Flashy Hard Drives - The way to the future?

ArBiTaL 24 · May 8, 2005

Regarding Ed's article: http://www.overclockers.com/tips00771/

Even though it seems like a long way off, maybe the possibility of flash-drive style hard drives, at preset capacities (80-250 gig), maybe faster than current mechanical drives and able to last just as long, if not longer, is finally here, or at least very close? Maybe they're closer in the industry to this technology than they want us to think?

Discuss

CJ4 · May 10, 2005

That looks pretty cool. Wonder why they are going with flash drives rather than regular RAM? Weren't there some 4GB RAM drives out there that you could put your OS on?

CJ

TollhouseFrank · May 10, 2005

RAM unfortunately, as fast as it is, is Volatile. take away the power, the data goes bye-bye.

Flash RAM/ROM doesn't lose its data when powered down. That's the unique appeal of it.

shellshock · May 10, 2005

ya, that will be sweet!! Sometimes when im at school, I ponder what the future holds for computers, just think 20 years now what its going to be like. Its gonna be awsome!!

CJ4 · May 11, 2005

TollhouseFrank said:
RAM unfortunately, as fast as it is, is Volatile. take away the power, the data goes bye-bye.

Flash RAM/ROM doesn't lose its data when powered down. That's the unique appeal of it.

I got that, but they are just using it as a buffer where it doesn't matter that it loses the data without power.

CJ

Dylruss · May 11, 2005

I wish I kept a pamphlet that Quantum was putting out in the early 90's (yeah the early 486 days). It was a 5 1/4" drive that was just flash chips, couldn't have been more then 100megs of storage and around $1200. They had an idea to do it, and now it is more of a reality with the chip advancements.
It is a great idea for one reason alone. No mechanical parts, so the chances if it lasting 20+ years seems easily possible. The only thing is, by then who will care or need it.

Gnufsh · May 11, 2005

Dylruss said:
It is a great idea for one reason alone. No mechanical parts, so the chances if it lasting 20+ years seems easily possible. The only thing is, by then who will care or need it.

Still unlikely, as you can only write to flash so many times.

veryhumid · May 12, 2005

I remember there was a company a couple years ago that built very fast, futuristic looking computers. And you had the option to get a solid state hard drive system for a hefty price (thousands). I'll see if i can dig it up.

Dylruss · May 12, 2005

Gnufsh said:
Still unlikely, as you can only write to flash so many times.

True, but if you read a little more about it like found here *LINK*. Although "All types of Flash memory and EEPROM wear out after a certain number of erase operations." It seems to me "Most NAND Flash manufacturers today claim a write endurance of 1 million write cycles per block." is a fair amount of times.

So I would still consider it likely, although the probability of mass producing something cheap/usable may not be here yet.

deathman20 · May 12, 2005

If it gets to nearly 10million times talk to me about if it will last.

Ya 1million times seems like a lot but give or take in a year sim sure it will do lots of read/write/erase operations on a normal harddrive if using frequently.

If it can last 5 years constant operation now you'll get some intrest.

Gnufsh · May 12, 2005

With a large drive, I'm sure they would use software to spread out the writes, so it doesn't wear out as fast. Still, this is a serious issue they have to deal with.

skab · May 14, 2005

What if you ran your os on one of these and then a second one for everything else? I would think that would give you the instant on capability of a PDA with an extremely low power up energy cost that would make this realy effective in the laptop class at least.
As for the write times issue, built in obsolescence? Does the aveage JOE SIXPACK even know or realize what a limitation this is?

geek2005 · May 16, 2005

I think standard HD's are going to die out for the future. It seems like a good way to hold back the computer industry. I mean...come on...250GB HD's are being sold for like $100-150! That's about the only progress...giving us more room.

Although, considering many games today use as much HD for 1 game as HD's only years ago contained...I can see the need for storage. But still...we need to go somewhere

Chixofnix · May 20, 2005

well call me foolish but i can't see much more development in the HDD industry in the near future...

small portable flash drives (512mb and under) certainly have picked up, and while i did my homework to pick up a reasonably fast one (cruzer titanium) in terms of reads/writes, it's nowhere near fast enough to play small games off of it.

The reason people have HDD's in their computer over other storage media are for a few major reasons (even if they aren't aware of it):
1) reliablility
2) capacity
3) speed

...generally in that order...

if flash HDD's are gonna beat out the usual ones, whatever advantages they hold in speed, they first must approach, and then meet or exceed the capacity AND reliablity of today's HDD's, without costing tons more...

that day isn't today, and i don't think it's tomorrow... maybe before i die, but maybe never ^^;

Audioaficionado · May 21, 2005

You can always set up a RAM drive if you have enough memory. These can be used as scratch files for PS, Very quick launch of favorite apps or maybe even the page files to keep it off the hard drive.

RAM drives never wear out

TollhouseFrank · May 22, 2005

Audioaficionado said:
RAM drives never wear out

But still... one power blip.... and *voila*... everything is gone on RAM.

redwraith94 · May 22, 2005

Gnufsh said:
Still unlikely, as you can only write to flash so many times.

How many times can you read from flash though? Is there still a failure limit...or is it something that I could load an os on, and then boot up as many times as I like, w/o fear of failure?...sans pagefile of course.

Audioaficionado said:
You can always set up a RAM drive if you have enough memory. These can be used as scratch files for PS, Very quick launch of favorite apps or maybe even the page files to keep it off the hard drive.

RAM drives never wear out

Do you know how to do this w/ win2k/winxp (I use win2k sp4)...I could do it w/ dos just fine, up to ~26 mb was the limit, I believe, but I have never been able to do it w/ win2k.

IDK about this technology, I think it is still a very long way off, and when mem based hdd do finally come out, they may not be flashed based at all, but something entirely different altogether.

Sjaak · May 22, 2005

I really like the idea but as said, it faces some current technical and practical limitations.

JaY_III · May 23, 2005

Sjaak said:
I really like the idea but as said, it faces some current technical and practical limitations.

Says who?
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23425

Sjaak · May 23, 2005

Uhm..price..the limited rewritability of flashdrives...

But, reading that article, it seems like those will be overcome sooner then i thought.

Flashy Hard Drives - The way to the future?

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