What is flash memory ? (related to computers)  

ya u right..but also flash memory means temporary memory...even this usb drives,pen drives,card are called as flash memory

Hi There,
Flash memory can be used as a hard drive which has many advantages over a traditional hard drive. It's nonvolatile or solid state, meaning there are no moving parts. It's also silent, much smaller than a traditional hard drive, and highly portable with a much faster access time.

You are right that flash memory can be erased and programmed in large block. In older versions of EEPROM, the whole chip needs to be erased and reprogrammed.

Flash memories are non volatile memories which doesn't require power to maintain its contents. It comes in different type, the common types are nor and nand. Each may have distinct advantage over the other (try to google about this).

Flash memories comes with many commercial variants, such as SD,MMC, xD, memory stick (sony), mini/micro SD (another version of SD). But these memories are nand type of memories.

Another fact about flash memories is that they have erase and write cycles, which means as the flash memory is often used (write and erase data) the earlier it will become unreliable, although it will take years to have your flash memory worth throwing to the garbage. And it won't bother you buying a new one because the cost of flash memory is constantly dropping as it grow in capacity.

But as of this time, flash memories could not replace the hard disk drives in terms of capacity. Another but, time will come that flash memories can compete with hard disk drives.

Hello friend,

What i know about flash memory were the likes of, hard drives,usb,thumb drives...that can restore files that is why it is being called flash memory.

Flash memory is a non-volatile computer memory that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It is a technology that is primarily used in memory cards and USB flash drives for general storage and transfer of data between computers and other digital products. It is a specific type of EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) that is erased and programmed in large blocks; in early flash the entire chip had to be erased at once. Flash memory costs far less than byte-programmable EEPROM and therefore has become the dominant technology wherever a significant amount of non-volatile, solid state storage is needed. Example applications include PDAs (personal digital assistants), laptop computers, digital audio players, digital cameras and mobile phones. It has also gained popularity in the game console market, where it is often used instead of EEPROMs or battery-powered SRAM for game save data.

Since flash memory is non-volatile, no power is needed to maintain the information stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times (although not as fast as volatile DRAM memory used for main memory in PCs) and better kinetic shock resistance than hard disks. These characteristics explain the popularity of flash memory in portable devices. Another feature of flash memory is that when packaged in a "memory card," it is enormously durable, being able to withstand intense pressure, extremes of temperature, and even immersion in water.

Although technically a type of EEPROM, the term "EEPROM" is generally used to refer specifically to non-flash EEPROM which is erasable in small blocks, typically bytes. Because erase cycles are slow, the large block sizes used in flash memory erasing give it a significant speed advantage over old-style EEPROM when writing large amounts of data.

Hi all,
All the answer is right. Flash Memory is the thing to save data base on capacity it has.