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Sandisk Debuts World's Smallest SSD Yet
siliconbits writes "Weighing less than a paper clip and smaller than a postage stamp, Sandisk's iSSD comes in a tiny Ball Grid Array and boasts support for the SATA standard, which means that it can be soldered directly on motherboards."
SSD being soldered directly to a motherboard? I'm a bit torn about that idea...
Living With a Nerd
To think that several years ago, a 64GB SSD was the size of a laptop hard drive and ridiculously expensive. Just awesome.
I don't think that the SATA spec mandates a BGA interface be provided on motherboards. You couldn't really solder this directly on there any more than you could directly solder a USB device on a mobo that had no headers. You'd have to precision-solder onto the tracks on the board. I think what's meant is that this component can be integrated onto existing motherboard designs without adding a new interface. It can use the existing SATA controller.
This opens the door to a mobo that not only has onboard graphics and sound, but onboard mass storage. That'd be pretty amazing in an "all my hard drives just ate themselves" scenario.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I wonder if anyone will build a mini-itx board with one of these on? IDE is on it's way out and while you can get SATA disk on moudules a largish lump hanging out of a flimsy sata port doesn't seem like a very robust soloution. A board with one of these on would mean all you would need to add is ram to make a fully functional embedded PC.
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I think that the two are actually positively correlated.
The whole article is just about 5 times longer than the very short summary. I didn't read it very attentively, but the following 2 quotes should be informative and reading them, I think you won't need to spend the 30 seconds it would take to read the full article:
"160MB/sec sequential read and 100MB/sec sequential write speeds being quoted."
"will target the "fast-growing" mobile computing platforms such as tablet PCs and ultra-thin notebooks (and netbooks we presume); as expected, they won't be available to consumers directly but as an integral part of devices."
Cheaper and higher capacity I'd say. I don't care if they've got some weight/size. 2.5" form factor for notebooks and very small pc's and 3.5" form factor for normal sized desktops is absolutely fine. My computer sits under my desk anyways.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
What is it with everyone and their demands from hard drive makers?
Don't make them smaller (in physical size) make them more affordable!
Don't make them bigger (in memory) make them faster!
Don't make them hold more, make them more reliable!
Did it ever occur to you guys that maybe, just maybe, SSD manufacturers only know how to do ONE thing?
Did it ever occur to you that drive manufacturers and researchers work on all of those things, but don't magically make breakthroughs in a given area simply because a bunch of jackasses on slashdot want them to? I mean, over the past 5 years, SSDs have gotten smaller, cheaper, bigger, faster and more reliable. This story just happened to be about a development in one of those areas.
yea take your money for a oversized sd card
In the end their purpose is to sell the product. That's why listening to consumers matters.
The only way I'm buying SSDs is if they become dramatically more affordable ($/GB). And I tend to think most people would agree. I'm not exactly asking for free stuff here, just helping those guys understand what matters. And I couldn't care less about a postage stamp SSD. I don't need that kind of speed at that price in my phone or my fridge. I want a fast disk for my workstation/server. And unless I have $1M to spend on a RAID array of 1024 SSDs the size of a postage stamp, I'm not going to mind if they're 3"1/2.
No, it really DID mean "boost": http://www.sandberg.it/support/product.aspx?id=130-26
Possible Applications of 64 GB integrated into the motherboard.
And that's right off the top of my head.
About the guy carrying a Sandisk SSD and postal stamp in his pocket who goes down the post office to mail a letter and then sticks the stamp in his smartphone.
Oh yeah?? Well my SSD is smaller than a pinhead, weighs less than a flea, and can hold 1.21 jigabytes!
Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
How is this much different from a MicroSD?
--Smaller than stamp? Very much so, Check!
--4gb to 64gb? Check!
--100MB/sec read and 160MB/sec write? Hmm... well not by itself, but if you Raid 0 a few MicroSDs it'd probably reach those speeds, and we're hoping the article is correct with the MB term meaning Megabyte and not Megabit because MicroSD's also offer 100 Mbit/s
So while this is announcement is nice, I still feel like they took the same thing we've been using for the past few years, put it in a new box and labeled it as a totally new product.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Hell with mini-itx, I don't know why more manufacturers don't pump out nano-itx gear. NVidia already showed us it could be done years ago, but no manufacturer has really stepped up to the plate:
http://www.google.com/images?q=nvidia ion reference platform
Sure there's the fit-PC2, which is cute... but still suffers from the crappy PowerVR video with limited driver support.
