What is the difference between flash drive and hard-drive?

Answer 1

There are significant differences between a standard hard drive and flash memory. A hard drive is a fairly heavy palm-sized device composed of several spinning platters and a roving head that reads data that has been magnetically imprinted on the platters. Flash memory refers to a memory chip about the size of a postage stamp, or smaller. The memory chip is solid-state, or has no moving parts and is therefore less likely to fail. It is virtually weightless, retains data without a power supply, is faster than a hard drive, does not generate significant heat, and requires little power. This is excellent news for extending the life of laptop batteries, reducing their weight, and eliminating fan noise from systems.

Answer 2

Nothing they r both the same

USB drive, USB flash drive, Thumb Drive, etc, is just a small "Solid State" drive, "similar" to the RAM chips on the RAM card you put in your computer. There are no moving parts. They are usually maxed out around 32gigs capacity now.

A Hard Drive is a mechanical drive that has a motor and "platters", similar to CD's, that spin at high speeds, from 5400 rpms to 10,000 rpms. A hard drives capacity is around 3TB+, (3 thousand gigs, give or take).

Don't get it mixed up with a "USB hard drive" as that would just mean a hard drive in a "case" and sits on your desk that hooks up via the USB port. Its considered an External USB Hard Drive.