Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Samsung Announces Flash-Based Disk Drive

Posted by Zonk on from the whirrless-laptops dept.

doc6502 writes "Samsung has announced flash-based disk drives with a 16 GB capacity, with an aim to get the drives to market by the end of the year. The (short) article suggests that this could be a big boost to laptop owners, as battery life could be seriously extended if there isn't a big high-speed motor to power constantly. The drives should be fast, too."

6 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. Old News by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Informative


    Memtech has been doing this sort of thing for a while now.

    Still, this is great news...the more companies that switch to flash technology, the more the technology itself will become mainstream. It's about time we did away with platter-based HDDs.

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  2. Re:It's good news but ... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 4, Informative


    Here's a great paper about flash technology in HDD applications. The document is a bit lengthy, but the conclusion is that today's flash technology allows for enough erase/write cycles to make them more than viable for HDD use.

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  3. Re:It's good news but ... by crow · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, the life of the flash is a factor here, but you're missing a couple of points.

    First, the life of modern parts if much higher than you stated. I think it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of writes.

    Second, they can apply the same techniques as spinning drives to remap bad blocks so that when a block stops working, it gets replaced by a spare one that was never seen by the user. A similar remapping can be done to swap heavily-used and lightly-used blocks to even out the wear and extend the life.

  4. what's new here ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    check m-systems http://www.m-sys.com/ they have a 176G flash scsi disk there, also a 'low cost' 8G ide flash drive in 1.8 and 2.5" so how is this news exactly ?

  5. Re:Flash makes a horible computer drive by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 4, Informative


    Again, please refer to this paper about flash technology in HDD applications. The document is a bit lengthy, but the conclusion is that today's flash technology allows for enough erase/write cycles to make them more than viable for HDD use.

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  6. Re:Announces?! by metlin · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Wake me up when they're introduced.

    From TFA:

    "Flash-based drives based on the new technology are expected on the market by August of this year."

    A couple of months and they will be.