Haven't you heard, "Thin is in" , people will pay more money to get the same product, just thinner and smaller. Example, Ps3, xbox, etc.
Almost a Daft punk song there "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".
Make SSD manufacturers more efficient! Do all three at same time!
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
I want a fast disk for my workstation/server.
In a desktop you can put in a SSD as your OS drive (which is where most random access takes place afaict) and keep a spinner for your data. Doing this is already reasonablly affordable.
However if you want a laptop with a SSD at the moment you have to either choose a SSD that can store everything you want on the laptop (which if you store a lot on your laptop means $$$), go for a monster size machine or sacrifice the optical drive (and pick your laptop from the very limited choice of machines that support replacing the optical drive with a hard drive).
With this a laptop vendor can put the SSD on the motherboard while having negligable impact on the rest of the machine.
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Why would they bait their breath? I await your reply with bated breath.
which is totally what she said
I chose SSD for my "thing" in 20 questions all the time, now Sandisk has ruined it!
It's a thing.
Q1: Is it smaller than a breadbox?
Yes
Q2: Is it around the size of a postage stamp?
yes
Q3: does it weigh less than a paperclip?
yes
Is it a SSD?
Yes! Damn you Sandisk! You'll rue the day!
Exactly. It would be pretty hard to make something that sells for less by ultimately putting more of [xyz] material in it... Making them smaller pretty directly leads to same-size price reduction. GP needs a -1, Whining mod created just for him.
Yes, something sure does seem fishy around here....
I really want to know how is this much different than a postage stamp?
It will be cheaper to build in most cases.
Normal SSD: SSD controller chip, cache RAM chip, PCB, flash chips, SATA interface, etc.
iSSD: Integrated chip (probably a sandwich chip - the controller, then RAM, then up to 8 (or 16) flash dies.
But new technology commands a premium. It will be interesting to see how these are used initially. The fast read/writes compared to normal flash storage in low-end systems could be a real boost on tablets.
Well, if you use the soldered-in flash as the OS drive, you shouldn't need to worry about lost data? Maybe?
Also, although I don't agree with what I'm saying here, there is a target device here that many people will consider disposable. Specifically, if the motherboard dies, remove your micro-SD card and buy a new cheap tablet for lost than the cost of repair.
Except that you and I will use our toaster oven to reflow the SSD and/or remove it, perhaps.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Actually you do care.
Getting 64G on a postage stamp means you get 650G(or more) in your half size HD.
I suspect you wouldn't buy 64G SSD the size of a normal HD.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You only complain, you didn't buy anything, you are not yet a customer.
This new SSD seems quite nice. What you have to realize is that you are not in the intended customer group and your opinion does not matter at all. This chip is intended for useage in embedded PC's, netbooks and possibly laptops. You might be a customer for the end product but since you haven't bought a SSD yet... well.. they tend to market stuff to people who actually buy things, they sort of make more money that way.
Sinced it uses a standard SATA interface it will be possible for laptop manufacturers to just place one of those chips next to the SATA controller. It's very little design work and the SATA controller probably already has a spare port. The end result is that your laptop gets an internal SSD while still leaving the standard HDD port for whatever you like to place there.
If they want to slim down the laptop they can just drop the 2.5" format and only support the internal chip.
Actually, they do. No through magic, but because they are cunning businessmen who have had the divinely inspired realization that if they direct their research towards producing what their customers - such as the jackasses on Slashdot - want, they might make more sales. Yes, I know, I didn't believe it either at first, but it really works!
I guess that's why they're manufacturers and you're an Anonymous Coward. And congrats to whoever modded you Insightful, too.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
They basically took a MicroSD card and made it SATA compatible. Now stop farting around and put 10 of these in parallel (RAID0) for combinations of blistering speeds and decent sizes. Until then, I’ll stick to my MicroSD cards. At least I wont have to replace an entire mobo if my micro takes a crap.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
I got an 80 gig SSD for my laptop which is enough for the OS and applications (as long as you don't go too crazy with AAA games). I put the old 500 gig spinning drive into my desktop and made it a network share for data. Got enough fast storage for the things I do and plenty of slow storage over the network. When it comes to putting an SSD into a desktop, I really have to question if its worth it. A couple of 7200 RPM raided will provide nearly the nearly same performance for a much lower cost. The advantages on a laptop are speed without a RAID, better battery life, better reliability when being moved around, and less noise; for the most part those things don't matter with a desktop.
