Samsung to launch flash-based hard drive

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Samsung today presented a flash memory based replacement for conventional hard disk drives. The solid-state disk (SSD) uses memory chips instead of a mechanical recording system, this ensures lower power consumption and high data rates.

The first SSD with parallel Advanced Technology Attachment interface will ship in capacities up to 16GB. Such a device will feature 16 8Gb memory chips and will likely cost $900 (or less).

News source: DV Hardware

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(1 reply) #1 westonb_2005 on 24 May 2005 - 05:26

QUOTE

Such a device will feature 16 8Gb memory chips and will likely cost $900 (or less).

That is expensive for the size. But it would be pretty cool have the fast transfer speed. But then all your data is lost and unrecoverable if your battery in the HD goes out.

Oh and my first, first post

#1.1 clonk on 24 May 2005 - 05:35

Flash memory needs no power to store data

#2 nogoon on 24 May 2005 - 05:29

do they work just like a regular hdd?

(4 replies) #3 Rudy on 24 May 2005 - 05:42

now thats the future of HDD, as i said about 2 years ago, in the future computers will have 2 kinds of HD, one small based on memory (for the OS and apps) and a large one based one today's technology (for storage)

#3.1 Rudy on 24 May 2005 - 06:11

nevermind i thought this stuff was the memory drives (like using RAM), but this stuff is slow

#3.2 Burly on 24 May 2005 - 06:56

and thats why it says;
Samsung to launch flash-based hard drive

#3.3 Rudy on 24 May 2005 - 09:29

I KNOW, what i mean is a memory based HARD DRIVE

like a harddrive made with RAM

#3.4 sphbecker on 24 May 2005 - 14:24

A RAM drive would be too risky. I don't want to trust my data to a battery.

They are making flash memory faster and faster and because it reads much faster then it writes this kind of a drive would be ideal for installing your OS and programs that rarely change.

#4 nvizible on 24 May 2005 - 05:52

and.... how fast does it read/write.... coz if this is faster than a 15k scsi on a u320 interface... i might just buy one >.>

#5 CZA on 24 May 2005 - 05:57

It's on pATA for the time being so no, it can't be faster than u320 scsi.

(3 replies) #6 ariel on 24 May 2005 - 06:01

Some day I want to see a computer that has no moving parts at all. An all flash HD, CPU that does not heat up and maybe only one mechanical device (spinning optical device) would be nice.

#6.1 Burly on 24 May 2005 - 06:59

a computer that does not generate heat? sounds impossible the whole architecture of the pc would have to be overhauled

#6.2 PCyr on 24 May 2005 - 11:41

Well some university in the states has already developed optical logic gates

They would probably generate no noticable heat.

#6.3 nic on 24 May 2005 - 17:37

they can make a computer that doesn't generate enough heat to warrent the use of a fan (just heat sinks). It won't perform as well, but they can make it. To some people, a quiet computer is more important then a fast one.

#7 razor_88 on 24 May 2005 - 06:03

they'll be great for laptops/notebooks

#8 Memento_Mori on 24 May 2005 - 06:07

holy expensive!!

(3 replies) #9 Bamsebjørn on 24 May 2005 - 06:21

The first SSD with parallel Advanced Technology Attachment interface will ship in capacities up to 16GB. Such a device will feature 16 8Gb memory chips and will likely cost $900 (or less).

Shouldn't this be 16 1Gb memory chips if it will ship in capacities up to 16Gb? Otherwise you'll get 128Gb, which wouldn't be bad either.

#9.1 Gobelet on 24 May 2005 - 06:27

Nah, there will be 16 8 Gb (Gigabits) chips, and yes you'll get 128 Gigabits. 128 Gigabits = 16 GigaBytes.

#9.2 sphbecker on 24 May 2005 - 14:31

That must be a typo. I 16GB drive doesn't have 16 8 GB memory chips, it would have 16 1GB memory chips. Perhaps someday it could have 16x8=128, but I don't think anyone makes a 8GB flash chip at this point.

#9.3 nvizible on 24 May 2005 - 17:36

It does have 16 8Gb chips... notice the LOWERCASE b after the UPPERCASE G. The lowercase b stands for "bits", were it uppercase, it would be "bytes". Eight bits make one byte, and hence, an eight gigabit chip is equal to one gigabyte (GB, notice the UPPERCASE B).

I guess that both answers your question, and serves to make your perfectly pitiful and insubstantial gray matter (pray, let us refrain from calling it a "mass", as of that, it has none) look substantially lacking.

#10 chilliadus on 24 May 2005 - 06:32

One important advantage of the SSDs is that they should have the same (or at least comparable) random seek date rate as contineous read/write data rate, and virtually elimiate the need for defragmentation. This will be a huge performance boost in a multitasking environment (server for example). It wasn't long ago someone boast that he could successfully burn a CD while defragging HD, lol.

