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Samsung's Hybrid Hard Drive Exposed
Erica Campbell writes "Samsung is preparing to release a new
Flash memory-assisted computer hard drive
that boasts improved performance, reduced energy consumption, a faster boot time, and better reliability. The new hybrid hard drive will be released around the same time as the upcoming Windows Vista operating system and will be one of the first hardware designed specifically to benefit from it."
That hard drive may ship out the door on the shelves before Vista...
that buffer is fucking huge. Laptops awesome, wonder when they'll actually work on a regular size one though. Then again, seeing as it's gonna be the first batch out the door, potential issues from what is practically a new drive type will scare me, and my wallet away.
Just think of how fast the virtual memory would be on one of those things, it could really help the linked site overcome the /. effect that has smacked it.
Looks like Samsung and Microsoft designed this together.s /HardDiskDrive_20050425_0000117556.htm
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/new
It was on display at WinHEC in April 2005.
Sorry, don't know how to link to one of the Caches, but here is the text of the article:
Samsung's HHD prototype
Samsung is preparing to release a new Flash memory-assisted computer hard drive that boasts improved performance, reduced energy consumption, a faster boot time, and better reliability. The new hybrid hard drive will be released around the same time as the upcoming Windows Vista operating system and will be one of the first hardware designed specifically to benefit from it.
Samsung's HHD - faster boot and resume on Vista
In mid-May 2006, Samsung unveiled a prototype hybrid hard drive (HHD) at WinHEC, the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Samsung's prototype HHDs have a buffer of 128 or 256 MB, much larger than the 8-16 MB of cache in current hard drives. This new buffer differs from the existing cache buffer on hard drives not only in size but also in structure, composition, and qualities. Conventional cache is made out of volatile memory that is erased when the drive is powered down. HHDs add another layer of cache consisting of Flash memory that is non-volatile and can be accessed quickly when the drive is powered on. Adding a large buffer to a hard drive can also reduce the drive's power consumption, thereby increasing the battery life, and reducing the time required for the system to resume its operation after suspension. Indeed, boot or resume time will occur about twice as fast as conventional hard disk drives, saving 8-25 seconds, and laptop batteries will provide 20 - 30 minutes more power. Another added bonus of the HHD is the improved reliability due to less mechanical wear and tear.
Samsung and other manufacturers are currently pursuing Solid State Drive (SSD) technology (to be covered in an upcoming TFOT article). Currently Flash prices are too high to allow SSDs to replace standard hard drives of any reasonable size and, although Flash prices are continually falling, it will be several years until such a drive will become affordable to most users. Here enters the near-term solution for enjoying improved performance at a reasonable price - the hybrid hard drive, combining the low cost and large storage capacity of conventional hard drive technology with quick and low-power Flash memory.
Apart from the reduction in Flash memory prices, hard drive manufacturers such as Samsung believe that we are about to undergo a major storage revolution in the next few years due to the upcoming release of Windows Vista. This new operating system from Microsoft will introduce three new performance-enhancing technologies: SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, and ReadyDrive. According to Microsoft, "SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive". Windows ReadyBoost allows users to use a removable Flash memory device such as a USB thumb drive to improve system performance. ReadyBoost retrieves data stored on the Flash memory more quickly than data stored on the hard disk, decreasing the interval until the PC responds. Windows ReadyDrive enables Vista-based PCs equipped with an HHD to boot up faster, resume from hibernate in less time, preserve battery power, and improve hard disk reliability.
Hard drive platters won't have to spin as much
Hard disk platters are components of hard disk drives that consist of circular rigid disks that store magnetic data. While the platters in conventional hard drives rotate most of the time, thereby consuming a great deal of power, the platters in HHDs are usually at rest, as if they were off. In HHDs, incoming data is generally written to the Flash buffer and any saved documents are saved to the buffer, instead of being written to the hard drive each time. Only when the Flash buffer is almost full or when the user accesses a new file that is not stored on the buffer, will the HHD platter rotate or "spin up". Thus, the battery power of laptops with HHDs is preserved, extending battery life.
