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SSD Heaven is near - Ah YESSSS!!!

capoditutti said:
I know i know, they still cost the earth, but at least they're being thrown into the ring now!!!

http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/news/2007/06/01/PQI-Debuts-256GB-Laptop-SSD/p1

How long before i can stick one if these into my UltraThin 13.3" LED-Backlit Full-Santa-Rosa MacBook Pro???

:D :D :D :D :D

cApO
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Looks interesting, although I've always been worried about the life of SSD's. I think they're only rated for 10,000 R/W's before failure? This was a while back though so please correct me if I'm wrong.
 
10,000 R/Ws of each sector on the drive? I've stumbled across such stats before but i havent seen a proper explanation of what exactly is being measured.....
 
capoditutti said:
10,000 R/Ws of each sector on the drive? I've stumbled across such stats before but i havent seen a proper explanation of what exactly is being measured.....
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I believe its 10,000 R/W for the actual device that stores the individual bites using what I believe are NAND gates.
 
Question: I buy a macbook pro now. In a year I want to swap it out for a SSD harddrive. Will that be a straight swap as the SSD takes less power...will my power supply fry it?

Also, will it save me battery life or will the macbook put just as much power to it so it doesn't save anything.

Essentially, does a system have to be configured specifically for these drives or are they a drop in and go solution?
 
Check the link before your post - i think we can safely stop worrying about disasters striking... However, how many SSDs would Apple have to pre-order before the price came down to allow them to be fitted as standard on the MBs or MBPros?

I've asked before if anyone knew which HDD manufacturers Apple generally went with or shunned when building machines, but no-one got back to me on that one. I've seen Hitachi and Fujitsu-Siemens; which other different makes are in their notebooks/laptops?
 
heatasmallhouse said:
Question: I buy a macbook pro now. In a year I want to swap it out for a SSD harddrive. Will that be a straight swap as the SSD takes less power...will my power supply fry it?

Also, will it save me battery life or will the macbook put just as much power to it so it doesn't save anything.

Essentially, does a system have to be configured specifically for these drives or are they a drop in and go solution?
Click to expand...

Your current HDD draws varying amounts of power up to a stated maximum, depending on what work it is doing. It may run on a base voltage, but have a varying current draw depending on how much work it needs to do. E.g. 5Volts, and anything from 200milliAmps to 1Amp (again, as an example!).

The SSD can and should work on the same principle, and we know that the connection interface can be the same (SATA??), judging by how Sony is offering/will offer 32GB SSDs on its new TZ series machines...

so it should be possible to do a straight swap, provided you can access the bloody HDD in the first place :D :D :D

cApO
 
During their natural life cycle SSDs are much more reliable than HDDs. Google sees something like 10% failure rate per year on their older HDDs.

SSD management software extends the life of the SSDs by moving blocks of storage from high traffic areas to low traffic areas. Most bytes stored on your disk are long term storage. For example the basic OS files will change during a couple of updates per year at most. Even individual pieces of program data, including browser caches (typically, caches are written to separate files and old ones removed), isn't being written to hundreds of times a day.

Swap space is being constantly written to. But this could be managed on a separate small, cheap, HDD that's easy to change, or even a separate small SSD.
 
I think this is pretty sweet, but it's still very expensive. I'd currently be more inclined to buy an PCIe express card drive - maybe 16GB - and add a copy of commonly used programs (firefox, vlc) to run while unplugged. The speeds, while not sata good, would be better than running it off of a thumb drive and require less power than running off of a hard drive. Watching a movie ripped to the flash drive would probably net a much longer battery life as well.
 
I don't think it'll be that bad!

This article states that the 3.5" SSds launched by SimpleTech consume 500mA in operation - that's the same as the 40GB in my G3 iPod! Bottom line, i don't think that the difference in power consumption would really be the reason for not taking an internal Sata-based SSD vs using a card-slot-based SSD. It's currently about capacity and price point in my opinion.
 
yeah, and at only 10 grand, what a bargain!:eek:

it'll be cool when SSD's become affordable, but god only knows how long that's gonna take....
 
capoditutti said:
It's currently about capacity and price point in my opinion.
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Not sure if your comment was directed at me, but this is exactly why I'd opt for a traditional Sata main drive and use the SSD when unplugged from the wall for extended periods of time. Even negating the power required to run the express card slot, I'm sure it'll still use less than running web browsing (and possibly even music/movies) from a traditional HD.

For me, it's completely about the price. When SSD comes down in price, sure, that'll be awesome.
 
weren't there already 64GB SSDs for $350 available? so by the end of the year there should be a 128GB for 350 available. that would be sufficient and affordable to me.

i would be mainly interested in the speed increase. how much faster than a 2.5" 5400rpm are these disks? twofold?
 
rockinrocker said:
yeah, and at only 10 grand, what a bargain!:eek:

it'll be cool when SSD's become affordable, but god only knows how long that's gonna take....
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Current SS memory usage is high and climbing fast - and it can only increase. Everything is gaining memory capacity, and high capacities at that. This should help the prices down, plus improved densities are never far away.

I wouldnt be surprised if we see some form of SSD in our lovely :apple: machines before Christmas 2008 ... How's that for a 'waiting for' pitch!
 
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