News - Tosh touts world's first half-terabyte laptop SSD

[Biscuit]

But with smaller handbag sized laptops or LAN gamers it might not be deliberate decision to do so as the computer gets moved around a lot. Aside from this its not just computers which use hard drives. It took years to ruggadise hard drives so they can be used in portable media players, video cameras etc. Even with this ruggadisation they are still more susceptible to data loss due to vibration than SS technology.

[Whiternoise]

If it's data that's THAT serious, then you'd be triple backing up anyway - even onto tape drives if necessary - and you could still use your SSD.

Fact remains that the lifetime is enough that most users will need a new one before it gets to the point where it's screwing around with data.

[dangel]

Well yes, if you make a habit of violently shaking your HDD while it's operating then yes, your data wont be safe. But then you're an idiot, and you shouldn't be allowed near technology in the first place.

Going on how many laptops I see with dead drives - I think a portable device with spinning platters and moving heads doesn't suit them all that well. But anyway, the point is that by the time SSD drops dead on you you'll probably no longer care - in much the same way most people don't see mechanical drive failure because you end up getting a new PC or a new drive (the latter often for capacity or performance improvements). I think worrying about it is a bit pointless really - as I said, backups are still going to happen (for the sensible) on either format - and if the warranty covers you for a reasonable period then even less so. I'm pretty sure the folks making these SSD's are wear levelling, or using hidden sectors (for want of a better word) for redundancy amongst other techniques.

I remember when we were told CD's were immortal

[TheAnimus]

I'm using the intel x25-E in anger, about 16GB been re-written every few hours without fail.

Its all 'calculated' data, with a checksum, so curruption will be easily detected and only cost us momentary downtime as we switch back to the very slow 15k rpm drives.

Wounder if i'll be digging this thread up in a year to say OMG i broke, or if the datasheet will hold true!