To learn more about Samsung's hybrid hard drive technology, TF
What's so different about Vista that makes this drive benefit from Vista. Will the drive not work in Windows XP, Linux or Mac OSX machines?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Sadly, I can't RTFA as the account has already suffered a slashdotting, but I have a question about this drive. Isn't there an upper limit to how many times you can write to flash memory before it ceases to function? Granted, hard drives wear out eventually, but unless this stuff is of high quality then the cache is going to wear out before the rest of the drive.
When the cache dies off, what happens?
It's designed for Vista, but I want it for Linux. How long until then I wonder?
Given Apple's strong relationship with Samsung (iPod shuffle+nano memory both come from Samsung, I believe- and I'm almost positive Samsung has supplied RAM to apple on+off since the golden olden days), what do others think about the possibility of this ending up in a Powerbook, er, Macbook Pro- and 10.5 being designed to take advantage of it?
Apple can be hit or miss with the latest and greatest- they took forever with USB2 (yeah yeah, firewire blah blah) and lagged behind a lot of the smaller laptop mafacturers with Expresscard (given there's next to nothing for expresscard, who can blame them?)...it'll be interesting to see if Apple thinks this is a win or lose technology...
Please help metamoderate.
Samsung's Hybrid Hard Drive Exposed
Written by Iddo Genuth Thursday, 19 October 2006
Samsung is preparing to release a new Flash memory-assisted computer hard drive that boasts improved performance, reduced energy consumption, a faster boot time, and better reliability. The new hybrid hard drive will be released around the same time as the upcoming Windows Vista operating system and will be one of the first hardware designed specifically to benefit from it.
In mid-May 2006, Samsung unveiled a prototype hybrid hard drive (HHD) at WinHEC, the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Samsung's prototype HHDs have a buffer of 128 or 256 MB, much larger than the 8-16 MB of cache in current hard drives. This new buffer differs from the existing cache buffer on hard drives not only in size but also in structure, composition, and qualities. Conventional cache is made out of volatile memory that is erased when the drive is powered down. HHDs add another layer of cache consisting of Flash memory that is non-volatile and can be accessed quickly when the drive is powered on. Adding a large buffer to a hard drive can also reduce the drive's power consumption, thereby increasing the battery life, and reducing the time required for the system to resume its operation after suspension. Indeed, boot or resume time will occur about twice as fast as conventional hard disk drives, saving 8-25 seconds, and laptop batteries will provide 20 - 30 minutes more power. Another added bonus of the HHD is the improved reliability due to less mechanical wear and tear.
Samsung and other manufacturers are currently pursuing Solid State Drive (SSD) technology (to be covered in an upcoming TFOT article). Currently Flash prices are too high to allow SSDs to replace standard hard drives of any reasonable size and, although Flash prices are continually falling, it will be several years until such a drive will become affordable to most users. Here enters the near-term solution for enjoying improved performance at a reasonable price - the hybrid hard drive, combining the low cost and large storage capacity of conventional hard drive technology with quick and low-power Flash memory.
Apart from the reduction in Flash memory prices, hard drive manufacturers such as Samsung believe that we are about to undergo a major storage revolution in the next few years due to the upcoming release of Windows Vista. This new operating system from Microsoft will introduce three new performance-enhancing technologies: SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, and ReadyDrive. According to Microsoft, "SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive". Windows ReadyBoost allows users to use a removable Flash memory device such as a USB thumb drive to improve system performance. ReadyBoost retrieves data stored on the Flash memory more quickly than data stored on the hard disk, decreasing the interval until the PC responds. Windows ReadyDrive enables Vista-based PCs equipped with an HHD to boot up faster, resume from hibernate in less time, preserve battery power, and improve hard disk reliability.
Hard disk platters are components of hard disk drives that consist of circular rigid disks that store magnetic data. While the platters in conventional hard drives rotate most of the time, thereby consuming a great deal of power, the platters in HHDs are usually at rest, as if they were off. In HHDs, incoming data is generally written to the Flash buffer and any saved documents are saved to the buffer, instead of being written to the hard drive each time. Only when the Flash buffer is almost full or when the user accesses a new file that is not stored on the buffer, will the HHD platter rotate or "spin up". Thus, the battery power of laptops with HHDs is preserved, extending battery life.
