When will we see Solid State HardDrives come to PC?

[fonzy]

I will be building a new PC after Christmas and I read that Samsung has solid state hard drives for laptops now and I was curious when we will see them come to PC?(affordable ones say 80Gb for $150)..they are supposed to be way faster,cooler and use less power then conventional hard drives,aren't they?

 

[JeanLuc]

I will be building a new PC after Christmas and I read that Samsung has solid state hard drives for laptops now and I was curious when we will see them come to PC?(affordable ones say 80Gb for $150)..they are supposed to be way faster,cooler and use less power then conventional hard drives,aren't they?

80Gb for £150? Well given that 80Gb flash drives don't even exist yet the nearest being 32Gb from Samsung you will have to wait a little bit longer for 80Gb's even longer from one that’s affordable. Maybe another 2 years?

Look on the bright side though in the mean time the flash technology will get even better and faster so by the time we have 80Gb flash hard drives they should be loading windows in no time.

 

[darkstar782]

Flash memory is actually pretty slow, although the seek times are of course almost instant.

Transfer rate however is not that great. And I cant see DRAM based drives ever catching the raw storage of magnetic media.

 

[JeanLuc]

Flash memory is actually pretty slow, although the seek times are of course almost instant.

Transfer rate however is not that great. And I cant see DRAM based drives ever catching the raw storage of magnetic media.

But in terms of product life cycles old fashion hard disks are in the maturity stage there not going to double there performance over the next year and a half like graphics cards do. Where as flash drives are still in the infancy stage, there is plenty more to come from flash drives.

 

[darkstar782]

Flash memory is actually pretty slow, although the seek times are of course almost instant.

Transfer rate however is not that great. And I cant see DRAM based drives ever catching the raw storage of magnetic media.

But in terms of product life cycles old fashion hard disks are in the maturity stage there not going to double there performance over the next year and a half like graphics cards do. Where as flash drives are still in the infancy stage, there is plenty more to come from flash drives.

But they have a long way to go to overtake conventional hard disks.

Seagate plan 1.5TB by the end of 2007, transfer rates will surely rise significantly with this due to the higher data density. Hard disks are extremely reliable no matter how many read/write cycles they go through.

Flash is *ALOT* slower in terms of transfer rates than normal hard disks, has limited read/write cycles before dieing, and lets not forget that while some of these may narrow, HDDs *are* a moving target. I couldnt cope with an 80GB drive as a C: drive, even with other magnetic drives for storage. When Vista comes out and chews 10GB+ of my hard disk, this will be even worse.

DRAM based drives I can see one day becoming more mainstream, but not Flash.

 

[jaguarskx]

I will be building a new PC after Christmas and I read that Samsung has solid state hard drives for laptops now and I was curious when we will see them come to PC?(affordable ones say 80Gb for $150)..they are supposed to be way faster,cooler and use less power then conventional hard drives,aren't they?

Considering an 8GB Flash Hard Drive for a notebook is about $180, I'll say an 80GB Flash Drive for $150 will not even happen in 5 years.

 

[fonzy]

What about these hybrid hard drives there coming out with?how much will they increase performance?

 

[enforcer22]

I will be building a new PC after Christmas and I read that Samsung has solid state hard drives for laptops now and I was curious when we will see them come to PC?(affordable ones say 80Gb for $150)..they are supposed to be way faster,cooler and use less power then conventional hard drives,aren't they?

Im responding to the title of the topic here but do you mean cheap and mainstream? or just out because they have been out since the early days of the 486. Now since you mentioned a 80gig with a decent price ill assume you just ment affordable wise. The hybrid solid platter drives should be coming out this next year they should be relativly cheap however a fully solid state drive wont be cheaper or within current prices's of hard drives until the tech matures and has gone through the first couple years of "beta testing" basicly the early adopters who buy it now to fund the growth and find the bugs. give it a year or two and youll be seeing them coming closer to main stream drive prices (at least youll be seeing them anyways)

 

[Chef_Boyardee]

I remember reading an article on this site with a guy from seagate. He said they have no desire to invest in solid state hard drives for a while. That could mean years. I can't find the article anymore, so I can't give any details.

 

[eguysa]

Deleted

 

[dean7]

I don't know if I would say that it's slow... THG did a review of that Samsung 32gb flash drive, and they found that it was limited by speed by the interface, not the flash (ata66). It totally pegged the specs of ATA 66. So, I think that's incredibly promising.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

The new hybrid hard drives are not really designed to increase performance (although they might under some conditions), they are designed to lower power usage and increase hard drive life.

 

[enforcer22]

I don't know if I would say that it's slow... THG did a review of that Samsung 32gb flash drive, and they found that it was limited by speed by the interface, not the flash (ata66). It totally pegged the specs of ATA 66. So, I think that's incredibly promising.

Yeah there was nothing slow about that drive other then the interface limitations i read that same artical and drooled over the possibilities of that drive. If they come out in larger formats for a good price ill be all over those thing. Keep in mind RAM has a much faster speed then hard drive interfaces so i doubt sata 3gig interface will handle the speed of the ram chips put on it. Your looking at a hard drive not being a bottle neck on a computer. Or at least not a major one.

 

[dean7]

Yep, and if we get to where HDD speed isn't a constant bottleneck, that would usher in a new era in the PC world. (ok, maybe that's a bit dramatic :lol: )

 

[enforcer22]

Yep, and if we get to where HDD speed isn't a constant bottleneck, that would usher in a new era in the PC world. (ok, maybe that's a bit dramatic :lol: )

Isher away! the life span alone on a solid hard drive would be enough for me to want to get it. (not that i would compleatly ignore the blazing speed

 

[dean7]

Yeah... I see, for you the blazing fast speed is just a nice extra, eh? If only everything came with nice little "extras" like that!

 

[enforcer22]

Yeah dont get me wrong the speed would be insane nice! but isnt a drive lasting forever more important? XD lol

 

[mark8987]

Yeah dont get me wrong the speed would be insane nice! but isnt a drive lasting forever more important? XD lol

Yes, definitely. Why are you then waiting for a solid state drive then? Current solid state drives are based on flash memory, and there are a finite number of writes possible with these drives.

Also, given that the current bottleneck in the system is often the hard drive, I really think that speed is important and wouldn't want to go for a slower drive even if it did last forever.

 

[mrmonk]

http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page3.html



http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page4.html




read the specs

 

[enforcer22]

Yeah dont get me wrong the speed would be insane nice! but isnt a drive lasting forever more important? XD lol

Yes, definitely. Why are you then waiting for a solid state drive then? Current solid state drives are based on flash memory, and there are a finite number of writes possible with these drives.

Also, given that the current bottleneck in the system is often the hard drive, I really think that speed is important and wouldn't want to go for a slower drive even if it did last forever.

My post was mealy sarcasm

I do agree a HD is defanitly a bottle neck on computers when you tend to use it often. But seriously when it comes to speed magnetic drives pretty much hit the wall so it really doesnt matter which one you get anymore. Sarcasm aside i cant wait for the solid state drives to be main stream. Course i been waiting 10 years or so for that 40meg one i saw to go main stream so i think i can wait a bit longer.