How far off are Flash Based Hard Drives?

[TheGreatSatan]

How far off are Flash Based Hard Drives? It's pretty obvious that there's a bottleneck in system performance when the hard drive is being utilized. Since the hard drive spins slow by processor terms, it takes several seconds to retrieve data. It seems as the obvious choice to use Flash based NAND tech for HD's. The slow use use platters and actuators will be gone and PC's should see an obvious rise in speed, but how far off is that? I heard that there was a drive in the works that would store your OS boot in flash and make your boot time a couple seconds, but I haven't heard anything else about this in a while. Any one know?

[Omega]

Go to newegg.

And laptops have SSD's too.

[DaJe]

Yeah, they already exist, and have for a while.

[Airbozo]

One of the mobo manufacturer's (ASUS I think) has been touting a flash based storage built into the mobo, just for loading the OS. I will try to find the link, but I is swamped...

But yeah the ssd's have been around for a while and I recently configured a system for a custy with 2 16gb ssd's

[Omega]

oh god

a mobo with built in 8gb SSD for OS matters

that would OWN. HARD.

[Zephik]

I love whoever invented Solid State Hard Drives, no more moving parts! Yay! Most normal Hard Drives I've used in the past end up breaking sooner than later, mostly due to that I move my PC around a lot and I'm accident prone.

How does the performance of Solid State match up to normal hard drives? Anyone know? Not that I care too much, I'm sure with the available technology of today, it can't be comparable to dial up. At least I hope to bob not, that would be very disappointing if they are selling them so early in their design/testing/performance stage. Especially with the available technology that we have now.

Now if only they were cheaper. Its only a matter of time I suppose, but dangit, I'm an impatient person when it comes to new and desirable technology! lol

Ugh, just look at these prices! (http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Solid-State-Disks) :(

I think your question, TGS, should of been more on the lines of "How far off are we from having practically priced Flash Based Hard Drives?" or something or another.

[Omega]

SSD's on ATA33 are faster than HDD's on SATA3.0

That should answer your question. ;)

[DaJe]

Yay for Asus. I loved my pimped out P5W DH Deluxe.

[Zephik]

SSD's on ATA33 are faster than HDD's on SATA3.0

That should answer your question. ;)

Awesome! Now if only we can work on that four thousand dollar price range...

With that much money, I could buy the worlds sweetest, non-corporate, raid system with anti-everything and put it all inside a thick black brushed aluminum box that has been especially designed for maximum heat dissipation and that also has a built in spring system for each hard drive, so it will survive even an earthquake.

Then again, technology gets cheaper every other month. So it'll probably be in the lower class enthusiast range by the summer of 2008. Then most likely affordable by people like us by winter of 2008 and then just affordable by 2009. Maybe even sooner if they throw money towards the solid state hard drive development teams.

[jdbnsn]

Is this the same idea as a RAM-bus? I guy I used to chat with built a comp with the latest and greatest hardware, plus added a RAM-bus for the first time in one of his systems. He said the load times were insanely boosted (like 8 seconds from power to windows desktop). He had a big one though, I think it was like 8 or 16 1GB sticks of RAM.

[TheGreatSatan]

The onboard RAM.....Is that around already or only in the form of I-RAM? I didn't know that SSD was Flash based. So there's no platters?

[DaJe]

What I do know is that you can get a PCI board that you install RAM into and use it as flash memory.

[jdbnsn]

What I do know is that you can get a PCI board that you install RAM into and use it as flash memory.

That's what my friend had.

[Ap1thy]

ive been folowing those ssd's as well, but id rather get a raptor for more than half off an 16 gig ssd

[Omega]

ive been folowing those ssd's as well, but id rather get a raptor for more than half off an 16 gig ssd

That's what a lot of people would do.

As far as I know, however, SSD's still faster.

and, honestly

I want 8 128gb SSD drives for ONE TERABYTE OF BLAZINGLY FAST STORAGE. =D

[nil8]

Just a little side note for those truly interested in ssd technology.
Watch thin clients. They've been using flash drives for years, and the more advanced their little OS gets the more space it requires.
Such as an XP or Vista embed.

[Luke122]

That's what my friend had.

That's what she said.

;)

Also, the thin clients I've used were totally diskless, just had 512mb ram in them. I've even built a few using p3 mobo's with 512mb ram. Set to PXE boot, and pull the image from the server.

[Quakken]

I flipping love the idea of a manufacturer putting flash on their mobo's. It could be totally integrated and have amazing fast OS operation. that would be so so so cool. They could get rid of SATA altogether for the OS, and reserve it for storage drives. Awesome.

And it's going to just get cheaper and cheaper as better technologies come along. Fully solid state will happen soon. Then, with heatspreaders and only using usb drives for CD-like applications, you could have a completely silent system. How awesome is that going to be?

[J-Roc]

SSD's on ATA33 are faster than HDD's on SATA3.0

That should answer your question. ;)

Umm, is that true? Now im no expert but, how on earth could a 33MB/s bus even with the SSD drive compare in speed terms to the 3GB/s SATA2 with the fastest plater based drive? You might obviously get a quicker reply from the device but wouldn't it be bottle necked by the bus so much as to cancel any performance gain?