When they boast about being SATA compliant, I don't think the point is that it could be used in {lap|desk}top motherboards, but more as a point of interest for embedded system designers who want onboard storage. Think of it rephrased as "hey, our chip uses that standard interface that your embedded ARM-based processor uses."
Mon chien, il n'a pas du nez. Comment scent-il? TrÃs mauvais!
It has a mass of roughly 7.37346606 x 10^(-31) Jupiters.
It is a square with sides of length 2.31481482 x 10^(-4) football fields.
It has a storage capacity of 6.25 x 10^(-3) Libraries of Congress.
I bought a Dell laptop for $700 that included a business warranty. I sent two tickets complaining about a screen defect, provided a picture, and the next day a technician was sent to my location and swapped out the part in less than an hour.
If you don't want to spend the extra $100 on the business warranty, it might take a couple days to get a replacement part. But you can buy a machine with with a three year accidental replacement on-site warranty for far less than you can get a similarly specced Apple product with AppleCare. Even if you pay $350 for the AppleCare for your MacBook Pro, they don't send on-site technicians. You still have to go make a reservation at an Apple Store, talk to a purple haircut who revels in informing you that you'll have to send your $2500 laptop off for repair, and maybe it will be back in a few weeks.
Your best bet is to go to an independent Apple Repair Center. At least they give a shit, and get the part overnighted and your laptop operable within 24 hours.
You'd think that paying $1,200 for a Core 2 Duo laptop would get you some actual customer service. But you'd be wrong.
You are not the target market. People who need raw IOPS are the ones who are buying these things, and their budgets are *WAY* bigger than yours. Stick to spinning media if $/GB is what matters to you.
This is going to be great when it gets integrated into mobile phones. My Moto Droid only has 512MB of for the OS and apps. Recently I have been getting low storage space warnings because of the number of apps I have installed.
With electronics, smaller = cheaper.
It was recently leaked that Intel has moved their NAND chips to a 25nm process instead of the much larger 45nm process, which is expected to cut price per GB in half.
The smaller they can make them, the more of them they can make at a time (they don't do these one-off you know). For example, if they have one square foot of space per run and each chip takes up one square inch, that means they can do 144 of them in a single run. If each chip takes up only 1/2 inch squared, they can make 288 in a single run.
The costs per run don't change much, if at all, and it significantly reduces the amount of expensive materials (like pure chip-quality silicon) per chip which leads to a halving of the cost per chip.
What you really pay for when you buy the "latest and greatest" is the engineering and design time, as well as any re-tooling. That's why prices drop so fast - as soon as the money is recovered they drop the price to expand the target market, and they can do that because the manufacturing costs are very low (and continue to drop with smaller chips).
That's why today you can buy a microcontroller that has the same power as the original 486dx processor, but smaller than your pinky-nail, for around $4. The 486 cost $1500 (adjusted for inflation) initially, and still costs around $100-$150 today because the chip itself is so much larger, and therefore more expensive to produce.
Smaller = cheaper.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Furthermore, smaller = faster, smaller = cheaper, and the smaller = denser (that is, more memory in the same package).
Making them smaller accomplishes all your goals, that's why they continue to make them smaller. Saying "don't make them smaller, make them cheaper instead" is like saying "don't add horsepower to my car, just make it go faster"*. Uhh...
Seriously people. The way you make electronics cheaper is by making them smaller. The more chips they can fit on a platter, the cheaper each chip is.
*This is obviously ignoring the minor speed improvements that can be had by reducing weight or removing parasitic losses like the flywheel and AC unit. Changing these invariably changes the purpose of the car (from a comfortable cruiser/street car to an uncomfortable racer) as well, which is assumed to be an undesirable compromise in the analogy.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
1.21 jigabytes, is it?
But... can it transfer data at 88 MBps?
I really want to know how is this much different than a postage stamp?
