The Solid State Drive based PC is here

[HEXUS]

With Solid State Drivess becoming possible and affordable, how long until the familiar whir of an HDD is no longer with us?

Read more.

[Anastie]

Read more.

This all sounds very good. But I have read that they can wear out and have a limit on how many times they can be written over.
But the future is certainly one to watch with interest.

[Sinizter]

This all sounds very good. But I have read that they can wear out and have a limit on how many times they can be written over.
But the future is certainly one to watch with interest.

Wear levelling built into firmware, makes them comparable to normal hard drives - much closer to hard drive MTBF now than a little while ago.

[Sinizter]

Where can I buy Ridata SSDs in the UK ?

[McEwin]

"wear built into firmware" ... can't they just give us something that doesn't self destruct like my parents 30 year old tumble dryer?

"The age when computers are always on" ... well don't use windows then, you have to reboot every time you receive an email.

[Sinizter]

"wear built into firmware" ... can't they just give us something that doesn't self destruct like my parents 30 year old tumble dryer?

"The age when computers are always on" ... well don't use windows then, you have to reboot every time you receive an email.

It's wear levelling ...

The hard drive doesnt self destruct. The MTBF is in hundreds of year - you certainly wont be here.

And you have got major issues with your windows install if you have to reboot to read your email - and it doesnt mean that it is the same for everyone.

[Funkstar]

"wear built into firmware" ... can't they just give us something that doesn't self destruct like my parents 30 year old tumble dryer?

From the Ridata Website:

Data Integrity
SSD Drives are inherently resistant to vibration, shock andtemperature extremes. The RoHS compliant drive is very reliable with more than 4,000,000 hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). This level of durability reduces IT labor costs, and the danger of losing critical data. Data integrity is further supported by dynamic wearing leveling and a built-in ECC that corrects up to 3 random 12-bit symbols (Reed Soloman-4) of error per 512-byte sector. With a write endurance cycle (P/E) of more than 2,000,000 times these drives are built to safely write and store critical data.

From the product datasheet for a Hitachi Ultrastar™ A7K1000 (The Ultrastar is designed as a 24/7 drive for RAID arrays)

Targeted MTBF 2 (hours) : 1,200,000

I would say that fairly reliable, wouldn't you? That works out as about 456 years for the SSD

"The age when computers are always on" ... well don't use windows then, you have to reboot every time you receive an email.

Well don't tell either of my laptops, or my desktop, or my PC at work, they go weeks without needing a re-boot.

[aminal]

it's still recommended that you disable things like swap files & virtual memory to reduce the number of write cycles you use.

[mikerr]

You've been able to run solid state for a while just by using an IDE-CF adaptor and CF card.

At work we have been using laptops daily running win98 on CF like this for a few years (HDD's don't cope well with cold/ low pressure/ shock),
The CF cards haven't died yet, despite expecitng a few failures due to the doomsayers on limited write cycles etc.
128Mb and 256Mb CF cards that cost a packet at the time BTW

Note that those CF cards are VERY SLOW for transfer seppeds though - 10Mb/sec ... nothing like the perfomance seen in this news article

[Sinizter]

it's still recommended that you disable things like swap files & virtual memory to reduce the number of write cycles you use.

Source pertaining to modern, current gen of SSD drives ?

[Whiternoise]

Presumably the idea is that by the time the drive does get knackered, prices will have dropped to such an extent that you will need to buy a new drive anyway?

ie I would expect 32gb drives to drop massively by 2010 - a reasonable assumption based on how fast flash memory prices have dropped in the last couple of years.

[Oobie-]

Could anyone tell me what the read/write times for a normal 7200rpm hdd are?

[mikerr]

Around 60 Meg/sec

[Oobie-]

ah ha! thanks mikerr - makes that picture a whole lot more impressive

[baius]

Well don't tell either of my laptops, or my desktop, or my PC at work, they go weeks without needing a re-boot.

Wow! I bet you don't pay them enough...

The PC (in the link) looks seriously impressive.

My current line of thinking is get a couple of 64gb SSDs and have raid 0 going on. (I don't like Raid 0, as a concept, but I'd love to see how fast I could make things "go"... you know what I mean?

Either that, or get 1 128gb drive. Obviously this would be a boot drive.

Being a cheapskate, (or perhaps not,) I doubt I'd want to spend more than £200. I'd want some serious piece of kit, for that price, too.


"Go single 32gb or 64gb" (Well someone's going to say it): I don't think I'd want to go under 100gb these days for any drive. I've got a WD74 atm, and on a really good day I can get 15gb free. (I record TV to my Raptor, then copy to my WD500RE2 (if needed) for long-term storage.) 15gb isn't enough.

[I should add that it's partitioned 60gb/8gb (Windows/Documents), but even so.]

Vista is very "hungry", 'n all (although I'm still a fan).

[markdevas]

A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. Unlike flash-based memory cards and USB flash drives, an SSD emulates a hard disk drive interface, thus easily replacing it in most applications.