To learn more about Samsung's hybrid hard drive technology, TFOT interviewed Andy Yang, the Strategic Marketing Manager of Samsung's Memory Division.
Q: How does the H
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
Flash technology seems promising and looks poised to take over devices that would be better off using solid state components (laptops, etc) that traditionally don't. I've wanted to invest in Samsung and flash technology in general. Samsung seems to only be on the Asian markets, is this so? Does anyone know of and good mutual funds/ETFs that allows one to invest in this specific tech sector?
why run from Vincenzo?
Why don't they just flat out say they don't know when it's going to be released?
SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive
I for one would rather have my ram uncluttered than any of my applications preloaded. I usually have enough time to wait if it means my ram will be empty of those preloads. This new HHD tho might help in that its flash would store these preloads instead of ram.
I hope, in case I am ever in need of Vista, that SuperFetch is optional and adjustable.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
You fools! Don't expose it! That'll ruin the hard drive!
*rimshot*
Is anyone else super enthused by the clearness of the HD rather than any performance improvements?
Sure faster boot ups will be great and eventually bootup will equal Flash -> DDR2 memory transfer speed but this seems like more of a limited upgrade.
Except the clear shell that's just too sexy for words!
What happens when the flash dies?
If Vista knows about the CF, why does it need to be on the hard disk itself? It sounds like all the heavy lifting is being done by Vista anyways. WOuldn't it make more sense just to use any CF attached to the system for this caching, etc, and use normal hard disks instead? That way adding CF to a PC would improve its performance, no matter what type of hard disks you have attached.
I thought these were only for old people.
Seagate
Silent
Read radical news here
'The new hybrid hard drive will be released around the same time as the upcoming Windows Vista operating system' Does that mean that you can buy it preloaded with Duke Nukem Forever?
Check out Spansion if you want to support an American company. They are a spin off of AMD, and have some impressive technology when it comes to flash memory.
That article mentions power savings a lot, but never boils them down to raw consumption numbers.
If a standard current notebook 40GB HD were replaced with 10 standard 4GB Flash drives, how much less power would the Flash consume than the HD?
--
make install -not war
Very doubtful that it is anywhere near Raptor or high end SCSI drives when it comes to performance. At some point, the access time of 7200rpm of that drive is bottleneck.
http://ffauploads.com/uploads/doink.html
Additionally, do you honestly think any company (Intel, Microsoft, Samsung) would back this technology if it was limited to R/W cycles in thousands?
Oh? Last time I checked...my xp seems to stop working after only several hundered read/writes, funny that.
Flash has LIMITED write life.
The devices spread the data around to hide the limited write cycle life, and uses error correction to hide the limited write cycle life.
At some point its worthless.
Flash is idiotic for a backing store (virtual memory) based hard drive. And atomic-commit algorithms and other safety mechanisms for structure preservation and corruption avoidance such as "Journaling" only make the chatter worse.
All the disk chatter destroys the lifespan of the flash part.
Worse... flash is SLOW for lots of non-paralell-capable individual 512 byte requests, which typically are not spread across multiple flash parts.
True, a megabyte read can be fast in flash, but lots of random 512 byte reads or writes are far slower than a modern hard drive STILL in 2006. (15,000 rpm scsi from 7 diff manufacturers for example).
But the article is about hard drives... still.. its hopeless and foolish.
people who use their computers a lot will have data corruption earlier... all due to flash problems
We wrote a driver to read and write fat 16 flash drives for an embeded system. The testing for it wrote and read full speed 24/7 for two weeks before they died. I assumed that was because of the limited read write settings. Or is it possible the low quality connection was to blame? Doesn't really matter they were only used to transfer settings. As any one whos had to support them knows, they often just die for no apparent reason. I'm not convinced that this is a system I'd want my data on.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
"Exposed", huh? Shouldn't that be "unveiled", or something like that? Exposing should be reserved for scandles and strippers.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I can't tell whether you're trying to be funny.
That is actually reason enough for me to re-think that whole Vista thing.
Has the ability to boot and run Linux off flash made you "re-think that whole Linux thing"?
