Difference between Flash Drive and Pen Drive

Key Difference: A Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drive is a portable flash memory device. It includes a printed circuit, a flash chip and a USB connector. Pen drives, also known as memory sticks or USB sticks are used to store data, records or any information from the computer.

A pen drive and a flash drive have the same work to do. However, many people get confused with both the terms. People feel that the pen drive and flash drive is the same device because all pen drives are flash drives. However, one should understand that the flash drives have usages that can be extended beyond the capabilities of a pen drive.

Flash drives have many different usages for data storage. A Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drive is a portably type of flash memory device. It includes a printed circuit, a flash chip and a USB connector. These components are protected inside a hard plastic, metal or rubber case. Flash drives were invented in 1999 by the Israeli company, M-Systems, though their patent describes a product that has a cable between the memory unit and the USB connector. IBM also filed a patent in 1999, whose design was more similar to the flash drives we have today. USB flash drives are similar to the old floppy disks, which also saves data in flash memory. The main purpose of flash drives is not for long term storage, but rather short term storage and data transfer. Flash drives, as compared to old diskettes and CD-ROMs, are faster and have more storage capacity. They are also more durable and reliable as they have no fragile moving parts.

Pen drives, also known as memory sticks or USB sticks are used to store data, records or any information from the computer. It is a portable memory stick and is very user-friendly. One can easily transfer data from a computer to the pen drive. A pen drive would continue to be a pen drive if it is used as wireless, bluetooth or a phone line to move data from the computer to its memory chips.

However, in 2001, the Phison company developed a removable data storage device, which was named 'pen drive'. Since then, a pen drive has incorrectly been synonymous with all USB flash drives.

Comparison between Pen Drive and Flash Drive:

	Pen Drive	Flash Drive
Description	A very small, portable, solid-state hard drive that can be inserted into a USB port for storage and retrieval of data.	A USB flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface.
Invented	2001by Phison	1999 by M-Systems and a more modern version by IBM later in the same year
Uses	Used as mobile USB storage device	It has many different uses for data storage
How data is stored	The data is stored on the memory chips	The data is stored on the chip in form of flash memory on the memory chip
Capacity	Up to 64GB (gigabytes)	Up to 256GB (gigabytes)