Benchmark Results: Throughput

Why would they continue to spend money on this technology when in 6-9 months you'll be able to get a 1TB SSD for $199? These 1.8" drives can't
even compete with regular sized analog HDD's, much less SSD's. You wouldn't spend money to find a way to upgrade a Commodore 64 at this point in time, so why would they spend money on such obsolete technology like 1.8" drives?

Put down the bottle. Terabyte SSDs in that price range are a lot more than 6 months away. And what the heck is an analog HDD? You should educate yourself before you post.

Of course they cannot compete with 3.5 inch drives. That idea is just stupid. You are not going to put a 1.8 HDD in a desktop computer, that would be stupid. You spend money on a 1.8" drive becouse your laptop cannot FIT a 3.5 inch drive. There just isn't enough space. Plus, I cannot see 200 dollar SSD's in 6-9 months, maybe two years. Right now you are only getting 80 gigs for 250$. Just think before you post next time. And read the introduction. It explains what I just said about the laptop thing.

When I saw the headline I wondered who still used the 1.8" drives and what they were still used for. Now I know. It appears their use is temporary.

Analog as anything with mechanical moving parts and digital being solid state type devices is what he would be refering to.

If that's what he meant by "analog," he's a silly man. Analog implies a continuous range of data values, whereas mechanical disk drives are, of course, digital.

Hey Jam, the drive may use a mechanical system, HOWEVER, the data is still stored digitally.

Mechanical is not a synonym for analog


http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mechanical
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/analog

The data is stored as an analog charge. When read, a threshold is applied to decide on a high or low state. Sounds analog to me.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question7.htm

A hard drive stores data by reversing the polarity of the surface of a hard disk. Since you can only have a North or South you only have a 1 or a 0. Because there is only two values and no range it is stored digital. This is also the reason as to why music will always sound best analog. There is a range that will always be cut out in digital.

@lamorpa:

No, the data isn't stored as an analog charge. The data is stored as a magnetic polarity. While of course there will be some amount of variation in the level of polarization (because no device is perfect), this variation is ignored, and the data is interpreted as a 1 or 0. Thus, it's digital. By your definition, ANY digital device is in fact analog because of imperfection in the digital signals, but you'll have a hard time getting people to agree with you that all computers are analog.

@endif:

The "analog music is better" trope is a myth. It would certainly be true if humans had an infinite range of frequency sensitivity, but we don't. We can only hear sounds up to about 20khz, and CD-quality audio is recorded at sufficiently high digital frequency to contain *all* the audio information up to 20khz.

@Anon

Shhhh..... it sounds better to dogs then!

I read the article just because I liked the picture of the bare 1.8" drive in the guy's hand......It was compelling though. Even more compelling was babchoo's comment....jeez...

true, but the price does seem to be dropping extremely fast... probably by next year we'll see 512gb flash drives at consumer prices... though a terabyte drive is feasible NOW, I don't think we'll see them at consumer prices till Q4 2011~Q1 2012
[citation]And what the heck is an analog HDD? You should educate yourself before you post.[/citation]
HAHA! he means punch tape!

Ijust bought a 1.8" 120G USB2 HDD, military grade, from Geeks and for portable storage it works great for me

nice little gizmos. it's more linked to art than usability.
i beleive that hdds are to fragile and limited in terms of speed. they almost reached the end of the road almost. ssds are advancing so fast that i believe in less than 2 years the meachanical hdds will be almost obsolete... excepting probably the storage usage.
if you ask me ssds will also reach the end of the road quite fast. i say that because we are already at 34nm technology for nand and you can't go much lower than 25nm and this will not give us the 1tb capacity. the life expectancy of nand goes down quite fast as you shrink them. ssds are nice but they will be followed up quite fast by something better.
ps: just oredered a new Dell Precision desktop and can't to pair that p with a ssd.

this tiny hdds are an easy target for ssd. 3,5" and 2,5" are a bit more tougher target bu they will be replaced.

I have the Toshiba MK2529GSG (250 gb) as the data drive in my HP Envy 15. It does a great job and it is silent, as far as I can notice. The primary drive is also 1.8" being an Intel X-18 G2 of 160GB.