S S D - Interesting Article

[klikster]

Interesting read from Seagate - Solid-State Disks Are Doomed

[dave_boo]

I think that Seagate's hybrid drives will definitely flourish up until something comes along to displace NAND. Either that or Intel's push for those wee (1,8" ?) drives will continue with capacity, and speed, going up. Manufacturers will utilise those mini-drives on the motherboard and still have space for the platter drives for mass storage.

[robblok]

Yesterday i installed an intel 120gb driver. I must say its super fast and i like it. Its a good upgrade and it is expensive but i make my money with my computer so its worth it for me.

[negreanu]

Seagate are only coming out with that as they only have a Very small market share of the SSD drive market and basically are worried.

Their Hybrid drives do not really offer a substantial performance boost and I will go as far as saying that their hybrid drives are doomed.

You can now get netbooks, Macbook air 11" for under US1000.00 equipped with SSD drives. Prices are dropping on a monthly basis for SSD drives.

100GB SSD drives from OCZ can be got for US180.00 now.

40GB SSD drives from OWC for under US$100.00.

Been using SSD drives in Macbook's, Mac Pro's and Imacs for 2 years now and would never ever go back to any other storage medium for boot drives.

HD's in large capacity agreed will be around for the next 5-10 years but only as a mass storage medium rather than a computers main drive.

[Crushdepth]

It was a pretty self-serving proclamation, I thought.

It's true that SSDs aren't cost effective for mass storage at the moment (and I'm not going to give up my NAS box!), but my next computer is definitely going to have the OS on an SSD.

[nikster]

Seagate are only coming out with that as they only have a Very small market share of the SSD drive market and basically are worried.

Their Hybrid drives do not really offer a substantial performance boost and I will go as far as saying that their hybrid drives are doomed.

You can now get netbooks, Macbook air 11" for under US1000.00 equipped with SSD drives. Prices are dropping on a monthly basis for SSD drives.

100GB SSD drives from OCZ can be got for US180.00 now.

40GB SSD drives from OWC for under US$100.00.

Been using SSD drives in Macbook's, Mac Pro's and Imacs for 2 years now and would never ever go back to any other storage medium for boot drives.

HD's in large capacity agreed will be around for the next 5-10 years but only as a mass storage medium rather than a computers main drive.

^ QFT

Exactly. Once you go SSD, there's no going back.

Ridiculous if Seagate touts their hybrid drives, of all things, as the solution, being as it is that their hybrid drives performance is very close to normal HD performance, and thereby totally missing out on the quantum leap that SSDs represent.

[dave_boo]

I got the Crucial 128GB RealSSD; the reponsiveness of the system, even on a SU7300 (1,3 GHZ) is awesome. However, dropping it into my media server was extremely disappointing; low 100 MB/s on the Jetway NC-64LF is not what I paid money for! Add in there's no new bios to upgrade to so I'm kinda boned...I wonder how many others are in the same predicament?

[robblok]

I got the Crucial 128GB RealSSD; the reponsiveness of the system, even on a SU7300 (1,3 GHZ) is awesome. However, dropping it into my media server was extremely disappointing; low 100 MB/s on the Jetway NC-64LF is not what I paid money for! Add in there's no new bios to upgrade to so I'm kinda boned...I wonder how many others are in the same predicament?

Dave out of curiosity what did you pay for it and where did you get it ?

[dave_boo]

I got the Crucial 128GB RealSSD; the reponsiveness of the system, even on a SU7300 (1,3 GHZ) is awesome. However, dropping it into my media server was extremely disappointing; low 100 MB/s on the Jetway NC-64LF is not what I paid money for! Add in there's no new bios to upgrade to so I'm kinda boned...I wonder how many others are in the same predicament?

Dave out of curiosity what did you pay for it and where did you get it ?

No problem, I bought it 06 Sep 10 for 253,99 USD from Compuplus. Apparently it's now 264,59 USD but well worth it in my opinion. Assuming that you don't have SATA 6G than the Corsair Nova is nearly as fast and will save you 20 USD.

And if you haven't set up a Google shopping account yet do it; the store I linked to allows Thai bank cards linked to Google Checkout to purchase from them. Granted I get my stuff shipped APO but perhaps they also ship to LOS.

[cali]

HD's in large capacity agreed will be around for the next 5-10 years but only as a mass storage medium rather than a computers main drive.

Yawn. That is what some people proclaimed 5-10 years ago. And 5-10 years before that. And 5-10 years before that going back to the 1950's when SSD was invented. Spinning platters have steam rolled over SSD and its fan boys for the last 50 years. Haven't seen anyone raise a single technical rebuttal to the facts Seagate presented so it pretty much goes without saying their conclusion is correct that hard drives will rule for decades more.

[robblok]

HD's in large capacity agreed will be around for the next 5-10 years but only as a mass storage medium rather than a computers main drive.

Yawn. That is what some people proclaimed 5-10 years ago. And 5-10 years before that. And 5-10 years before that going back to the 1950's when SSD was invented. Spinning platters have steam rolled over SSD and its fan boys for the last 50 years. Haven't seen anyone raise a single technical rebuttal to the facts Seagate presented so it pretty much goes without saying their conclusion is correct that hard drives will rule for decades more.

