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Intel Intros 310 Series Mini SSDs
crookedvulture writes "Intel has added a couple of tiny 310 Series solid-state drives to its storage lineup. Measuring just 51 x 30 x 5.8mm, the mini-SATA SSDs are about a tenth the size of a standard notebook hard drive. Impressively, their performance ratings track with full-sized SSDs. Intel is pushing the 310 Series as a solution for dual-drive notebooks that combine solid-state and mechanical storage to give users the best of both worlds. Next-gen notebooks just got a little more interesting."
I was excited as these appear to be Mini PCIe cards, but then I was disappoint as it looks like it's a SATA connector that shares the form factor. It's not entirely clear, though.
Why is it impressive that a smaller solid state drive performs as well as a standard size one? What does the size have to do with anything relating to these performance benchmarks?
Perhaps you don't know that Windows (Vista confirmed, 7 should too) can map a seperate drive to a folder instead of a drive letter, if you tell it to. It is rather easy to do. You can even setup multiple paths for a single drive if you want.
It goes back at least as far as XP, probably 2000 if you don't need the Fisher-Price skin...
Now, just to get back to the bigotry and one-upsmanship, any setup that forces the user to think about how best to allocate filesystem stuff between block devices, or forces them to commit to one inflexible configuration, is arguably underutilizing the capabilities of this sort of technology.
Machines are, unless the human really wants to, supposed to handle the grunt work(not to mention, keeping accurate track of file accesses, speed and latency of multiple devices, etc. properly is really beyond the capabilities of a human, at least in realtime).
What you really want is an FS arrangement that can seamlessly present you with a single logical volume, silently handling the details of what to commit to flash and what to platter, for optimal performance and responsiveness without the cost of going all Flash.
If mounted upright, these guys would be just a little too tall for a 1U; but a 2U could fit several hundred... With the economies of scale enjoyed by something designed to be shoved into consumer laptops, a shelf or two of these little puppies could, with the right controller, make fibre channel stuff that costs a factor of ten or two as much wet itself...
Sorry to repost this, but I accidentally posted it as AC, and nobody is going to see it at -1.
I can't believe it either ... but there is a whole industry dedicated to dealing with windows. But it's the way our world works, sadly.
We create artificial scarcity, force people to use an inferior and limited technology, that has ridiculous drawbacks, and requires a tremendous workforce around it just to keep it functional. And we keep people using it even when there are cheaper, infinitely better, more reliable and future-proof technologies. The reason is simple: Through artificial scarcity, we keep the money flowing in a certain direction, we keep control in the same hands, and we create hugely profitable but completely pointless industries.
Think about it, we could be running 100% on clean, future-proof, secure and cheap nuclear energy. Instead, we rely on oil. The infrastructure that oil demands is huge, the drawbacks are incredible, we are polluting the environment, drilling the oceans to get some more black juice out of the earth at a huge risk.
We could also have moved all of our communications to ip-based networks, cutting down costs, and removing the need for so many different networks. We could have a single infrastructure that would provide us with high-bandwidth, low-latency internet everywhere, and put everything from phone calls to TV through that network. Instead, we are running different networks for each purpose, and within each purpose different networks for each provider. If we re-purposed all cellphone towers from all providers to give us just internet access, we could have 100% coverage everywhere in the world. Instead, we have huge overlapping (areas serviced by several providers), and huge areas with no coverage at all.
We could also be using just Free Software. It's open, transparent, reliable, cheap, and ethical. Instead, most people use windows. That means triplicating new hardware purchases, cutting 70% on hardware's lifespan, spending incredible resources in pointless activities like antivirus production/sale/deployment, and an IT structure several times bigger than required, not to mention all the lost time and profit due to preventable downtime.
But it's the way the economy works. It's the way the usual people keep getting richer, while keeping the majority of the world in line, quite and productive.
It's absolutely sad, but it's not just something that happens only in software, and it's certainly no accident.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I wonder how much that primitive joke of an "operating system" will derail the widespread adoption of these hybrid technologies.
The primitive joke of an operating system that introduced USB-flash based application acceleration (no such similar feature for any free operating system, and supported SSD TRIM commands before any other operating system? (OS X still doesn't and there are no announced plans to; Linux 2.6.32+, I believe, does only on a kernel level, but support amongst various filesystems seems inconsistent or not present; it's hard to tell. hdparm supports manually running TRIM using areas reported by the filesystem as free, but that's hardly equivalent to Windows, which "just works".)
Please help metamoderate.
Directory linking goes back to Windows 2000 but mapping c:\Users to it is a bit more difficult as the currently logged in users profile is always in use thus locking the folder.
There are quite a few ways to deal with this issue:
There are also tools from Microsoft designed to automate installs that will allow the mapping to be set at install time.