SSD... is anyone excited?

[nachowarrior]

I've been loosely watching the solid state drives (flash based hard drives). And I was wondering is anyone else but me anticipating their mainstream/practical price points? they run on ata66 right now as far as i'm aware... if they put them on a sata 2 hookup and made em a little bigger I bet they'd almost kill the current HD market (save for mass storage/backup). Any thoughts on the actual transfer rates on such a setup?

 

[apt403]

I wouldnt buy one. A good HDD can run for 10+ years, flash-based memory has a finite number of read/write cycles before they become useless hunks of plastic, silicon, and metal.

 

[sailer]

I think they need to come down in price and improve their service life before I'd invest in one. Sure, they have their uses, but not enough to attract me yet.

 

[nachowarrior]

yeah, i have an hd that i'm running ubuntu on that's from back in 2000... I see what you're saying... now does that apply directly to the ssd's or just flash memory in general?

The one thing that's really getting me is the fact that they all run on ata 66 now and have about the same performance as new normal hd's run on a faster ata (100 or 133 i think) i just think it would be sweet to see how much speed you could get out of them.... i'd buy one at a decent price just to boot off of it... even if it does have a limited life cycle if it included some type of life expectancy monitor so i could maybe "copy and paste" the contents before it died... or possibly run it in some type of weird type of raid where the normal hd just works as a backup... i think if you could "back up" all the saved info on a normal hd or partition, it might push a few more out the door... (still get the fast boots and access times, but slower reads)... and once again IF the performance were significantly faster than standard hd's (other than just boots)

 

[sailer]

I think if you could "back up" all the saved info on a normal hd or partition, it might push a few more out the door... (still get the fast boots and access times, but slower reads)... and once again IF the performance were significantly faster than standard hd's (other than just boots)

Backing up the OS is the one main advantage I see in flash drives at the moment. Even with their limited lifespan, if you did a back up of the OS once a month, if by some disaster the original OS on a hard drive was lost, you could then reinstall the OS on a new hard drive with minimal trouble. Of course, that would mean having a flash drive of about 40 gig and keeping your data on a second hard drive for safety. But I keep my data on a second hard drive anyway for safe keeping.

 

[nachowarrior]

I meant that you use the flash as the main, and the normal hd lags behind in speed... so kinda the opposite way around from what your thinking. But that is a good application because even during major power failures it would boot with the last byte of info it recieved/wrote.

another advantage that came to mind... no noise low heat low power consumption. ok... that's three advantages.

no moving parts - drop it on the ground a few times (i wouldn't do it on purpose)

err.... yeah, i like the Idea that way around too... small fast durable os backup... maybe even automated? (by software)

 

[sailer]

I don't know that I'd do the automated backup. That would mean leaving it connected to the computer and I've lost a couple computers in the past due to lightening problems and storms. I'd do a manual backup and then disconnect the flash and put it somewhere safe from accidental electrical discharges.

 

[nachowarrior]

ssd drives are internal... via ata 66 (the cable you use to hook up your standard hd's)

 

[slim142]

1) They need to low their prices, with the same money I can buy 500gbs or 750gbs drives and get more space.

2) Raptors and Barracudas perform the same, sometimes better, and very few times slower but usually better. Why pay hundreds more for a couple of perfomance on only some applicationS?

3) They can be silent and everything, but that silence is not worth hundreds of bucks.

 

[SEALBoy]

Until I can get 250GB worth of SSD for $60, no.

 

[slim142]

And that no will stay for a long time.... I know that

 

[nachowarrior]

as of now on the ata 66 yes... limited. I was rather hoping for some insight on how they would perform on a faster connection... eg, sata 2 where they will have headroom to perform.

 

[SEALBoy]

And that no will stay for a long time.... I know that

Yeah, I know. Well, maybe around $150.

 

[slim142]

That sounds better

I just hope they start lowering their prices now. Anybody would like to try those SSD drives.

 

[nachowarrior]

unless i start making a rediculous amount of dough... I won't want one till they use a different connection.