Yawn

depends what seagate meant with its statement. If it means is there enough to replace all sales normal harddisk for a year.. sure they are right. But if they just want to be the main drive at 80-120gb im pretty sure there is enough to go around and keep big hard disks for data. Statistics and numbers can be manipulated believe me as an accountant i know numbers. Its not about replacing its about existing next to each other for different functions and it very well may be that the function of normal hard disk shifts.

[negreanu]

Yawn. That is what some people proclaimed 5-10 years ago. And 5-10 years before that. And 5-10 years before that going back to the 1950's when SSD was invented. Spinning platters have steam rolled over SSD and its fan boys for the last 50 years. Haven't seen anyone raise a single technical rebuttal to the facts Seagate presented so it pretty much goes without saying their conclusion is correct that hard drives will rule for decades more.

You don't get it do you. Look at the price's now for SSD technology they are at consumer levels now. Look how many products contain SSD now compared to 2/3 years ago.

As I stated HD large capacity (1tb+) will be around for awhile as a MASS STORAGE DEVICE. But mechanical storage in today's technology really is dated and unwanted.

[nikster]

HD's in large capacity agreed will be around for the next 5-10 years but only as a mass storage medium rather than a computers main drive.

Yawn. That is what some people proclaimed 5-10 years ago. And 5-10 years before that. And 5-10 years before that going back to the 1950's when SSD was invented. Spinning platters have steam rolled over SSD and its fan boys for the last 50 years. Haven't seen anyone raise a single technical rebuttal to the facts Seagate presented so it pretty much goes without saying their conclusion is correct that hard drives will rule for decades more.

Huh?

SSds have really only become a viable alternative very recently. If you look at the cost / GB only, then HDs will have a huge advantage for a long while to come. But that's not what will make SSDs mainstream - SSDs will be mainstream as soon as they're "cheap enough, and big enough". For more and more people, they already are - and for many more they will be very soon.

Once 256GB cost $250, that's the point where anyone who can afford it might switch. That's when Apple might make all their laptops flash based (not even SSDs - you don't need a SSD enclosure that just takes up space and weight). Others will follow. Desktops will also get them, as boot drives, plus a cheap media HD.

It's enough for all your documents, the OS, your work, and your music. And some movies. I think people will be fine with not being able to carry around their entire 4TB movie collection around with them at all times.

To back up my theory of "enough space, cheap enough" look no further than iPods and mp3 players in general. They're all Flash based even though a HD based one would provide more space at a cheaper price. But Flash is cheap enough, and 8 or 16GB is simply big enough to store most people's entire legally purchased music collection. You don't need more space.

The only thing that takes up space these days on computers is video - HD video particularly. Anything else - peanuts. So it comes down to: How many films does the average person want to carry on them? I don't think it's all that many. This is why SSDs are going to become the norm once 256GB become cheap enough.

I think Seagate's hybrid approach could work too - let's say they have 64GB of really fast Flash buffer, plus whatever size HD, it would probably work well, especially if they optimize it so all the small files go on the SSD. Might end up being a driver problem, as they'd probably have to know about file systems and such, which could be a mess. But what they have now, 4GB cache, that's a joke. No wonder it doesn't work.

[cali]

Apparently some people are unable to understand what the article had to say, if they read it at all.

[Crushdepth]

Price is not the only factor. Apart from speed, power savings and extended battery life are also highly attractive for mobile devices etc. I think they'll continue to grow in popularity for certain applications.

[robblok]

Apparently some people are unable to understand what the article had to say, if they read it at all.

Apparently some people believe everything they read even if the writer has something to win by twisting the truth.

[wolf5370]

Technically rotating disks have phyisical limits. A disk can only rotatate so fast before it tears itself appart (explosively) - increasing the density of the disk to stop this makes it heavier and thus slower for the same power input. As drives get incredibly large (I remember my IBM XT hard drive - 20MB and hardly touched it!) either the disk has to get faster or the read/write rate has to decline. In the 50s/60s/70s/80s/90s/etc this was not a concern as no one thought individual plates would need to become so huge (capacity wise) - mainframes had disk packs with ten or more heads and rotataing disks - more storage, just add more disks - and these were all but replaced with mass store units (and ATL for offline storage). Obviously that is not an option in a laptop!

Therefore, SSD or some description is the future and will take over as the price comes down - just as tape decks were replaced by floppies and then HD floppies (even SHD floppies) and then CDs and then DVDs (and possibly one day BlueRay - but that's another arguement!).

I read, in New Scientist, about ten years ago a discovery/invention in which a 3D lattice (some kind of super-plastic crystal) was used to store data - this meant a sugar cube sized volume could store terrabytes of information. Never really happened thouigh as yet - probably issues is actually seeking data in 3D at such a scale. I also read about a 64 bit CPU chip about 15 or 20 years ago - when 8 bit becoming obsolete to 16 bit CPUs - took almost two decades to come about though. Sugar cube was a Cambridge University (UK) project I remember.