Ive always thought that Flash had only a single pro that made it worth making - its size. Now, i start hearing that Flash drives have access times As fast as RAM(!!).
Now, this dosent make any sense because i own a USB flash drive and 3 kinds of flash memory sticks. All of those are far slower than my hard drives and certainly my RAM. I mean it takes forever for games to load on my PSP.
I know that access times and transfer rate isnt the same thing, but if the access time of flash really was as fast as RAM, then there should still be a performance difference even if the transfer rate is much slower, right?
So what do u think? Should I buy a Flash Drive or a Raptor?
Now, this dosent make any sense because i own a USB flash drive and 3 kinds of flash memory sticks. All of those are far slower than my hard drives and certainly my RAM. I mean it takes forever for games to load on my PSP.
maybe they are slower because they run through USB...
and besides a SSD harddrive is more ment for laptops then for a PC because they are silent and very power effecient (no moving parts) and i dont really think that i can trust the wiki's report on SSD's drives. If you've got the money to burn and you want performance stick with the raptor, if you've got a laptop go for the SSD. also i dont think that there is a 3.5 SSD around.
Regarding your old memory flash sticks, they are exactly what they seem -- cheap slow and quite useful for their purposes.
How can one type of Flash be worse than HDD's and another as good as PC RAM??
HDD's have been around for AGES as well, so it's a mature technology.
I believe that what people are trying to say is that a SSD has far quicker access times (good for small files) and energy efficiency than a traditional HDD but if you are looking at moving about large files then you should get the raptor, as it has a quicker transfer rate.
Regarding your old memory flash sticks, they are exactly what they seem -- cheap slow and quite useful for their purposes.
How can one type of Flash be worse than HDD's and another as good as PC RAM??
seriously?!? your asking THIS question?!?
for the love of god, unlike the communist manifesto all things are not created equal.
specialisation does come into play, as does quality. why do some RAM sticks cost more then others?
I do hope you actually read the responses that you get
Regarding your old memory flash sticks, they are exactly what they seem -- cheap slow and quite useful for their purposes.
How can one type of Flash be worse than HDD's and another as good as PC RAM??
seriously?!? your asking THIS question?!?
for the love of god, unlike the communist manifesto all things are not created equal.
specialisation does come into play, as does quality. why do some RAM sticks cost more then others?
I do hope you actually read the responses that you get
Why wouldnt I?
Just because some things "arent created equal" does not explain why my USB flash drive is about 10 times slower than my 7,200 RPM HDD, and this SSD flash drive is about 100 faster than my 10,000 RPM HDD.
I think what explain the difference in performance is that the USB interface does not let the flash use it's actuall access time. The USB drive is very fast but the USB interface is very slow. So all in all, the USB drive becomes even slower than an HDD because now, not only does it not have good access times, but it maintains it's slow transfer rate.
So then the S.ATA interface WILL actually allow the SSD to be as fast, because its not going to be bottlenecking it's access time (as much), much like the I-RAM. Of course the DIMM slots on the motherboard are much faster than S.ATA in access times, so RAM will always be fastest when its on the motherboard.
Also SSD's are far too expensive for now, and the same goes for the I-RAM.. Raptor is it!
I believe you are confusing the I RAM and such RAM disks with the SSD Hard disks.
The SSD hard disks are actually SLOWER for large files compared to mechanical harddisks. They just kick ass when it comes to large number of small files due to the almost zero access times.
IRAM on the otehr hand is actually RAM modules connected through the IDE or SATA interface.
I'm a writer so I figured it was cheaper to buy a flash drive instead of backing up my files on CD all of the time. I stopped using the floppy because I would notice a lot of errors in saved files through Microsoft Word. A few months ago, I got a 160GB hard drive on sale for about $44 so I figured that a hard drive was cheaper than buying flash drives all of the time. The good thing about flash drives is that I can take it to work and have access to all of my important files and it fits in the inner pocket of my jeans. I took my first flash drive to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and my nephew told me to touch a lightning display that had ten times the amount of electricity than which runs through your house. My first flash drive started acting up after that but luckily I saved the data right before it died. I'm waiting for prices to become reasonable before I buy another flash drive because I know that prices will be lower in two years and then maybe an 8 GB or larger MP3 player will be reasonable. I also suggest that people shop online and avoid the big stores because you are paying for the big name.
They do NOT have sustained transfer rates even as good as HDDs let alone RAM.
There we go, mystery solved. Whereas a HDD takes time to move the read head to a different area of the disk, a flash drive doesnt, but flash drives cannot read as fast as HDDs.
Not even close. Quoted flash drive access to data times are around 0.1 msec (100 microseconds). Most of this overhead is in the transport protcol (USB or IDE/SATA for flash-based hard drives).
Modern RAM has access times of around 5 clock cycles at 533MHz (DDR2-533), which works out to around 2 nanoseconds. This is about 500,000x as fast as access to the flash devices.
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They do NOT have sustained transfer rates even as good as HDDs let alone RAM.
True for the most part, although many of the recent flash devices are approaching hard drive speed. The Samsung 1.8" SSD device just released has read times of 64MB/sec, which only modern SATA drives can best.