With partial flash drives and eventually 100% flash drives, the last major component of computer hardware failure, namely, all of those closely moving parts in a hard drive, will be wiped out.
They'll be replaced by a medium that has a much higher MTBF for writes.
Oh yeah, and it'll be fast as hell, too.
Not really. Flash memory is not all that fast, and a lot of boot time is spent doing other things. On all my machines, most of the booting process is concerned with checking and initializing hardware.
Windows ReadyBoost allows users to use a removable Flash memory device such as a USB thumb drive to improve system performance. ReadyBoost retrieves data stored on the Flash memory more quickly than data stored on the hard disk, decreasing the interval until the PC responds.
I'm a little confused about ReadyBoost.
A 7,200rpm HDD which reaches a little over 100MB/s (800Mbit/s) transfer rates.
DDR2 is up to 6.4GB/s (51.2Gbit/s) transfer rates.
And yet USB boasts a maximum of 60MB/s (480Mbit/s) transfer rates.
How is this an improvement? I understand that there are other factors in play when accessing the hard disk, but.. I digress. Is this supposed to be a cheap way for Joe Schmoe to upgrade performance?
"Don't buy 1GB of RAM for $100, but a 1GB flash drive for $30 and get 1/109th of the performance upgrade!!"
Anybody know if these will have a PATA interface? My thinking would be putting this into laptops that currently exist, say for example my 12"PB?
Jonathanjk.com
AFAIK, the flash is only used for caching small files and for faster booting, all the data will eventually be stored on the HDD. Also, they assumably use algorithms that check the flash for bad sectors and marks them unusable if they stop functioning. HDDs also use similar methods, but a flash drive will be able to die more gracefully, as there is no mechanical parts that can fail abruptly.
...so now hard drive too have finally matured and have started exposing.
....
Nice days coming
Eclipse PDE and Me
Not true. If you write to ALL of the writable adressable area of a flashram , you will not get over 200,000 full writes on average despite the lies. In fact, the parts fail in 2 or 3 weeks of lab benchtests.
The flash fanatics keep modding down these facts to -1 for some insane reason here.
Flash has LIMITED write life.
The devices spread the data around to hide the limited write cycle life, and uses error correction to hide the limited write cycle life.
At some point its worthless.
Flash is idiotic for a backing store (virtual memory) based hard drive. And atomic-commit algorithms and other safety mechanisms for structure preservation and corruption avoidance such as "Journaling" only make the chatter worse.
All the disk chatter destroys the lifespan of the flash part.
Worse... flash is SLOW for lots of non-paralell-capable individual 512 byte requests, which typically are not spread across multiple flash parts.
True, a megabyte read can be fast in flash, but lots of random 512 byte reads or writes are far slower than a modern hard drive STILL in 2006. (15,000 rpm scsi from 7 diff manufacturers for example).
But the article is about hard drives... still.. its hopeless and foolish.
people who use their computers a lot will have data corruption earlier... all due to flash problems
..... Hard Drives expose you
Eclipse PDE and Me
Actually I think it's more like fixing software problems in Hardware. The situation in which this technology will improve access time is when you have to randomly seek on your harddrive. Unfortunately that is needed in Windows as there is little possibility to keep all your bootup files one after another in the order you need them. With Linux, however that is rather easily possible. You can create an initial ramdisk which the computer can load very quickly without much booting and then boot from it. Theoretically, if you have enough RAM, you can even load your complete system into it.
So now you essentially have to spend a lot of money (Flash and Patents!) on a technology which will, at most, give you an decrease in boot-times and will be obsolete once the power management of the drivers support Suspend to Disk or Suspend to RAM. Just look at Linux or MacOS 8 on an old clamshell iBook. You just close it and it's "Off", you open it again, and after very few seconds it's completely back again.
Sources:
http://www.techworld.com/storage/features/index. cfm?featureid=2814&pagtype=samecat
http://www.bitmicro.com/press_resources_flash_ss d.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Limita tions (yeah, yeah, Wikipedia isn't authoritative, but it's good enough)
Boycott Sony
Special guest appearance from the makers of the BSOD, and the upcoming RSOD, Microsoft!
