Bitcoin Forum

It is relatively easy and you have a lot of tutorials and videos on the net that explain it to you. Here are a couple:

Ledger Nano S Tutorial : Setup and Guide (Hardware wallet) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPpZxOjvU10)

Trezor - Initial Setup and Trezor Bitcoin Wallet Review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wruL9LF8AUA)

Do you mean hardware wallet or it is just a plain flash drive that you have bought?

if it is the plain flash drive. You can save your private key there through a file and have it encrypted if you want.

The Electrum wallet has a portable version that you can download from the official website and unpack to a USB Flash Drive. Keep in mind that, while this allows you to run your wallet on any device, there is a security risk to be aware of:


Do not download Electrum from another source than electrum.org, and learn to verify GPG signatures.
https://electrum.org/#download

There is no "bitcoin" to store on USB disks or any medium like that, the "bitcoins" are stored in the blockchain that any full node will store publicly. What you actually store is the keys that could spend those "coins" that exist on the blockchain.
And a bitcoin private key is simply a number that can be stored anywhere, you can encode it using a human readable format like the Base58Check encoding aka WIF and write it down on a piece of paper or  you could store it as binary in digital form on a digital medium such as USB disks, hardware wallets, ...

Hardware wallets are very different from your USB. Hardware wallets contains the necessary components (MCUs) which is used to generate the signature using the private keys stored on it. LiveUSBs cannot do so and it relies on the computer for the signature which makes it vulnerable to BIOS root kits as well though that would be more complicated.

If you're talking about something like an OpenDime, it generates the key on the device itself and gives you the address. You will reveal the private key only if you poke the seal, pretty cool!

Sure,  but those "just extras" are pretty important... They make sure that master private key never ever leaves the hardware wallet... That's a pretty big deal, not something you should just catalog as "just extras".

By this defenition, a car is just four wheels and an engine. The steering wheel, chassis, airbags,... are just extra's.... They add nothing to the basic functionality of your car (which is moving automatically)...

Nothing, it's really just far superior in terms of security in a way that security newbies can hold their keys securely(and actually use it securely as well). Because, you know.. maybe because security is actually the main reason why anyone would use a hardware wallet in the first place..

In terms of being able to send/receive bitcoins? Nothing

In terms of security... a LOT. A good hardware wallet provides and extra layer of security by effectively "air-gapping" your seed/private keys from the world... even if it is connected to an internet enabled device.

A software wallet on an internet enabled device does not. Malware or someone with remote access can copy your wallet file, keylog your passwords etc. With a hardware wallet, they cannot... because the only thing the HW wallet does is receive unsigned transactions, and output signed transactions. The private keys are not accessible (even by malware)... at least, that is theory! :P

And not to mention the physical confirmation of transactions. No malware, no matter how well-constructed, has yet learned how to physically confirm a transaction sent out with a hardware wallet. With software wallets, that's often the case, as we can see with the various fake Electrum apps that empty the bags of users after installing or inputting the seed. 

Yes, that is very true... while both software and hardware wallets generally provide a final "transaction preview" seeking confirmation... the hardware wallet has the added protection of requiring the physical confirmation, but also it provides an "independent" verification screen that is not able to be tampered with...

That is to say, while a fake version of a software wallet can modify what you see displayed on you computer screen (ie. the receive address and/or amount, while it is actually going to send to a different address), a hardware wallet will generally give an independent view of this information as read directly from the raw transaction... so it's an extra safeguard where you can see exactly where the coins are being sent (and how much!)

USB flash drive can still serve as a good backup device but should never be used as your only wallet.