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Samsung Announces Flash-Based Disk Drive
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."
I've done some work with Flash in an embedded database application.
Flash is specced for 100,000 erase cycles -- in a 'disk' application this probably equates to 100,000 writes. However, after about 10,000 erases, the write speed decreases significantly.
In my application, I remapped blocks of data on a cyclical basis, so that all the blocks would get used the same number of times.
At 100,000 cycles, if you erased and rewrote the entire disk every hour, it would last for 11 years. How many people are still using an 11 year old HDD? (That'd be, what, 1GB or so?)
The key question is how much this will cost. The fact that its aimed at laptops suggests that it will be significantly more expensive than a HDD.
Another question: how long do we keep calling Flash memory devices 'Flash drives'? Or will the name hang on, like 'dialling' telephone numbers?