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Flash storage like USB sticks is a crude comparison to an SSD or NVMe with cache and a controller capable of parallel operations.

A USB flash drive is like a dumpster. Big bandwidth when the lid is open but it’s got poor performance for fetching and storing lots of things all the time.

An SSD or NVMe is more like a rolling auto tool chest. Same big metal box, but much more performant for complex and numerous read and write loads.

Or to use a computer analogy: SSD is like a hard disk, USB flash is like a tape drive.



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