News Solid-state disk capacities set to soar

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/12..._set_to_soar/1

American memory manufacturer, STEC, has launched a massive 512GB SSD drive after it developed a novel new memory controller.

[Almightyrastus]

Any word on expected lifetime for these drives?

[Woodstock]

i wouldnt say no to something close to 80gb

[p3n]

mmm solid state passive cooled PC, just need to remove sound from CD/DVDs now

btw ed needs to learn vb tags

[airchie]

Originally Posted by Almightyrastus

Any word on expected lifetime for these drives?

MTBF is quoted at 2,800,000 hours.

Just as well I can't find a stockist of the Samsung 64GB SSD.

All I need now is a stockist of one of these solutions so I can buy one.

[cjoyce1980]

just let me know when these bad boys are going to hit the shops bit-tech

[TreeDude]

SSDs already exceed normal drives in their life span. Current SSDs have a MTBF of 1,000,000hrs.

As soon as high capacities get cheaper we are going so see nothing but speed increases, since they are not mechanically limited like HDs. I get the feeling as soon as I go to buy one they will release a new one that is the same price but 30% faster or something. It will be interesting to see how fast they progress once they are selling well.

As soon as I can get a 32gb with 100+MB read for less that $100 I'm gonna jump on it.

[yakyb]

i would a 32gb drive to throw my games on as read speeds far exceed traditional drives load time should be drastically reduced


any chance of one of these before february?

[Silver51]

I'd love to replace all drives in my machine with SSDs, just to remove hdd oscillation noise. The problem with current SSDs is their price, they're stupidly expensive at the moment.

[[USRF]Obiwan]

As long as: 500Gb-HD $ < 500Gb-SSD $

It is not going to be attractive to consumers.

But it is another story when: 500GB-HD $ <= 500Gb-SSD $

On the other hand a SSD is way better then anything a hd is made off:
No moving parts
Less heat
No magnetic influences
No wear
Less parts
Less power consumption
Larger live-span estimate
Cheaper in production
Environment friendlier then HD's
Less raw resources needed
Faster access times
Less space needed
Space to grow in memory/storage sizes
Space to read faster to/from memory

It really is a win/win situation. All it needs is to get into the consumer market and cheaper.

[Redbeaver]

Originally Posted by [USRF

Obiwan]As long as: 500Gb-HD $ < 500Gb-SSD $

It is not going to be attractive to consumers.

uh i dont think so....

if SSD price drops even to a 2:1 ratio (2x HD = 1x SSD), these puppies will sell like hotcakes.

current price for 320Gb = ~$100.

would u pay $100 for a 160Gb SSD drive??

i would.

how about $150 for a 250Gb SSD drive?

oh please....

[Cupboard]

I suppose there is a bit of cost saving with SSDs because you don't need any redundancy. SSDs fail bit-by-bit, rather that the whole thing at once don't they? The fact that you could get away without "wasted" hard drive and expensive controllers could convince some people to swap.

[<A88>]

I've been thinking about building a blisteringly fast yet quiet SFF PC recently and was going to stick a laptop drive in it until SSDs become cheap enough to make them a viable option. Seems I won't be waiting as long as I thought now .

<A88>

[crazybob]

I'm with Redbeaver on this one. I'd pay double the cost/GB if it would get me all the benefits of flash storage. I'd even pay 3x to replace my system drive, but at that price I'd probably hang on to magnetic storage for my data drive.

[Delphium]

512GB SSD, YES PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

Would love to swap my current RAID array out with a bunch of these drives, be sooo much quieter, less heat, more speed, MOAR WIN

Its the hard drives in my pc that make the only noise now, with the rest being watercooled, i would love to remove the heat and noise form the pc, by swapping out the drives for these SSD's.

[crazybob]

Originally Posted by The Article

the performance isn't quite on a par with the latest traditional drives, with a claimed 90MB/s read and 60MB/s write

Actually, that's rather faster than the majority of drives out there. Most modern magnetic drives can outperform this at the outer edge of the disk, but speeds fall dramatically as the disk fills - my current system drive, a 40GB, has an inner-edge write speed of under 40MB/s. The flash drive will have the same speed no matter how full it is. Additionally, the reduced latency of flash will make them feel faster for most people's uses. The latency also makes fragmentation irrelevant.

Personally, I'll feel a lot better when the only mechanical devices in my computer are the cooling fans. Now we just have to figure out how to get software distributed on flash so I can get rid of my optical drives - optical has all the drawbacks of magnetic, plus a few more issues. I wish we could use CompactFlash cards today like we used floppy drives 5-10 years ago.

EDIT: Does anyone else find it strange that while the fastest drive on the manufacturer's page is the 3.5", the highest-capacity drive is the smaller 2.5?" I suppose that's not all bad - I'd be just fine with the smaller form factor, if most desktop cases could provide mounting.

[specofdust]

It's claimed speeds though crazybob, real speeds tend to be so much lower than claimed speeds, that chances are real hard disks are still faster.

[The_Beast]

512GB SSD; How much??? $20,000???

[airchie]

Originally Posted by specofdust

It's claimed speeds though crazybob, real speeds tend to be so much lower than claimed speeds, that chances are real hard disks are still faster.

While I agree claimed speeds are often a little optimistic, they're usually not wildly inaccurate.
I think current 3.5" HDDs still don't beat 100MB/s in sustained sequention transfers.
That's at their best and as bob mentions, their inner edges are much slower.
I think a suitable average would be around the 80MB/s mark.

Now Samsung's latest SDD (which I'm currently looking for a stockist of ) claims 100MB/s reads and 80MB/s write IIRC.
Even if they were wildly optomistic that's probably still gonna be at least 80MB/s read and 60MB/s write.
Now combine that with the fact that's the speed you get across the whole capacity of the drive, seek times of less than 1ms (meaning you don't have to worry about fragmentation nearly as much), very little heat, no noise, comparitively little power draw, no spin-up times and you can start to see why most of us are excited.

Just a shame about the cost but it looks like that'll be tumbling soon too.

Start bringing raid into the mix and we're gonna see great leaps forward in the storage area soon.
And about time too!

[Hwulex]

Originally Posted by [USRF]Obiwan

On the other hand a SSD is way better then anything a hd is made off:

Don't forget no fragmentation. Shweeet.