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Samsung's 64-GB Solid-State Drive
Anonymous Howard writes "Just a couple of weeks ago Sandisk introduced a 32-GB solid-state drive. Now Samsung has one-upped them, unveiling a 64-GB solid-state drive. They are expecting to begin shipping in the second quarter of this year. Samsung says the device can read 64 MB/s, write 45 MB/s, and uses just 0.5 W when operating (0.1 W when idle). In comparison, an 80-GB 1.8-inch hard drive reads at 15 MB/s, writes at 7 MB/s, and consumes 1.5 W when either operating or idle. No pricing yet."
You don't need that speed for all your slews of videos and images, just put them ( and all data) on a regular disc, and use this for applications only. It'll last longer that way, anyways.
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Quality hard drives are fairly reliable. They can last 10 years or more and you can usually count on them to last their warranty period - 3-5 years - and then some.
They also have error detection/correction, bad-sector remapping, and "I'm about to die" notification.
At one time, solid-state devices were good for about a thousand writes for any given memory cell, a lot fewer than HDs.
Does anyone know the reliability for these new solid-state devices over wall time, hours in use/plugged in, number of read cycles, and number of write cycles under normal operating conditions, and how those compare with a modern 1.8, 2.5, or 3.5" drive?
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How can it be one-upping them A-DATA already annouced 128GB SSDs two months ago?
There should be no seek time, it's solid state. There is no read write head to move, and there is no platter to spin.
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What would you spend if you could be a 2.5" version that was interface compatible with your laptop sata connector that was say, 100gb with comparable power and performance?
Personally, to pull the SATA drive out of my laptop and replace it with a 100gb version of this that used so much less power and was so much faster would be a no-brainer even at something like 700 or 800 dollars (US). Battery life would be radically better, noise and heat would be much lower, performance better and general usability should be outstanding.
What are the downsides? How is the duty cycle on these things? Will they last as long or develop hotspots that can't store data as well?
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no, but your browser will need the latest Adobe plugins in order for your operating system to boot properly.
I read the articles. I didn't see anything about heat and noise output. Can anyone fill me in? I would guess it would be minimal and none, respectively.
Well, based on an energy consumption of 0.5W and an educated guess that they probably aren't emitting much light, I'd say that the heat output is 0.5W.
Duh.
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They specify 10 years for flash memory to hold it's data, but in practice (e.g. not at the highest temperature or most extreme operating voltage) it is significantly longer. I don't know to what extent the hard drives work around bad sectors, but they probably do it for both flash drives and the traditional magnetic type.
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Well... that doesn't necessarily mean it's as fast at random access as it is at consecutive access.
Normal computer RAM is also faster at consecutive reads than random reads.
Hm, based on the cheapest (without rebates) memory available at $8.50/GB, figure 20% markup between the manf and retailer, thats $6.8/GB.
e _digital_2gb.htm
$435 for memory
+10% for R&D
+10% for manf (including controller, parts, etc)
-10% for manf efficency when producing 64GB/run
COST $479
RETAIL:
+20% for geewhiz-newtoy-factor/supply shortages
+10% for retail
YOUR COST: $630
sources:
http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/secur
Another prediction: SSDs will offer such huge power and performance advantanges, they will sell like crazy and drop in price by a factor of 70% within 1 year from now.
... which leaves 0W for the noise.
Fortunately flash fails on writing not on reading so while you can't write to sectors that have failed you can still read them.
If comparing these to 2.5" drives instead of 1.8" drives the advantages aren't as drastic.
* 2.5" drives consume between 0.8W to 2.5W (ok, seeking eats a lot, but during sequential read or write, they consume similar amounts), almost no power consumption when they spin down.
* 2.5" drives give 53MB/sec read and write.
* 2.5" drives are very cheap and have triple the capacity.
The solid state drives are still at an advantage, but it's not quite as large as compared to 1.8" drives.
It's not about the MTBF (the wear with age), yes you can almost indefinitely read data from you flash drive, when compared to harddrives, because there's no mechanical wear.
/var and /tmp, most of the rest of the installation can be read-only), and that support special file systems designed for lower wear (JFFS and such), may fare better : for example there are some Linux distribution that are tested for running from flash, like Damn Small Linux.
BUT!
The flash cells have a limited number of write cycles, which is very small compared to hard drives. If you write too much data on the same sector, the sector get very quickly broken.
If you used a flash card for swap, it won't last long at all (because some sectors get constantly written over).
To limit those damages, flash controllers use "wear level". That means that the small RISC controller that interface between the flash cells and the computer interface (ATA/CF, SD, USB, etc.) dynamically remaps the sectors so the wear caused by write cycles is distributed over several different sector.
Let's say that an OS constatly writes data on the first couple of sectors. Instead of always writing on the first few cell, the controller remaps a different physical flash cell, to the logical disc sector seen by the OS.
This works as a charm for flash media storing files likes used in digital cameras and such.
But doesn't perform as well when used by an operating system.
Windows XP is specially bad at this.
Other OS - such as Linux or *BSD, that already have good support for running on slow read-only media (LiveCDs) for a long time, that don't need writing that much (except
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