Solid State Disk (SSD) to Replace Your Hard Drive

originally published on TabletPCReviewSpot.com 6/20/05

Solid State Disk (SSD) to Replace Your Hard Drive

Thinkyou're staying on top of the game with your spiffynew 5,400RPM or 7,200RPM hard drive in your Notebook? Think again! Oh the changes in technology move so fast that sometimes it can be just downright painful!

Today:

Recently there has been a lot ofinterest among mobile computing enthusiasts regarding hard drive speed, performance andits affect onbattery life. Whilst most of the world's notebook computershouse hard drives spinning at 4,200RPM (4,200 rotations per minute), the industry is quickly moving forward. The adoption of drives spinning at 5,400RPM and even 7,200RPM is starting to take hold of the mobile computer industry. As processors are hitting the wall in performance boosts due to heat and battery life issues, the next logical move in the seemingly unquenchable thirst for speed has been a focus onhard drives, bus speeds and RAM.

In looking at the great hard drive dilemma, the industry seems to be pointing mobile users into the direction of the 5,400RPM speed drives. The transfer rate advantageof these drives over the former 4,200RPM typesis significant while the impact on overall battery life in mobile devices is negligible. Moving to the 7,200RPM drives at this time is not a popular choice (at least in the thin and light) notebook category, though some power users are going for this option in desktop replacement models.

Tomorrow:

We have talked "RAM" and "RPM" so how about we throw yet another acronym at you? "NAND". NAND is a type of flash memory (similar to what you use in a digital camera). It is a very low power, permanent (allows read and write functionality)storage solution. Recently on June 17th, Samsung Electronicsannounced a NAND-based hard drive replacement.Calling it "the world's first Solid State Hard Drive", this new storage device boasts a power consumption of less than 5% needed for a conventional hard drive. Even more exciting is that this new type of hard drive benchmarks a performance of 150% that of standard hard drives! The SSD has no moving parts, so the need for "shock mounted" drives or the worries of hardware failure will no longer be issues of concern. Finally, the SSD type of drive will cost significantly less than the cost of drives today.

So what's the catch? Not much with the exception that NAND-based drives are curently limited to only 16GB sizes. But just like everything else in the industry, it will only be a matter of time before we see improvements. The new SSD technology has been aimed at Tablet PCs and sub-notebook markets. To read further, follow the link below:

Samsung develops NAND-based hard disk drive replacement

Barry

 

That's really cool.

 

I like the idea but, does anyone know what's the life (write-rewrite) of this devices?

I mean, it's not the same as an MP3 player, this thing will have to run Windows [ ], will they last as long as a hard drive?


Thank you,

 

There was a good writeup on Slashdot on this about a month ago. I just wrote a nice summery of some of the better points from the comments, but I got an error when posting and lost it, and I don't feel like typing it again. It's useful to look through some of the posts anyway - the major issue seems to be the number of rewrites flash memory can handle before dying. Still sounds pretty viable though.

 

SSD's will be cheaper? Heh, that's what they (Hitachi) told me about plamsa and LCD tv's being cheaper to make when they first came out. [ ] Once SSD takes off it'll be more expensive.

This is very interesting though. I'll keep my regular HDD, but ultra thin/light users will really benefit from this.

________________________________________________________________________
UT2004 SoulKeeper - Modeler | Unreal Engine Game Content Developer: Maps, Models, Animations, Characters, Textures

 

Will this thing need some new ATA interface? Would mean we have to buy new laptops, dang.

 

Ah man! another part of the computer that will be dominated by megahertz!

 

I have one objective in adopting this type of drive--SPEED. One really great way to judge the speed is to measure the really slow boot times that drive us all crazy. Unfortunately the lightning speed access times of these drives don't solve this. We need really fast read and write speeds to get the boot speed up.
Current max is about 50-60mB/sec. We will see lightning noticeable fast boot times when we get to about 90-100MB/sec read and write times on these drives.

How awesome would it be to push the on button and have our laptops fully ready for work in 11 seconds.

 

I would be happy with a equal to or a bit better then current drive data transfer rates. I want more battery life. Speed is great if it's by product but I am willing to give up speed to get more battery life...can ya tell I am not a game player?

 

SSD isn't for me yet. The amount of space I require would completely empty my pockets if I wanted to dish out for SSD drives. I am looking forward to getting two monster 7200rpm drives in my baby once SSD gets popular, and SATA drives drop.

 

I would be completely willing to trade down size for the SSD. I could go as low as the 64GB size. I would have the speed solved, power solved, heat solved, and noise solved. And, if I need more storage, thats what the 4 external drives I have sitting around are for. I am looking forward to this technology quite a bit.

 

I have the ability to have dual drives in my notebook, so being able to carry around one less thing for my storage really appeals to me. I have some massive files, and lots of them, and they all need to go with me when I travel.

I agree that it will definitely be the champ in terms of overall qualities, but until it gets to the storage size I require, I'll take advantage of the decreasing SATA prices.

 

Funny how this thread was started back in '05, and now nearly 2 years later and we haven't moved any closer to solide state drives. I mean besides the 4 sd cards stuck together in a little box and call it a ssdrive, there's not much else in terms of that. Not at reasonable prices anyway.

Good looks to the OP about the "tomorrow" part...more like 3-5 years if u ask em.

 

No closer? They have been announced to be on the market in the next months. I would say that is closer. Maybe not closer to 100GB models, but we are much much closer.

 

Have you read the prices on them? The newsbits on the main page has a good article about that, check it out.

 

Yes, but do you know how much a 1MB hard drive used to cost? When they were first created they weren't feasible either. This is what we call technology. It is expensive when it first comes out, but prices drastically reduce, and stabilize. The first flash card I bought was 128MB and cost $100. 3 month ago I bought a 2GB card that is less than 1/5th the size for less than half the price. This is the same trend that SSD drives will follow.

 

I understand that. I was just saying that the thread started back in '05 said tomorrow, which yeah could mean anything. But still, we're 2 years away now, and still doesnt look that solid state drives will be taking over completely anytime soon with the pricing of current drives.

128 cards came out when, several years ago. So it took quite a while to get down in price that much.

I just dont expect 100GB+ ssd to be around $100 anytime soon.

 

Your right, but those cards came down in price several years ago, not just last week. The point is, the 64GB drives will likely be feasible for many people within a year.

 

K, Ima come back 1 year from now and bump this thread while typing on my spanking new laptop with the ssd.

I hope ur right, cuz that would be awsome.

 

Try again: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37847

 

What's your point? SSDs exist. That's not the issue. The issue is price, and the prices we see now are still far beyond the average consumer's grasp.

It is inevitable that prices will drop, but the idea of 64GB drives becoming feasible within the year is highly doubtful.

 

Direct quote from the newbits: "Pricing is the downside of this drive. The 32GB Adtron Flashpak drive goes for about $10,000; the 56GB is $16,000. There are no figures for the 96GB and 160GB drives Adtron wants to ship, but considering the prices of the lesser-capacity drives, it will be well into the five-figure range. Commercial SSDs are likely to be considerably cheaper."

Is anyone gonna pay $10,000 for a 32gb ssd?

 

Yay! The first discussion of SSD back in 2005. Almost two years later, and it hasn't made its way to the consumer market in a reasonable fashion yet. What's the likelihood its going to happen this year? Oh well, for 2008, we hope!

 

available now

 

SSDs are available as options on a few laptops. The Zeptos have them, but they cost 600$[aussie] than a regular 100GB and they were only 32 GB or something.