Solid State Drives: Fast, Rugged, and Really Expensive

Solid State Drives: Fast, Rugged, and Really Expensive

chuggyhandbags on 14 November 2007 - 19:20 · 19 comments & 14290 views

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Are solid state drives becoming a reality? Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech published an article this morning concerning the current state of SSD with a comparison between a Samsung 64GB SATA and a Super Talent 32GB SATA. While they showed impressive speed rates when placed against a hard disk drive, the occasional sporadic statistic (and high cost) indicate they're not quite ready for the mainstream. Regardless, Dell and Alienware have been shipping laptops with SSDs for months now. Does anyone have any first-hand, practical experience with SSD? Is it all that and a bag of chips?

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(3 replies) #1 X'tyfe on 14 Nov 2007 - 19:26

for the love of god hurry up with them
we need to replace the design thats been around for almost 3 decades

that and BIOS too

#1.1 Jugalator on 14 Nov 2007 - 19:39

There already are BIOS replacements (one and two) but Vista still don't support them.

Major operating systems need to, before the ball can even start rolling and manufacturers start supporting that.

#1.2 Nu|ma on 14 Nov 2007 - 21:36

Quote - (Jugalator said @ #1.1)

There already are BIOS replacements (one and two) but Vista still don't support them.

Major operating systems need to, before the ball can even start rolling and manufacturers start supporting that.

EFI is already being used in Intel-based Macs. It's a good start!

#1.3 Jugalator on 15 Nov 2007 - 08:58

Yes, I know, but I think it needs to be used in a major OS for it to get more commonly implemented by hardware manufacturers. There's just no point otherwise and will only end up in specialized hardware.

#2 zeta_immersion on 14 Nov 2007 - 19:28

i agree man, the pc needs a damn overhaul .. it should be a museum piece by now

(2 replies) #3 Sazz181 on 14 Nov 2007 - 19:31

They won't go mainstream till teh prices are mainstream. $1100 for 64Gb is too much for me.

#3.1 ThaCrip on 15 Nov 2007 - 01:02

hell, at that price it "should" be to much for ANYBODY! lol ... cause anyone who drops 1100 on a thing like that is a little off in the head or sick rich.

cause for 1100 you could build a entire quality pc (i paid 1169ish for my pc back in march 2006 with no monitor)

but yeah, they wont become popular til there atleast "reasonably" priced. (maybe 200-300 tops)

#3.2 Roger2 on 15 Nov 2007 - 03:54

What about £223 ($446) for 32GB?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135169

(1 reply) #4 Jugalator on 14 Nov 2007 - 19:35

I remember when 20 MB hard drives were expensive as heck!

Before you know it ( especially if you're old and time has really started flying! ) we'll be storing data on Terabyte-sized protein-coated discs!

( the downside then being the uncertainty of picking Sony's Proteodisc format vs Microsoft's TeraDisc format

)

#4.1 Croquant on 14 Nov 2007 - 19:40

That, and during the coming global apocalypse, the mutants will desire your protein-coated disks because they are an excellent source of protein.

#5 costanza007 on 14 Nov 2007 - 19:40

i have a few for work... the hard drives are indeed silent and fast.

#6 ThePitt on 14 Nov 2007 - 20:03

thats the future. Like every new technology is expensible at first. you know

#7 KoDeXeRo on 14 Nov 2007 - 21:08

I got one now and i find it hard to upgrade my system because i'll have to get another one again

The one i have now is IDE for my laptop and flies but if i get a Thinkpad T6x it'll have to be a SATA one and when i buy that i'll have to be at least 32GB. Right now that's $500 so i guess i gotta wait.

(1 reply) #8 Shadrack on 14 Nov 2007 - 21:24

The problem still comes down to:

* How much more reliable
* How much faster
* How much more expensive

Last I heard, flash memory had about the same failure rate as conventional mechanical hard disk drives...

#8.1 PermaSt0ne on 14 Nov 2007 - 22:33

Quote - (Shadrack said @ #

i rarely have any hdd's fail for my computer or my friends' computers. so i think most people would agree that the failure rate is relatively low and not a big issue

right now HDD's are the bottleneck of computers. we need to see massive speed increases, not space increases. 1TB drives are more than enough for the average user for the next 7 years

make them faster. that's it

(2 replies) #9 lnxpro on 14 Nov 2007 - 22:51

SATA II drives are pretty fast. faster than any IDE drive you'd encounter. hehe.

perhaps SATA III should be next. or SAS II. then USB 3.0 i heard of. has an optical fiber channel built in. should speed up transfers. not that 480 mbps is not fast enough. could be faster. hehe.

#9.1 astnbomb on 15 Nov 2007 - 04:45

The interface between the drive and the mobo will only speed up max theoretical transfer delay(bandwidth). The real cost of reading or writing to a harddrive is the seek-time and rotational delay.

#9.2 Fanon on 15 Nov 2007 - 16:31

What astnbomb said. The problem isn't the interface the drive sits on, it's the fact that the discs are stuck at a certain spindle speed and mechanical heads move to read the information on the disc. An IDE SSD would blow conventional SATA II drives away.

#10 jafoman on 15 Nov 2007 - 07:16

I paid $1000 for a 1GB drive years ago.

When these come down to half their current price, I imagine these will sell like crazy.

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Solid State Drives: Fast, Rugged, and Really Expensive

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