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Switching from "normal" HD to flash HD.

princealfie

princealfie

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 7, 2006
2,517
1
Salt Lake City UT
http://www.flash-memory-store.com/qmemory-flash-laptop-hard-drive-16gb.html

This looks very promising. Despite the limited writes (which I suspect is overrated anyways) and the lack of 160 GB flash memory, I would love to have this to replace my Powerbooks' current HD's which already suck up a ton of battery life spinning up the platters.

So what is the extended battery life? I suspect like 2-3 times more? I wouldn't be surprised.
 
I'm going to give it a few years so the price to switch becomes a little more practical...Thats almost half the price of my machine and is only 16GB...But yeah, it would definitely save some battery life.
 
Isn't Flash memory comparatively slow? If so, I couldn't imagine using it as scratch disk or it rivalling some of the faster drives out there.
 
StealthRider said:
Plus there's the matter of the 100,000 R/W cycle lifespan...which is fine, unless you're using it as a swap disk in addition to file storage.
Click to expand...

Actually it's more like 1,000,000 R/W cycles now. In fact, the improvements are incredible.

The write times are like 20 MB/sec up to 50 MB/sec

However, the battery life would be awesome especially for word processing and some photo editing like I do.
 
super expensive is the problem, would discuss it only when price is down to <$1/GB
 
It'd have to be a hybrid - with an internal "old-style" hard drive that could be turned off and on as needed. At least until price/GB comes down...
 
like prince said, the R/W cycles are over a million now. Also, the new high speed flash is so much faster than even a year ago. It would seem that a couple of 8gb flash drives could house what is used most frequently, with a perpendicular drive to handle bigger storage. I've heard (can't remember where, may have been popular science, or here...) 3-5 years until we have fully flash based storage in laptops.
 
But, in the meantime, standard HDDs will be able to hold far more than flash drives manufacturers can even dream of. It'll be supplemental, not a full replacement.
 
They'll have their niches, but for low-end notebooks that are just for word-processing, it would cost far less per GB to use magnetic storage. I can see it becoming an enhanced version of Robson caching in higher-end machines.
 
it seems that for things like optical drive usage, we need movies and software to be put on flash. The drain to watch a DVD would go way down with flash-based content. What's to stop it happening? Cost, availability? Adoption? just musing...
 
Modern OS's and programs make extensive use of temp files and swap files, which are written to continuously. Two problems; Flash memory is much slower to write than to read, the linked cmpany plays the usual games - states read speeds not write, and states the ATA-66 interface speed AS IF that's what the drive can actually accomplish. 16.0 MB/s read speed (write is typically half of read). Can you say; 10 times slower than a SATA drive? A Firewire 400 drive regularly gets 40 MB/s read and write.

Depending on the type of flash memory used, a huge issue is that you cannot erase and update just one bit of data; you have to erase an entire block, and rewrite it, even if you are changing memory at only one address. That is slow.

And even a million r/w cycles is NOTHING for a primary hard drive, you'd run through that in months, not years. Notice that the company advertises data RETENTION of 10 years; but not a word about how long it will last if you actually USE it.

What's to stop it happening? Cost, availability?
Click to expand...
4 Gb flash = $99.00. Time to write 4 Gb of data: 8 - 15 minutes
4.7 Gb DVD = $0.25 Time to stamp DVD in pressing plant: 2 seconds
All numbers approximate.
 
CanadaRAM said:
Modern OS's and programs make extensive use of temp files and swap files, which are written to continuously. Two problems; Flash memory is much slower to write than to read, the linked cmpany plays the usual games - states read speeds not write, and states the ATA-66 interface speed AS IF that's what the drive can actually accomplish. 16.0 MB/s read speed (write is typically half of read). Can you say; 10 times slower than a SATA drive? A Firewire 400 drive regularly gets 40 MB/s read and write.

Depending on the type of flash memory used, a huge issue is that you cannot erase and update just one bit of data; you have to erase an entire block, and rewrite it, even if you are changing memory at only one address. That is slow.

And even a million r/w cycles is NOTHING for a primary hard drive, you'd run through that in months, not years. Notice that the company advertises data RETENTION of 10 years; but not a word about how long it will last if you actually USE it.
Click to expand...

and that is why I love MR. someone always knows the answers to the questions. thx canadaram!:)
 
Hence, Robson caching - the best of both worlds.

I've never understood, though, why hard drive caches are limited to 16MB - 128MB of RAM is dirt cheap.
 
princealfie said:
Does that mean Crucial RAM too? I think Sandisk and A-Open are supposed to be good brands eh?
Click to expand...

Brand is largely irrelevant, but the functions of Dynamic and Static RAM are quite different. SRAM is faster than DRAM, and doesn't require periodic refreshing, but requires larger more expensive chips.

Since they're mostly made of Silicon, it's all dirt (well sand) in the end.

We'll all be using quantum computers in the not too distant future...

B
 
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