The biggest difference between a PhotoStick and a FlashDrive is its functions.
As a storage device, the main function of a flash drive is to save data, no matter photos/pictures/images/graphics, videos/movies or audios/music, program files, documentation, etc. It is used as an extra storage or data transfer device for computers.
Besides, a USB flash drive can also be created as a bootable media to boot up crashed machines.
While for a PhotoStick, it is more like a flash drive with the specialized purpose of backing up and saving backed up photos, videos & maybe some other files. To be exact, if you really want to take a photo stick for other usages like storing other types of data or being created as a bootable stick, it is also possible.
PhotoStick vs FlashDrive: Capacity
In general, both Photosticks and Flashdrives have a variety of storage capacities and the capacities of the Photosticks are larger than those of the flash drives. The common capacities of a Flashdrive are 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. Yet, the popular capacities of the photo sticks can be 1TB (1000GB), 512GB, 256GB, 128GB, 64GB and 8GB.
Why the capacity of a PhotoStick is larger than a USB flash drive? There are two reasons.
On the one hand, since the PhotoStick is used for saving photos and videos that are usually large files, the storage device should be large enough. On the other hand, the built-in backup application will occupy a certain amount of space in a photo stick.
Thus, to ensure enough storage to save the imaged pictures and videos, manufacturers usually equip them with large capacities.
What Is the Difference Between a PhotoStick and a FlashDrive: How to Make Use of Them
Finally, let’s talk about how to make use of these two little storage devices.
Make Use of a Flash Drive
For a USB flash drive, to take it for saving data, just insert it into one USB port on your computer.
Then, there should be a pop-up message telling that an external USB drive is plugged in or similar words, and you can get access to it from that message window.
Or, if there is no such reminder, you can directly go to Windows Explorer and open the device. Then, you can store or back up any data to it just by copying and pasting.
How to Transfer Files to a Flash Drive Using PC or Phone
This post offers you several ways to transfer files to a flash drive using a PC or a phone.
If yours is a new flashdisk or you are not satisfied with the current format of your USB drive, you can format/reformat it with MiniTool Partition Wizard, which is a professional and reliable hard disk partition management software. Yet, formatting a disk will destroy or overwrite all the data on it. So, make sure there are no import files on the flash drive before wiping it. Or, just move crucial data to another safe place or make a backup of them with MiniTool Shadow Maker.
Step 1. Connect your USB disk to your computer.
Step 2. Download, install and launch Partition Wizard on the machine. Do not install the program on the flash drive.
Step 3. Click on the partition of the flash disk and select Format.
Step 4. Specify the Partition Label, File System as well as Cluster Size of the flash drive and click OK. Partition label is customized; available file systems are NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4 and Linux Swap; available cluster sizes are default, 512 bytes, 1 KB, 2 KB, 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB and 64 KB.
Step 5. Preview the changes of target flash drive partition and click Apply to save the changes.
If there are more than one partitions on the flash disk, just repeat the above steps and format them one by one. Yet, usually, there is only a single partition for a USB flash drive.
Furthermore, if you want to make your flash drive as a bootable device, you can continue to rely on MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Step 1. In the main UI of the partition tool, click Bootable Media on the upper right.
Step 2. In the popup, just select WinPE-based media with MiniTool plug-in.
Step 3. In the next window, select USB Flash Disk and confirm the warning by clicking Yes.
Step 4. Then, it will start to create a bootable USB drive. When it is done, click Finish to exit the application.
Step 5. Finally, safely Eject the bootable USB drive from your computer.
Now, you can use this bootable flash drive to boot up any crashed computers. Just insert it into the target machine, power the machine on and enter into the boot menu, then choose to boot from the USB drive.
When the crashed computer boots up, you can do any fix or maintenance to it such as back up all the data on the internal local disk to an external hard drive with the Copy Disk feature of the plug-in MiniTool Partition Wizard.
External Storage Transfer/Copy/Backup for Data and System
This article tells something about an external storage and how to do external storage transfer between internal & external drive or between two external disks.
How to Make Use of a Photo Stick?
Here, it will take a famous photo stick ThePhotoStick (best photo stick) for example to show you how a photo stick works. As for other kinds of photo sticks, they are similar to ThePhotoStick on operations.
Step 1. Plug the photo stick into a USB port on your desktop or laptop.
Step 2. Then, the computer will automatically recognize the stick and issue a window allowing you to run the stick. If not, you can go to Windows Explorer, find the photo stick and double-click the Photostick software to run it.
Step 3. Click the Go button on the software interface. Then, it will begin to search the folders on your machine, find photos/videos within the folders and save a copy of those photos and videos in its own storage.
Tip: ThePhotoStick can eliminate duplicated pictures or videos to save storage space. Also, it can recover lost photos.
Step 4. Eject the photostick from your computer or just leave it connected to the machine.
If you get a new photo stick or just don’t want your current photo stick as a backup device anymore, you can reuse it as a common flash drive by reformatting it with MiniTool Partition Wizard following the user guide above.
What Is the Difference Between a PhotoStick and a FlashDrive FAQ
It depends on how large your ThePhotoStick drive is. For an 8GB photo stick, you can save 3,500 photos or pictures. For a 64 GB photo stick drive, it can contain up to 30,000 photos/images. As for a 128GB photo stick disk, it is able to hold up to 60,000 photos and graphics.
The photo stick can identify all picture and video files as well as some other types of files. Exactly, it can recognize standard JPEG files, MPEG4 files, MOV video files, PNG files as well as files with these extensions: JPG, GIF, TIFF, PCT, ICO, BMP, AVI, RAW and WMV.
Besides ThePhotoStick, there are many other photo sticks which can help to backup photos and videos on Windows PC, MacBook or other computers as well as mobiles (both Android and iOS), including but not limited to Picture Keeper, SUNSWAN 3.0 USB Flash Drive (photo stick for Android) and SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive 128GB (photo stick for iPhone/iPad).
