flash drive vs hard disk

A Mac Pro can use 4 SATA II drives with some 750GB drives delivering 80MB/sec while Flash is often limited to interface of something much slower like USB2 or FW800/400.

Even Vista ReadyBoost etc only really works if it is directly part of the motherboard.

With Mac Pro and PS, you are better off iwth real memory and real disk drive(s).

Really not faster than a good hard drive, even with a good interface like SATA.

http://www.adtron.com/products/A25fb-SerialATAFlashDisk.html

I can see flashdrives being useful for lightweight applications like a web browser. I have PortableApps installed on a 4GB flash drive. On it, I have Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, SSH, etc. on it. Of course, these are Windows only versions. I use it between my home and work PCs which are currently WinXP boxes. I'll, hopefully, be getting a Mac Pro delivered Friday. So, now I need to somehow add a Mac version of Firefox and Thunderbird and which uses the same profile. I have found a portable versions of FF and TB for Mac OS X. I'll see how things go.

For heavyweight apps like Photoshop, Aperture, Premiere, etc, IMO, flash drives are out of the question unliess I am simply using the flashdrive to transfer a few files back and forth.

Enjoy life,
Steven

The answer is.... it depends when reading it is very fast but writes tend to be slower( not slow just slower) there is also the matter of a finite life in writes with flash..really unless you have a set up optimized for flash and its idiosyncrasies (some linux distros) you are better off using conventional hard drive. If this is going to be an external rive do careful research not all external enclosures are equal I have one for my Mini that is SLOWER then the 5400 rpm internal laptop drive and it is a 7200 RPM drive..

My $.02 worth