep your important data with you all the time. Storage space ranges from 32MB-8GB (i don't know if it already exceeds this, correct me if i'm wrong).

A floppy disk is a device where you can also store data up to 1.4 MB. Floppy disks are already obsolete and I advice you not to take this option anymore.

Answer 5

we can say that the flash drive is the "up-to-date" version of the floppy disk

floppy disk as we know is a magnetic drive encase in a plastic shell either in 5.25 inch (the soft one) or the 3.5 inch ( hard one which can store up to 200MB, which is the high capacity floppy disk )

the flash drive is usually a rectangular shaped object that allows you to store more than 200 MB (1,2 4 GB) and the advantage of it over floppy disk is that you can use it on almost any computer that has USB, unlike the floppy disk where you should have a floppy drive.

So to answer your question, both are temporary storage items ^_^

Answer 6

Flash drive is a USB memory "stick" a.k.a. thumb drive that you can insert into a USB port. It allows you to move files upto the capacity of the stick, which could be 1Gb or greater. I have one that is 6GB.

Floppy disk is a removable disk that you insert into a floppy drive on your computer. Current state of the art is that a floppy disk holds 1.4Mb.

In either case you can use these "removable" storage technologies to move files/folders (pictures, music, documents etc..) from one computer to another or as a backup.

Because of their limited capacity, floppy disks have gone out of favor.

You can do the same with a Read Write CD-ROM (720Mb) or RW DVD(4.7Gb).

The thumb drives are very handy, fast and small.

Answer 7

Floppies store 1.44 MB, whereas flash drives can store from 128 MB to 8 GB. Floppy disks go in the floppy drive, and flash drives go into the USB ports.

Answer 8

A flash drive is memory with a usb interface, When plugged in it connects as any other storage device on your pc. You can download things to it and take it to another location and use it on another computer...

A Floppy disk is the original removable storage for the pc...same as the flash you write to it and take it where you want and then use it on another pc..Floppy usage basicly died as rewritable CDs can higher cpacity drives came out..

In the future I can see that we all may have just only the flash drives for Cds and floppys will be obsolete..

Answer 9

you can use them to store information that you need saved. use a flash drive they can store more and are more modern, floppy disks are becoming ancient.

Answer 10

they sky is the limit. you should probably use the floppy as a coaster; they are pretty much obsolete.