The postage stamp isn't dropping in price.
What is it with everyone and their demands from hard drive makers?
It's quite simple - until a product meets my criteria I'm not going to buy it.
I'd love an SSD, but at the current price/GB there's absolutely no way I can afford one, so when the subject is discussed I may well opine that they're too expensive (for me). That won't do anything to make them cheaper of course; sucks to be me.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Maybe someone thought him calling us jackasses was insightful. :)
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Thank you, Slashdot, for not noting the storage capacity of these tiny SSD's in the summary. I actually had to go RTFA to find out the information I wanted (4-64 GB).
Er, it was a clever ploy to make Slashdotters read the article, right? It wasn't just coincidence that you left out this important piece of information?
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Cue the Apple lawsuit...
I recently added a second hard drive to my 2007 MacBook Pro. Yes, it involved replacing the optical drive but the process was simple and cheap and went without a hitch. http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
At least on a Mac Pro, it's totally worth it. I've been running a three year old Mac Pro with a 7200 RPM drive as HD1, bought an SSD for my MacBook and fell in love with it, got another 128GB SSD for the tower and played with a couple of configurations. Using it as a dedicated scratch drive was an improvement over the spinning iron, but replacing HD1 (while keeping that as the scratch) really makes the thing fly. No stutter switching apps, PS just zips along even with 2GB files.
As long as reliability is reasonable, I'm totally hooked.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That's what popped into my head, anyway... but after reading the article, the sizes are only about what you'd find on a USB thumb drive these days, anyway. Although I'm guessing the potential for higher sizes is more on the iSSD side of things.
But it did make me think of something else that might be interesting: What if we saw a complete convergence of USB and SATA? Don't look at me like that, why not? Imagine, instead 2-6 9/1-pin USB connectors on your mobo and 4-8 SATA connectors... just 4-6 USATA connectors, you can connect whatever you want to them, internally or externally.
I'm no engineer, but it doesn't sound like it should be all that far fetched.
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Oh, I thought it was -1 inciteful. My bad.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Only when you're running Time Machine.
You know, you are allowed to have more than one drive in your system, and it's highly unlikely you need fast storage for everything.
A 64G SSD for the OS and active file and a 1.5T hard drive for long term storage makes for a very nice desktop system. Even with a laptop you can get by quite nicely with a small internal SSD and a large external drive for your multi-terabyte music and pr0n collection.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Replacing a laptop's optical drive with a 2nd disk (SSD or HD) is a no-brainer and cheap.
There are several companies like NewmodeUs which specialize in hard drive caddies to replace the optical bay... I'm running my MBP 13" with a Vertex2 (sandforce) SSD 60GB for boot/apps + OEM spinning disk for storage (easily upgradeable for now to 640GB, but I'm waiting for 1TB or df to report > 85% usage). Total outlay for the mod? Less than $200, with another $50 if I really needed a USB/FW DVD+RW external.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
A couple of 7200 RPM raided will provide nearly the nearly same performance for a much lower cost.
If you're talking big sequential transfers, sure. If you're talking random access, you're not even close.
I substituted an an Intel X-25M G2 80g SSD for a 10k RPM Raptor as my main OS drive. It cost me exactly $244.10 at the time and was easily the best performance/$ upgrade I've ever done.
Saying "don't make them smaller, make them cheaper instead" is like saying "don't add horsepower to my car, just make it go faster"*.
Sorry, bad car analogy, I'm currently thinking of building a ~120hp(at an entry level, at least) beast of a car. Not much power, but very, very much, faster than a *typical* car with similar power.
By which, I meant you don't have to add power, you can add lightness instead.
Work it.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Next time I get mod points, I hope they have a -10 Bitching About Moderation.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Exactly. It would be pretty hard to make something that sells for less by ultimately putting more of [xyz] material in it... Making them smaller pretty directly leads to same-size price reduction. GP needs a -1, Whining mod created just for him.
It's been a while, but I understood chip fabrication to be slightly different than traditional manufacturing (what you describe).
Lets say your current process allows you to make 10 chips per 'process'. Each process costs approximately X dollars. So each chip costs X/10. Now, you refine your process and now are able to make smaller chips, which allows you to make more per 'process' lets say 20. The chip capacity remains the same.
