Pros and cons of microdrive vs. flashmedia

[Kwad Guy]

At one time, microdrive based portable storage (a microdrive in a small enclosure with a USB dongle) was the only reasonable way to get significant (4GB+) portable storage. But flash based portable storgage is now dropping like a stone. Most of these flash based units use a proprietary all-in-one system board with controllers and memory, with a case and a USB dongle.

OK, so my question is: If the cost is similiar, is there any reason to opt for the microdrive based storage?

From what I understand, flash based media has a limited number of read/write cycles. This not something that would ever bother the average user, but could easily be approached if/when someone decides to use flash memory to launch a portable operating system.

How about I/O? Can the flash based units come close? Does it matter?

Are flash memory based units poised to overtake microdrives in terms of capacities offered at a reasonable price?

Obviously, microdrives are more susceptable to physical disruption--a strong point for flash media.

Kwad

 

[DaveSimmons]

Depends on the use.

File storage: flash don't crash.

Swap file: flash wears out.

 

[Jiggz]

Agree with Dave but I recommend flash drive over microdrive regardless of usage due to the low cost and reliability. There are just too many moving parts in a microdrive to be reliable.

 

[jkresh]

Microdrives really don't have much of a purpose anymore, flash is as fast (probably faster now) and as cheap per gigagbyte, as Dave said the benefit for microdrive would be in the number of read write cycles, but outside of using the drive as a swap file I dont see many uses where microdrive would be better (and microdrive as swap is silly because it doesn't have the access time benefits of flash and is slower then your desktop hard drive).

 

[Blain]

Moving parts vs. solid state

 

[lxskllr]

I don't think it's read/write cycles per say, but write/erase cycles. I don't think they wear out by reading them. In any case it's quite a few writes you can make before a flash drive will wear out, and you'll probably be ready to buy a newer(bigger, faster)drive before that happens.