Blind are we who do not know that we are blind. The world has been boring ever since I got here.
Hello all, Well apparently we underestimated yesterday's Slashdot audience which was considerable. On the other hand we overestimated our own Bluehost server which exceeded it's CPU usage. In the next few days we will move to a dedicated server on another company and hopefully resolve this issue and by the time our follow up article on Samsung's SSD drive will be up (in a week) the site will be able to support a much larger workload. For the moment the site is up but Bluehost can't grantee how long it will last under the load. Sorry for the temporary downtimes. Iddo TFOT
We did some basic research with Flash / HDD hybrids two years ago. As such disks weren't available, yet, we were using a real (Notebook)HDD and a IDE-Flash-HDD in parallel.
." in the root of a freshly booted system).
Our goal was to minimize energy consumption for mobile devices (i.e. not a lot of ram available for caching and the device is switched off repeatedly to save energy).
Using a very sensitive (time resolution wise) energy measurement device, we determined, that most energy was consumed by moving the heads into position. The difference was substancial: Around 0.63W for the HDD spinning idle and about 5.3W during heavy seeking (e.g. trigered by a "find
We decided to not use the flash as cache (flash is quick to read, but slow to write) and just put the relatively static metadata (directory structure, inode tables...) onto the Flash drive, but keep there files and data on the HDD, as each directory access triggered a expensive seek, but delivered very few data, compared to reading a file.
To simulate our mobile device we used a Linux-System limited to 32 ram to prevent the system from excessive caching.
We observed up to a factor 8 reduced energy consumption and as a surprising side effect a factor 6 increase in speed!
When increasing the available Ram, this advantage quickly vanished on repated benchmark runs, as the System appearently cached the directory structure very effectively. The first run after booting however still performed substancially better with our system, no matter the amout of ram. (And this was our target useage profile: Power on, search something, Power off).
As the code was an embarrassingly ugly hack to the ext2 driver and we envisioned trouble keeping the hdd with the data and the flash-hdd in sync, it was not persued further.
However with hybrid drives becoming available, it might be worth a more detailed analysis...
My iPod does this. It has a 20GB disk and 32MB ram (or is it 64MB?). Anyway, not new.
I'm a 2000 man.
Well, I imagine that Vista is going to need a very fast hard drive >;-)
Me, however, is happy with the (cheap!) existing hard drives. And if I need a very fast drive, I find that about 4 GB will do fine.
And what a coincidence - there's a RAM-drive of 4GB, hardware, battary-backed, bootable, which can sit in a PC slot and pretend to be a hard drive (needs no driver). I found it under the name "GigaByte i-Ram DDR GC-RAMDISK Hard Disk Drive SATA PCI" on eBay, as apparently you can't get it in a shop in Europe yet...
(No, I'm not connected!)
Ciao,
Klaus
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
channel 9 have a video on the details of how vista works with this technology http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=2424 29
The New macbook's HDD is easy to replace.
Swap it for a flash assisted.
You're all haggling about speed and reliability.. But how much less power would a solid state disk use compared to a mechanical disc? And what percentage of my laptop power is being consumed by my hdd (say watching a divx).. Though I realise this is a hybrid disc only storing OS boot files, so cant imagine it would give me a longer lasting battery when watching said divx etc..
It would also be ideal for laptop systems to save power...
95% of all computer errors occur between chair and keyboard (TM)
"What would be neat is if you could swap out flash drives .. I'd be more interested in that than a permanently integrated flash drive",VitrosChemistryAnaly
:)
.. upgrading memory is not always easy .. and open your computer .. can invalidate your support agreement"
Wouldn't it be neet to keep parts of your mind on an external USB device
"Vista supports a feature called ReadyBoost, which can use just about any flash memory device", Phroggy
"Adding system memory (RAM) is often the best way to improve your PC's performance
More memory is the simplest solution. A Gegabyte is standard nowadays. Except you can't take the lid off.
"SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory"
Apart from the moniker I don't see the innovation. Back when Dos couldn't see extended memory, to speed up access, you allocated this memory to a ramdrive and loaded commonly used executables into it. Apart from the names what is new and innovative here. Has ReadyBoost been patented?