Now, each time you run the process it only costs you X/20 (The process may vary in cost from the original, but once designed and up and running it will probably be very similar in cost).
As a result, you now have the same capacity chip, smaller, and while it costs the same to make a 'batch' you get more per batch.
Thus you get your lower cost BECAUSE they made it smaller. (The price remaining the same or higher is just a way for them to make a little bit of profit and offset developing the new process and building the equipment to do the new process) Eventually the price will fall as either competitors make similar products or the early adopters become saturated.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I mean, the point of a hard drive is to have a filesystem on a peripheral bus.
But if you're going to be soldering things to the board, why not just put them on the memory bus and use a flash file system?
If you can do that, going through the SATA bus means you have to have a SATA bus you otherwise wouldn't need, and a couple of layers of data packaging and transfer. Slower, more complex, more stuff to implement. But you can use an OS that doesn't understand FFS (but really, is that likely?)
This thing only makes sense in two cases:
1. you don't have a memory bus (don't ask me, it's just a consideration)
2. SATA thumb drive (which I just noticed CeruleanDragon just posted above me.
Cheaper and higher capacity I'd say. I don't care if they've got some weight/size. 2.5" form factor for notebooks and very small pc's and 3.5" form factor for normal sized desktops is absolutely fine. My computer sits under my desk anyways.
And the computer I use the most during the day sits in my pocket.
Regardless of your primary system, Hard drives, even in the 2.5" form factor, use a lot of space compared to other components, especially now that the optical drives are being phased out. Along with that comes digital storage of the data that was traditionally stored on the optical drives. So what do we need more of? Storage space.
But as I explained above, smaller size of chips IS going to result in a cost reduction once production starts.
So we all win.
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This would be really nice for ZFS ZILs I think. You only need a ZIL twice the size of your RAM *at most*. Put a 2 of these on my motherboard for that please :). (Buying a whole SSD is way too expensive just for a ZIL : /)
If not, maybe Jobs & co. will sue Sandisk for using the lower case "i" as the first character of the name. What's all this self centered "i" stuff? What ever happened to "we"?
I don't need that kind of speed at that price in my phone or my fridge.
Well sure, I can see where most don't, but I'd like that. And it seems like breakthroughs like this often herald cost reductions across the line.
I'd like this one on a pico board for my drone project though. :)
What about a CardBus/ExpressCard (PCMCIA) SDD drive? using that you don't have to remove your CD/DVD
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Well my SSD is smaller than a pinhead
That's funny. I heard your dick is the same size, too.
So you didn't get the whole "SSD = "Super Small Dick"" thing?
well
Making them smaller uses less raw materials - which makes them cheaper
Making them larger can allow for them to be faster (using multi path writing instead of single to simulate a larger available path - write to 2 chips instead of 1 in the same amount of time can effectively double your overall speed)
Making them hold more (more raw space) does increase the reliability by giving more free sectors to be used in ware leveling operations to ensure sectors don't fail early, or if they do fail they have a spare to relocate to..
do One thing?? not so much as to make them better - each step they take is a step in the right direction - while you might not think it is the direction you want in reality it just may be the step that enables what you are wanting..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Does anyone actually make decent expresscard SSDs?
Just to clarify by decent I mean something that meets the following critera
1: Uses the PCIe part of the expresscard port, not the USB part.
2: Has sequential read and write performance comparable to or better than a hard drive and random read/write performance much better than a hard drive?
3: Preferablly is bootable though i'm not sure how laptop bioses would handle booting from an expresscard.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
In the end their purpose is to sell the product. That's why listening to consumers matters.
Customers want a lot of things. Many of them are the kind I'd categorize as "won't happen", and if you fast forward 10 years still no one has done it because it's just not feasible or economical or meaningful as it can't work by magic like the customers expect. I've worked more than enough with trying to find inputs and processes to deliver outputs to know there's plenty handwaving going on there.
I'd take the flying car as a good example. Even though probably many wanted one, reality just didn't let it happen. You'd be much better off trying to make your current car better on the road than trying to make it fly. In this case I think it will happen eventually, but it may be just as easy to pour through the breach in the high IOPS markets where they are already king of the hill and trickle down as it is to start another uphill battle.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I understand what you mean, but what you manipulate is not in your pocket, even though your digits are...
