Their technology might not be as fast as CF devices, but the chips fit in a lot of smaller devices. Meanwhile, devices that use SSD such as thumb drives, are literally as small as your thumb, hence the name. They’re meant to be an alternative to the larger compact disks (CDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs). Since flash drives use CF, they can come in all shapes and sizes. You can consider CF as coffee beans and SSD as coffee-based drinks. Rather, SSD is a type of less powerful device that also uses CF or Flash memory. Keep in mind that SSD and CF are neither rivals or counterparts. The main purpose of SSD is to carry and transfer files from one device to another. Meanwhile, SSD is a kind of media that stores, reads, and writes data using a form of Flash memory without magnetic properties. Not only is CF used on flash drives, but you can also find it in tablets, smartphones, cameras, and MP3 players. Generally, CF or Flash is a type of high-speed, non-volatile, and magnetic read-and-write media that carries all kinds of digital data. Flash drives use Compact Flash (CF) while thumb drives are a type of Solid-State Drive (SSD). Perhaps the biggest difference between a thumb and flash drive is their memory storage type. Listed here are some of the most notable differences. Basically, a jump drive is the same as a flash drive, but there’s a difference between the mechanisms of a flash and thumb drive. In fact, most users don’t know about the differences between the three. That’s because they’re all compact storage devices with the same function. On such a relatively small drive, that sounds like it'll likely just have a few large files on it, just set the allocation unit size to 32kb and move on.You might notice people using the terms thumb drive, jump drive, and flash drive interchangeably. This comes more into play with hard drives where tens / hundreds of thousands of files reside. if your allocation unit size is 32kb.Ī 2kb text file will consume 32kb on the disk (the remainder is referred to as slack space)Ī 32kb text file will consume 32kb (exactly one allocation unit)Ī 33kb text file will consume 64kb of disk space (since it is more than one unit) Here's basically how allocation units and slack space relate -Į.g. While using a small sector size may cut down on slack space (especially with a drive containing thousands of files), disk IO will suffer slightly, because the drive and OS will have more allocation units to manage, which will increase the number of times the MFT / FAT has to be accessed. This can help or hurt, depending on how it's utilized. When a file is written, it will actually consume a multiple of your allocation unit size. You'll need to format it to NTFS to copy individual files > 4GB.Īn allocation unit can be thought of as a "chunk" of storage space.
You'll get the "file too large" message when copying a 7GB file if the target drive is formatted FAT32.
You could save a little space by formatting it FAT32, but you of course have the limitations of FAT32, like maximum individual file size of 4GB, and you'll have a 32kb sector size which creates a lot of slack space if you have a high number of files, but sometimes it's a trade worth having.Īs soon as i bought Flash i connected it to my laptop tried to copy two 7 gb files but i had a message that informed me that the file is too big,that was disappointing cos i though that using flash drive is a piece of cake anyway i googled my problem and yea i found out that it can be formatted.im mostly going to use this fd for copying big files from laptop which is almost full to my pc these files are iso 7 gb and i cant copy them to simple dvd so this fd is great and fast way to do it(not related to my main question>i also bought usb to usb cable tried to glue laptop and pc that is working only in safe mode due to some problem but that cable didnt work maybe safe mode causing this prob,before that i tried Dual layer dvd to save my huge music programs but i bought not Verbatim DL dvd but cheap and i have error and my dvd drive cant burn it correctly at least Flash Drive works fine ) 14.6 sounds about for a NTFS formatted 16gb drive. Welcome to the world of formatted capacities.