On 5/26/11, Kevin K kevink1@fidnet.com wrote:
Though thumb drives are flash, they tend to use a slower flash than what is used in hard drive replacement units.
No actual industry facts for this, but I think the Flash used in thumb drives are not really any slower by nature/design. This is because I see that the fastest SSD currently tend to use 8 channel controllers for 200+ MB/s performance which translate to 20~30MB/sec per channel.
There is quite a difference between common USB flash drives and SSDs. SSDs are supposed to replace a HDD while USB drives are not designed for it. One difference is the type of wear leveling, also documented here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling
There are exceptions of course, for example there some "industrial grade" devices, but the commonly used ones can not be compared.
Simon