If you are planning to buy a storage device and confused between the flash drive and portable hard drive? There are certain points which to keep in mind before buying any one of the storage drives, flash drive or portable hard drive.
Data storage capacity:
Storage size is the major difference between USB flash drive and a portable hard drive. Flash drive’s storage capacity variants start from 2 GB and end with 1 TB (still growing) but the storage capacity variants of portable hard drives start with 500 GB and end to 16 TB (Samsung) till now and it’s going beyond.
Physical size and weight:
The physical size of a regular flash drive is approximately 1.5 X 0.25 X 0.5 inches and weighs approximately 0.2 to 0.3 ounces. But portable drives weighs around 100 to 500 grams according to the casing material and storage capacity. If you go beyond 2TB, the drives are about a kilo and more.
Performance:
The performance also varies in both the technology because flash drive is a solid state memory and the hard drive has a moving part like a compact disk but thicker. Solid state memory performs faster than a portable hard drive. The portable hard drive takes some time to accelerate and that’s the PC works on solid-state memory boots faster than a hard drive.
Portability and Durability:
Flash drive is a solid state memory and is very durable because even with several drops, your data will be safe (if components are not damaged). You can easily carry them in your pocket and wallets and carry them around. Portable hard drives are fragile and can get damaged if dropped if moving-part (drive) of the portable hard drive gets out of alignment then you might lose your data as well as the hard drive. It is necessary to buy a shockproof case for portable hard drives.
Price:
Talking of price, the flash drives are cheap but only up to 64 GB because beyond that storage capacity you need to pay about Rs 7,000 to 8,000 and portable hard drives are much cheaper of what these are offering you. If you need to carry data up to 64 GB then you should buy a flash drive and for carrying data more than 100 GB I recommend you to buy a portable hard drive with 500 GB capacity because it will cost you lower than a 128 GB flash drive unless you want more portability.
I will strongly recommend you to buy a portable hard drive because these are much cheaper than what they are offering you. Just that you need to buy a shockproof case to protect it from shocks.