SuperFetch = keep apps loaded in memory.
Sticky bit = keep apps loaded in memory.
ReadyBoost = use an external cache.
ReadyDrive = hybernate to flashram.
was Re:Ship time (Score:5, Stating the obvious)
davecb5620@gmail.com
As often as I have had memory cards fail for no reason with my digital cameras, I'd hate to see this on a PC or Laptop, and sure as hell not in a Server.
Why not just make it 128MB or 256MB battery-backed cache, with a mirror on the HD. Part of the spin-up process could be to verify the code is in memory, and let it boot off cache RAM or something...
Sorry, flash is great when you need portability, not in data-intensive operations.
My main question is what the interface is going to be to this. Is it going to appear as regular flash media? Will there be extended PATA and SATA commands to address the Flash/modify the drive priorities? The re-posted article says that it's only designed for Windows Vista and will not support XP; does that mean that the interface is now totally different from anything else and these drives won't work?
Finally, why the hell haven't they given Linux hackers a go at the drives? There are certainly those who would be interested in supporting the technology. AMD and Intel sure seem to (note that Linux supported x86_64 before it even shipped!)
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I used to feel the same way about Samsung. Every time I looked at their stuff I was less than impressed to say the least.
:)
When I was looking for my first LCD monitor, the best price/performance match that I could find (reported reliability, screen dimensions, speed of refresh were my key criteria) was a Samsung. I finally took a chance on it despite my reservations. I was so impressed by the actual product that I bought two more a couple of years later and I've been recommending that people at least consider them when they are shopping for monitors.
IOW, I'd say don't bail on these new drives just because they're made by Samsung. It's possible that their old inability to build reliable products may be behind them. With that said, I'm not really a pioneer myself so I won't be buying the first generation of these anyway. I'll wait and see if the hype is truly justified once they've been out for a year or two. Besides, by then maybe there'll be some Linux drivers.
XP currently boots from USB keys just fine. So why did you say it cannot boot from flash without significant bootcode changes? USB keys are flash memory, you know._ your_pocket/index.html
See Tom's Hardware, or BartPE.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/09/windows_in
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Old news. Sorry, but I just had to give the responder a clue.
wake up and hold your nose
That word has a certain negative connotation associated with it. In the context of this article, wouldn't "revealed" have been a better choice?
Heard any good sigs lately?
Everyone here keeps thinking about using the flash memory as a regular "swap" style cache that it written and read many times. But I don't think that's how flash should be used. Flash memory should be used to read chunks of data often yet write to that data rarely. This applies in some applications, for example, loading program executables. You rarely overwrite the data for a program's binary yet you read from it often. If you cache all of the program executables along with their config files (which also should be written to rarely), I'm sure you could see much faster performance or power savings because the only time you would need to spin up the hard drive is when you want to save new data (assuming your flash memory has enough storage to store most of the user's programs).
That's being addressed, though, with a rewrite of "init" (shipping with Ubuntu Edgy Eft).
Didn't Apple basically already do this? They wanted a faster boot time than the traditional init system would give, so they wrote launchd. It's open source, and it replaces init and also some functions of cron.
If the Ubuntu/Debian people are rewriting init and not using launchd, they're seriously reinventing the wheel. The most often stated downside of launchd that I've ever heard is that it uses XML config files, rather than the flat text that's preferred by most people coming from a UNIX background, but I'm sure you could change that.
The purpose of launchd, as I understand it, is that it keeps track of which processes can't start until other ones have started, and which can be started up in parallel. By parellizing the ones that can be run simultaneously, it shortens boot times substantially over the old sequential approach. The first version of OS X that used it was noticably speedier during boots than previous versions.
Is Edgy Eft going to use launchd?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... after a certain number of writes, how exactly is this supposed to help produce better drives? A more likely outcome is that it would produce drives with an even more firmly guaranteed obsolescence: the Flash RAM will begin flipping out long before the platters do. I have HDDs that are well over a decade old and still working perfectly, yet a buddy has a 256MB thumb drive that has already bit the dust because of media failure.
Yeah, I'm really itchin' to buy a drive that will fail sooner rather than later.