 

[aevm]

I read an article some weeks ago, it said Samsung had developed a type of Flash that was much faster than the usual stuff. Maybe that will bring SSD to SATA2 speeds...

The price is nuts, a 500 GB Seagate drive is 8 times cheaper per GB.

 

[nachowarrior]

Samsung is always first to the market with this kind of stuff... they're awesome. And as far as i know they manufacture everything in house, right down to the screws... so if they make a prototype, there's really no overhead save for the cost of making it and raw materials... I wouldn't be surprised if they even had operations to acquire the raw materials. that's why they're so successful too, production costs are lower, and profits are lower, and they can put the same product on the shelf as other companies for a lower price and still make more profit... it's business genius really.

 

[rodney_ws]

I'm thrilled... seriously! Just not with the current batch... when the price begins to near the cost of traditional magnetic storage, I'll be lining up to buy one. Hard drive crashes will be a thing of the past!

And to re-answer your original question... I bet SanDisk is thrilled with their development as well.

 

[Therlian]

I would like to see drives setup where you read and write to the flash memory, and the flash memory reads and writes to a hard drive; sort of like a large buffer or cache.

I'm thinking of a setup like a SQL database where the fast read/write operations take place in transaction logs and write them to disk as they have time.

I think this is the way to use the SSD drives; I would buy one like this.

 

[nachowarrior]

if they get big enough and inexpensive enough, then you wouldn't need to use it as a "buffer" to a magnetic disk... and either way, the magnetic disk would still slow down your pc... it's the slowest piece of equipment in your machine. But I can see how somone who needed a VAST amount of disk space might want a setup like that. and technically isn't that what your RAM is supposed to do?

 

[djgandy]

Another 2-3 years and I think they could start to become a much more popular choice. It's only that they aren't as cheap as the old spinning disk. That's obvious though, this is new technology. 10 years ago the largest hard drive was around 6gig.

SSD has jumped up the capacity ladder a lot faster than standard hard drives have.
Didn't some company recently announce a 128GB version? I swear it was only 6 months or so back that 32GB was announced as a breakthrough.
Who says they wont hit a Terabyte in 2 years?

 

[nachowarrior]

i think it's always samsung that puts out the big ones... or maybe it was sandisk this time, i dunno, i forget. But yeah, the 128 gig was definitly there. That would be enough for me for a boot and game installs... now all they need to do is up the performance and put it on a different cable. i would rather see uped performance over uped capacity...

 

[liquidx]

I would definitely say that it is not the interface that is bottlenecking these meaning the ata66, if it was then the companies would simply switch it to sata2. I think it is the way the actual flash memory inside can read and write. Once they improve upon that, upgrading the interface would be nothing for them. Remember the technology for that is there and readily accessible. And to be honest, may even be cheaper to integrate that into the drives I would think just due to the mass quantities of it already produced for magnetic HDDs. Anyway, in answer to your question about speed, this is not a full blown scientific fact, but one could logically deduct that it is not the interface slowing things down, simply the read and write ability of the media itself. The one major advantage that could help speed this up is it's wide use. Meaning, flash drives, memory cards for cameras, all of which would benefit from speed boosts. Thus giving the companies even more reason to work on increasing the read/write speeds of the media.

 

[apt403]

32? 128? Well, atleast the SDD people are doing something right. Base16 ftw!

 

[liquidx]

I would have to think that the companies making these drives are going to try as hard as they can to keep the prices as high as they can, for as long as they can, and due to the limited number of companies that could make these in a quality manner, that could be a while. Plus, anyone buying these now are generally gonna be those people that want to get the latest and greatest, so I am guessing we will watch this technology step up slowly in terms of speed. That way the companies can max profit on the technology. I wonder if they are working on making the memory itself last longer. Given the fact of the finite number of read/writes that worrys me about using it as my main hard drive even if they do speed them up. At least with magnetic drives worse case scenario the data can usually be recovered if you want to spend the money. Does anyone know if that is the same case with flash memory or is it just that once the drive bites the dust so does your data?