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Solid State Drives in Notebooks?

Posted by Cliff on from the don't-you-wish-you-could-build-your-own-laptop dept.

spenney asks: "It seems like the most problematic part of any notebook is the speed of the hard drive (and they also get noisy). I noticed this site selling 2.5" solid state disks (SSDs). Anybody currently using one of these in a notebook? I can't find pricing anywhere, but they've gotta cost a fortune." How long do you think it will be before the major laptop manufacturers start adopting this technology?

4 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. My experience with laptops... by HaloZero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...as a student, has been that the hard drive is usually the first piece of equipment to fail, with the LCD/TFT or optical drive (if it's a tray) following in a close second. Other concerns are batteries and power supplies, but I digress.

    The constant moving, up and down, left and right, jostling, dropping, the occasional beating-by-classmates (consider laptop being hauled around in a backpack - yes, the Targus ones are damned, good, I have one [If you need a laptop bag, GET ONE!], but the padding doesn't stop the heads from skittering across the platters when the laptop is subjected to smacking, pounding, and even spinning around.) Data is lost, the discs spin down, and it's all just one big bloody mess. Solid state drives, if affordable, could definately revolutionize the way I look at laptops, the way my school looks at laptops as a student solution, and the way the laptop community works.

    But... will it catch on? Please? I hope so. This is one thing that would suck to see it go the way of vaporware.

    --
    Informatus Technologicus
  2. What about the limit on number of rewrite? by linuxghoul · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesnt Flash memory have a really low number of rewrites, like 10,000 after which the chip goes bad? To me, this means tht one just cant use a flash chip as primary storage with regular consumer operating systems...think /tmp and /var/log and their equivalents under win32. Or look at yesterdays story about the sector which holds the FAT, which is written/rewritten every time a file on the filesystem is modified. 10,000 total modifications, and ur FAT sector (and probably the physical chip its located on? i am not sure...) craps out. Heck...that means, a new device might not even last through the installation of a linux distro.

    or is this a different kind of flash from an alternate universe that i dont know about. I noticed on the webpage, they mention a very high MTBF, which is logical, but dont say anything about the number of rewrite cycles...

    Ghoul2

    --
    Sigura Non Grata
  3. Laptops? They dont think so... by GeekWithGuns · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From their own Applications page you can see that their not even looking for the laptop market:

    Portable Computer Applications

    Notebook and laptop computers will use Solid State Disks as the main external memory storage because of their low power consumption and resilience to mechanical stress. There is no need for the external memory storage to withstand environmental conditions that are better than those required by the LCD screens. LCD environmental requirements are generally more restrictive than those for mechanical disk drives.

    The majority of portable computers will continue to be equipped with magnetic and optical mechanical drives. The competition in this market will be challenging because the customers in this market will be price sensitive. We still believe that some customers who need the higher performance and reliability of our E-Disks® will be willing to pay more.

    Not that it isn't a good idea, but they are just not going to price them to compete with the standard Magnetic disks. But looking at the performace these would kick butt in any server application!

    --
    [End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...] - Larry Wall in Configure from the perl
  4. Re:Answers by oakwood · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Thanks!

    The system has 160Mb, which is the max for it. For my next system, I will look for one that takes more RAM.

    The Win98 never crashes (except for the rare shutdown hang.) It does crash if I fiddle with the swapfile size or turn it off. Like you say, instability. I do run Norton WinDoctor regularly to clean up the registry.

    I don't think I want to go back to 95 in order to gain more space, but it is an interesting idea.

    I will look into a minimal XP installation with no swapfile.

    Best thing is to stop keeping so many unused apps and unused files on the system! I have IE set to keep only 0 days worth of history. And use Norton Clean Sweep once in a while. Mijenix SizeManager is very helpful on this. Amazing the redundant, old, and usused junk that collects in a Win system.

    By the way, I back up the key files online to a small TypeII PCCard Sandisk and, of course, offline.

    Thanks again for the insight.