3. You manufacture a smartphone or smartbook/netbook and want something that is faster than current SD/eMMC solutions and about as cheap.
Flash filesystems are a real pain. The open source ones have some pretty severe limitations (yaffs2), and the commercial ones are expensive and annoying to license (you get locked into them and can't get away). Also, SD/MMC sucks at doing fast reads, while the interface could push 50MB/s most implementations of the interface (not the flash, just the bus itself) can't eek out more than 30MB/s. And managing the flashfile system on the CPU makes doing DMAs almost pointless since you end up using short chunks of data to fit it into NAND's weird topology. The market has shown that device makers really prefer having a smart flash with a small processor to deal with the FTL(flash translation layer, the bit that makes NAND topology into linear logical blocks), this is what SD/MMC/eMMC are (over a medium-speed serial bus).
Processor + MLC NAND flash + a fast bus(SATA for example) is really a winning combination for single-chip flash devices and package-on-package (stacked) devices. Which right now means it is limited to 64GB, but that's hardly a serious limitation. A lot of people are thrilled to have 64GB SSD in their laptops.
If this product is picked up in the big way that I believe it will be, then 96GB-256GB devices would be possible in a stacked configuration.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
New manufacturing equipment of some sort must still be purchased. So if the tool costs Y, then you have to sell Z number of cost X/20 chips to pay for the tool. After that, you get to make a profit. You can conceal and amortize the costs through whatever accounting tricks strike your fancy, but the cash flow and mid-term profit concerns will weigh heavy. This is usually the largest factor for long-term reduced prices.
You're full of shit - they were Googlers.
which is totally what she said
Years ago, there were discussions on putting an OS on a chip to improve boot and operating times. Given the number of patches that come out, that wasn't feasible for mainstream use. These days SSD's are a kind of happy medium in that they offer some performance gain in the right situations, but can easily be updated without the OS needing to be specifically written for them.
So this chip would be really cool for that. It'd also be cool for mini itx stuff.
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
Frak SMD soldering directly (though nice)..
I wanna see the silicon of this licensed as a layer or whatever inside of an existing SoC, such as a beefy Samsung ARM Coretex based chip. Rad.
We could make such beautiful SoCs now.
(*gets disturbingly over-excited*)
Does anyone actually make decent expresscard SSDs?
As it's been quite a while since I looked, your post inspired me to see if the landscape had improved at all.
It seems this one is ok, once you manage to find one that actually works.
It is OK? The card uses the USB2.0 connection (and not PCIe), so it's limited to 480Mb/s. I'd hardly call that OK :)
It is OK? The card uses the USB2.0 connection (and not PCIe), so it's limited to 480Mb/s. I'd hardly call that OK :)
No, it uses the PCIe interface. This isn't explicitly in the Newegg specs page, though it is noted by several of the comments. I think if you look up the same (or similar) devices on Amazon, they explicitly mention it's PCIe.
However if you want a laptop with a SSD at the moment you have to either choose a SSD that can store everything you want on the laptop (which if you store a lot on your laptop means $$$), go for a monster size machine or sacrifice the optical drive (and pick your laptop from the very limited choice of machines that support replacing the optical drive with a hard drive).
Yes, it's a trade-off.
But it's worth it. As soon as SSDs get close to $1/GB, I'll be going that route for my Thinkpad. Run off a 256GB SSD for the main drive, then stuff a magnetic in the optical bay for auxiliary storage. It'll be like a brand new machine in feel, even though it's already 3 years old.
(I've used other laptops where we refitted magnetic with SSDs... it's amazing.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Did it ever occur to you guys that maybe, just maybe, SSD manufacturers only know how to do ONE thing?
Well, yes. But we don't talk about that in polite company.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The slashdot community has been called many things, but "polite" isn't one of them ;-)
Don't you wish you hadn't wasted 3 seconds of your life reading this sig?
For example, if they have one square foot of space per run and each chip takes up one square inch, that means they can do 144 of them in a single run. If each chip takes up only 1/2 inch squared, they can make 288 in a single run.
I think you'll find that's 576 in a single run if you halved both width and height ;-)
Don't you wish you hadn't wasted 3 seconds of your life reading this sig?
I use a Sprint Aircard so that's out.