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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."

14 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. No SATA? by Eunuch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If your're gonna jettison old crap, do away with PATA as well.

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    Transcend Humanity. Please.
  2. Fragmentation by ari_j · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The MTBF question has been asked a dozen other times, and I don't see any answers or know of any to contribute. But as to fragmentation, I would think it will not be an issue. Since there are no moving parts, there should be no waiting time to get from sector 0 to sector 8 billion. Of course, I may be wrong, particularly if there is complex circuitry to route requests to the drive, seeing as there are probably quite a few individual flash memory chips involved in this and addressing that many different chips could require a memory processor (replacing the drive controller circuitry that traditional hard drives have) which would take some time to access a given piece of the drive.

  3. Why limit these to laptops? by rnturn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I want a couple of handfuls of these to use in my home system. These aren't all that big so making a one or more RAIDsets would be nice, especially come backup time. Added plus: No spinning drives or the auxiliary fans to keep them cooled == nice quiet system.

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    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  4. Naming? by Winterblink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is it called a disc drive if it's based on flash memory? :)

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    1. Re:Naming? by yagu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When you make a phone call, why is it called "dialing"?

    2. Re:Naming? by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      probably by the same people that gave us the cable modem

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  5. Re:This question is already in the original articl by Humorously_Inept · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One might additionally be concerned about long term data durability. Granted, most people are unlikely to have data that is untouched for the ten-odd years that current flash technology can maintain it, but it's still something to think about.

    There is also the matter of medium damage and data recovery. HDDs may not be as mechanically reliable but if there's something on stored on an HDD that you really need then it can be recovered by a recovery service. What happens to your data if your rig gets zapped in some kind of freak accident and the flash memory is affected? It is, after all, an EEPROM. Everything on it would be erased. Great for spies, but not so great for everyone else!

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    ~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
  6. Re:Old News by rainman_bc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Excuse me, but doesn't flash storage have a limited number of writes?

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  7. Flash sucks for this. by JustNiz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Flash read/write performance is terrrible compared to DRAM, and has a very limited number of possible rewrites, too. Depending on the flash technology:(NAND=100,000 NOR=10,000).

    Other than for laptop use, I'd rather have a DRAM-based drive that optionally gets backed-up/restored to conventional HD at power-off/on. It would give much better performance than flash, last much longer and probably cost much less per Gb.

    If you just used it for /temp and the swap partition, you'd get good performance gains and it wouldn't even need to be backed-up/restored. It would save wear on your conventional HD's too.

    Unfortunately the only such drives I've found are ludicrously expensive.

  8. Re:Thank goodness! by Mononoke · · Score: 2, Insightful
    i dunno. the human brain has far greater total storage and throughput than our most advanced technology right now.
    Bit rot seems to be a real problem for some models, though.

    Damn proprietary wetware.

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  9. Re:Old News by LordStraun · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Yes, and depending on how the writes are being spread across the media, the device could last a day or years. From the comments in TA, someone posted the following specs:

    MTBF specs vary based on the manufacturer and the calculation used; the following are some sample specs I have found:

    Pretec --> MTBF 500,000 hours (powered on)
    Simpletech --> MTBF 1M+ hours
    SanDisk --> MTBF 3M+ hours
    BitMicro --> MTBF 2M+ hours


    But the most reliable and experienced guys around are BitMicro, and this is what they pubish for one of their flash drives:

    http://www.bitmicro.com/...urces_flash_ssd_db2.php

    Example #2: Write Frequency in MB/sec

    E-Disk® PB Size = 16 KB

    I/O Block Size = 64 KB

    Write Frequency = 6,016,204,800 KB per day (68 MB/sec)

    E-Disk® capacity = 155,648 MB
    Number of Flash chips = 608
    Size of Flash chips = 2048 Mbit or 256 MB or 262,144 KB


    Number of writes to Flash chip = 64 KB / 16 KB = 4
    Total E-Disk® physical blocks = (262,114 / 16) x 608 = 9,961,472
    Total max writes to E-Disk® drive = 9,961,472 x 1,000,000 = 9,961,472,000,000

    Endurance (in days) = 9,961,472,000,000 / (4 X (6,016,204,800/64)) = 26,492 days
    Endurance (in years) = 199,229 days / 365 = 72.59 years

    Samsung could also use a form of wear leveling to increase device longevity.
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  10. Re:And its no HUGE breakthrough on battery life. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Assume a laptop gets a 5hr runtime from its 50WattHr battery, for an average draw of 10W. The WD drive pulls 2w, leaving 8w for the rest of the system. Cut out the drive and the laptop draws 8w, which works out to a 6.25hr battery life (50WHr / 8W = 6.25hr).

    Now assume the parent's descriptiuon - use the same 5hr runtime and 50Whr battery, now with a drive that draws 1/3 the total power (3.33W). Not counting the drive, the system would have to draw just 6-2/3W. Remove the drive, the runtime goes up 50% to 7.5hrs (50WHr / 6-2/3W = 7.5hr).

    The interesting thing in these examples is that cutting power consumption by x% increases battery life by y%, where y > x.

  11. Re:Memory by Pontiac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh yeah like we've had great luck with standard disks in the last 5 years..

    IBM DeathsStar drives come to mind along with the Travelstar line..(We've replaced hundreds of those)
    mosts of those were total failure with little to no warning.

    More recently I had a 2 year old Maxtor puke on me..
    Maybe it's me but todays drives just don't last like they used to.

    If these new drives can run for 3-4 years before fraging themselves it'll be an improvement.

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    If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
  12. Re:Flash makes a horible computer drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I belive the limit is rather high nowadays , I cant remember exactly but i belive they will outlive the average laptop HDD if you dont shove your swapfile on it.

    Pardon me for stating the obvious, but when did virtual memory become a "nice to have" feature?