(6 replies) #11 neocitron on 24 May 2005 - 06:43

just like the LCD... this will take years to develop into mainstream.. but once it's in... say goodbye to the spinning Hard drives.

#11.1 Burly on 24 May 2005 - 07:02

crts are still around

#11.2 neocitron on 24 May 2005 - 07:33

sure... only people on neowin would use crt's... because they know more than the average user

#11.3 the_snitch on 24 May 2005 - 08:04

Last time i checked the "post your workstation" thread, most people had LCDs, or were drooling over the Dell and Apple ones

#11.4 Rob on 24 May 2005 - 09:49

Yes but you have to remember that CRTs are still the monitor type of choice for serious graphics professionals. They offer a more faithful reproduction of colours, for one.

#11.5 Quick Reply on 24 May 2005 - 16:04

And a CRT is the weapon of choice for a gamer such as myself - No response times.

#11.6 nvizible on 24 May 2005 - 17:38

CRTs offer far better quality, better refresh rates, and nice looking, anti-aliased text. What more could you want? Surely you wouldn't sacrifice all of that for desk space!

#12 indiehead on 24 May 2005 - 09:15

i have a samsung one and it's very nice.

wouldn't buy that though, too expensive!!!

#13 yudi_lks on 24 May 2005 - 09:52

Wow.. Cool.. I'll buy it once hits singapore

#14 tiwaris on 24 May 2005 - 10:06

SSD will pick mommentum and will become cheaper and faster. SSD does not have a rotating spindle and therefore it should be easy to scale up the performance.

(1 reply) #15 Sensayshun on 24 May 2005 - 11:27

Until these are faster than normal HD's I'm not buying one. I thought they were being developed using the flash drive as a huge cache? And why not put them on scsi cables?
As far as I can see the improvements aren't large enough to warrant buying one.

#15.1 sphbecker on 24 May 2005 - 14:33

Yes, the combo drives are also being developed; but that is something else. SATA is much cheaper then SCSI and works just as well for single drives.

To me it seems like these memory only drives would be good for laptops and the combo drives for desktops.

#16 loc[a]lhost on 24 May 2005 - 13:07

I don't really care about the speed, but the silence!

I can't wait for such drives to reach HD capacities.

#17 bobfastner on 24 May 2005 - 14:37

Dang! How can I crash the heads? I am against all moving parts inside a PC. Fans and motors are evil. In my perfect PC world, I predict that all moving items will become solid state and cooling will become minimally necessary and will be through the case. I also predict PCs will only be kept large enough to connect the external devices and insertremove removeable storage media.

#18 nvizible on 24 May 2005 - 17:51

What i wonder is... WHY aren't they using faster memory?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the UK, ddr400 ram (i'm sure they could use the same chips) is really cheap. 21 quid for 512MB to be approximate. Hence, that would equate to 672 pounds for 16GB. Surely thats would be about $1k, and hence about the same price as this product?

Not to mention the added speed benefit!

hmmm that makes me wonder... I wonder whether it would be possible to buy 4 or 5 gigs of ram, and in some way make windows page all OS files and program files to ram each time it boots, or even better, never shutdown, and just go into S3 suspend mode (suspend to ram)?

(1 reply) #19 ssjchris_29 on 24 May 2005 - 18:22

SSDs have been around for awhile actually. the government finds them nice, as do scientists, research organizations, large enterprise type companies, and the power user like me lol. I'm just too poor to afford one. www.bitmicro.com has information on them, and there is another place that makes them too... there are no moving parts so they run *much* cooler, and although the data transfer speeds are fast, what makes these drives so wonderful is the nano-second seek time. windows xp can reportedly be installed in about 12 minutes start to finish on a SSD. this samsung drive is just the first general public one that'll be available (and the price is pretty good actually!!!!! a year ago a 4Gb drive would cost about 4,000USD. anyways, good news for the power user and speed freaks :-p

#19.1 Xionanx on 25 May 2005 - 02:10

Argh!! You beat me to the punch! Anyway, your right. I actually contacted bitmicro about 7 months ago when I just happened to stumble across them.. turns out a 40GB model cost around $30,000.. Needless to say thats out of my price range. but the specs... ohhh..to die for.

#20 Tai on 25 May 2005 - 02:02

nice .... but I'll wait and get the 500gb++ version when it comes out

#21 nvizible on 25 May 2005 - 12:24

woohoo those ones from bitmicro are FAST (/me thinks of saving for one of the scsi ones) ... burst write speeds of upto 320MB/s on them :s

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