[Airbozo]

I love whoever invented Solid State Hard Drives, no more moving parts! Yay! Most normal Hard Drives I've used in the past end up breaking sooner than later, mostly due to that I move my PC around a lot and I'm accident prone.

I was working with an SSD unit with a total of 8 gb of space in a double wide server rack (7' tall ~48" wide), back in '85 built by Storage Tek. Total cost for an 8gb SSD rack? ~$750,000! Not to mention the power it sucked and the heat it generated. It had a failure almost weekly and never caught on.

How does the performance of Solid State match up to normal hard drives? Anyone know? Not that I care too much, I'm sure with the available technology of today, it can't be comparable to dial up. At least I hope to bob not, that would be very disappointing if they are selling them so early in their design/testing/performance stage. Especially with the available technology that we have now.

Interestingly (or not) enough the performance of the ssd'd are bottlenecked by the controller.

Now if only they were cheaper. Its only a matter of time I suppose, but dangit, I'm an impatient person when it comes to new and desirable technology! lol

Ugh, just look at these prices! (http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Solid-State-Disks) :(

I think your question, TGS, should of been more on the lines of "How far off are we from having practically priced Flash Based Hard Drives?" or something or another.

As they gain acceptance the cost will drop.

[Omega]

Umm, is that true? Now im no expert but, how on earth could a 33MB/s bus even with the SSD drive compare in speed terms to the 3GB/s SATA2 with the fastest plater based drive? You might obviously get a quicker reply from the device but wouldn't it be bottle necked by the bus so much as to cancel any performance gain?

Assuming top speeds on both drives:

The SSD would need ATA166 (I am guessing).

But here's the thing, platter based drives are slow as hell. You would get better real world performance from a SSD on ATA33. (However I don't suggest running it this low).

Also, the bottleneck on the SSD would be bus-side, whereas the bottleneck on the HDD is drive-side...

If you're really concerned, get a SATA SSD. Problem solved.

[Airbozo]

Umm, is that true? Now im no expert but, how on earth could a 33MB/s bus even with the SSD drive compare in speed terms to the 3GB/s SATA2 with the fastest plater based drive? You might obviously get a quicker reply from the device but wouldn't it be bottle necked by the bus so much as to cancel any performance gain?

It is true. And your assumption about the bus bottlenecking the drive is also true. One of those ssd'd will flood a 3gb sata controller. I have yet to see a sata drive actually do a 3gb/sec burst. I am testing some 1TB sata drives for performance now and only see about1.7gb sustained and 2.4gb burst. It may be my test (and I think it may be), so I have asked one of my friends to help me set IOmeter up correctly.

The ssd's are fast for many reasons. The main one is the transfer rate of the memory. Another reason is the (almost) elimination of seek times. It is still there, but a lookup into memory is sooo much faster than waiting for the head to move to the correct location on the platter. One way to verify this is to create a ram disk using memory and then time the transfer of files into and out of the ram disk, then do the same on any HD. Make sure to use several different sized files from a small 16kb to at least a 1gb file for an accurate measure of transfer time. You can use a program called IOmeter (free) to test this theory and it will also measure seek times.

[killergamer]

I found this

Its part of an artical
Here (http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20071108/tc_pcworld/139422;_ylt=AlvFWgVTOxY0H26vlZYKTR4jtBAF)

Prices for hard drives may also drop as flash memory evolves, he said. Flash memory supplements hard drives on hybrid drives, but as flash makes inroads into the storage market it could drop hard drive prices, Chander said. "Flash is an added bonus to bring hard drive prices down," Chander said.

Solid-state drives (SSDs), purported by many to be future replacement of hard drives, currently cost between $7 and $10 per gigabyte, which makes them much more expensive compared to magnetic desktop disk drives, which cost $0.20 to $0.30 per gigabyte, Chander said. However, SSDs have longevity and storage issues, which should keep the demand for hard drives high for many years to come, Chander said.

"Data on SSDs will exist for 10 years at the most and data on hard drives will exist for 50 years or more on a hypothetical basis depending on how data is accessed and used," Chander said. But that could change in the future, he added.

[J-Roc]

I was googling around and found that most people (enthusiasts) buy thies SSD drives to use as a PageFile drive. Apparently this is the best way to justify spending so much on them.

I have a little off-chute question here. In my system i have SATA2 RAID-0 for performance, does this effectivly double my transfer rates?

Also, if the price drops on the SSD's, it might entice the powers that be to develop a new bus technology.

[Luke122]

I was googling around and found that most people (enthusiasts) buy thies SSD drives to use as a PageFile drive. Apparently this is the best way to justify spending so much on them.


Do SSD's have the same rewrite limitations that flash memory have? I know that CF cards can be used as HDD's, but if you turn on caching it'll die within minutes, due to the limited number of writes.

If the same limitation holds true, then a pagefile would kill an SSD in minutes. :eek:

[Luke122]

I have a little off-chute question here. In my system i have SATA2 RAID-0 for performance, does this effectivly double my transfer rates?


Due to overhead, I dont think it would double it, but there should be a performance gain from it.

That being said, here's an article (http://tweakers.net/reviews/515)I'm (coincidentally) reading about this right now!