Using a FLASH device..

I just orderd a 4GB flash drive. (patriot) off newegg.

My question is most of these other drives come preloaded with a software called u3? or something like that. I was just wondering if it's something you can just get.

and also if i wanted to run mozilla firefox off it will this require an OS system on there?

and if i install an OS.. how much faster will booting and what not be with a flash drive instead of using your hard drive.

if i just use the flash drive as my primary main drive. will this blow away a 7200rpm drive?

and finally how long does it take to load an OS on one of these drives.

Thank You.
Rob.
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Let's see: For specs we have:

USB 2.0 = 480Mbps
ATA100 = 800Mbps
ATA133 = 1064Mbps
SATA = 1200Mbps
SATAII = 2400Mbps

OK, so you're starting with a significant disadvantage just in the interface. However, hard drives do not maintain the spec max as a "sustained" data transfer rate. Neither do flash drives. The flash drive you bought is spec'ed at 32MB/s read speed. This compares with an Hitachi Deskstar 7200 PATA 133 drive's speced sustained transfer rate of 64.8 - 31MB/s, depending on where the data is physically on the drive.

So, bottom line, it won't be faster.

Using it for memory, if it were even possible would slow your system down even more since memory transfer speeds are faster than hard drive speeds.

On a side note, you can definitly transfer more porn to your work computer!