hard drive vs. flash drive

[Sisyphus]

So, I was shopping around for flash thumb drives (my old 256MB one was too small), and out of curiosity I looked for the highest capacity one I could find. As far as I can tell, it's 256 GB, currently. This prompted two immediate questions, for those more tech savvy than myself:

 

1) Is the skyrocketing capacity/plummeting price likely to calm down anytime soon?

 

2) Why are we still using hard drives with moving parts, that are slow and seemingly always the first part of any computer to malfunction? Is it just price per byte?

[insane_alien]

1/ it'll settle down eventually. when? dnot sure.

 

2/ hardrives are cheap and tend to have more capacity while being almost equally reliable.

 

you can get a few terabytes for the same price as a 256GB flashdrive.

[StringJunky]

Solid State Digital drives haven't been taken up universally yet because their maximum capacities have been too low for everyday storage use in the average PC.

 

A quick check reveals that a 64gb SSD can be bought for $165 for an eeepc, so it's just coming into the realms of having a usable capacity and being affordable.

 

There were also one or two performance and reliability issues that precluded it's mainstream use before but they seem to have ironed them out.

 

I found a 512gb unit so capacity is not an issue any more.

 

I imagine SSD prices will fall substantially to mechanical hard drive levels, as take up increases, just like other PC components have in th past.

Edited September 3, 2009 by StringJunky

[insane_alien]

seems to me that a the rate they're going down in price they'll overtake conventional disks in price per capacity.

 

although that may be mainly due to lots of prerequisites lying around (small fabrication processes for the circuitry from processors and such) and when they catch up on those it'll slow down.

[StringJunky]

seems to me that a the rate they're going down in price they'll overtake conventional disks in price per capacity.

 

although that may be mainly due to lots of prerequisites lying around (small fabrication processes for the circuitry from processors and such) and when they catch up on those it'll slow down.

 

I was being cautious in my prediction, but yes I think they will eventually be "cheap as chips" just like thumb drives are now since there aren't any moving parts, thus less human intervention in the manufacturing process compared to HD's.

 

Intel have just moved to a 35nm process, from 50nm, so the new ones are faster and will be cheaper eventually. Currently £204 for the latest 80gb SSD (35nm process) from Intel.

 

Reading about the progress towards smaller denser chips it still has another year or two, at least, of improvements left in the technology:

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10307018-64.html

 

I suppose the next logical step will be to make standard motherboards with SSD's welded on as one.

[insane_alien]

i don't think we'll see integrated SSD's (although asus sold a motherboard with a version of linux installed in precisely that manner) appearing in very great numbers. the chips take up quite a bit of space needed for other things. i think they'll continue to be found as discreet drives (maybe with a token amount of storage space on the motherboard)

[StringJunky]

You are probably right for the foreseeable future. I haven't looked into computer technological progress for a year or two so my eye is 'off the ball'...I just use them now.

[Mokele]

I've heard there are problems with solid state in terms of simple access speed, but that's just a vague recollection, and may no longer be true.

 

Also, I doubt they'll ever be integrated into motherboards for a more pragmatic reason - upgrading. This way, you can buy a new drive when you need one, rather than having to shell out for a drive + board.

[insane_alien]

there are problems with writing to a block and technically they have not been addressed but the speed has increased so much that even with a handicap it is still faster than a platter based drive.

 

there are still concerns with the limited number of times you can write to a block before it fails but this is compensated with more advanced wear-levelling algorithms

[StringJunky]

On reflection, I agree it doesn't make sense (from a data security point of view) to tie your valuable data to a device that can't be detached from the computer.

 

Yes, your knowledge is out of date Mokele (like mine was 'til last night!].

 

 

I haven't got the time now to provide the evidence but the best SSD's are designed to withstand the operating forces and reliability demands of tactical military aircraft pilots and drones, and their specs outstrip platter drives in every way except price / byte and absolute capacity.

 

There Mean Times Before Failure (MBTF) rates, the number of times they can be written to before becoming unreliable, has apparently reached a level comparable to a platter based drives operating life...this issue has been their main sticking point.

 

I'm going to stick one in my laptop!

[bascule]

Why are we still using hard drives with moving parts, that are slow and seemingly always the first part of any computer to malfunction? Is it just price per byte?

 

Yes, not to mention total capacity. You can get a 2 Terabyte hard drive, which is an order of magnitude larger than the largest available SSD.

 

Most of the existing storage infrastructure is designed around the needs of hard drives as well.

 

I forsee solid state technologies eventually replacing hard drives much in the way they replaced floppy drives, but it's going to be a few years down the road yet. Manufacturers are still ramping up volume production of SSDs.

[alan2here]

I'm getting this when prices drop for my high performance laptop.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/08/super-talent-ships-1-500-2-5-inch-masterdrive-rx-512gb-ssd

 

http://www.supertalent.com/datasheets/6_169.pdf

[LeePeyton]

wiki

"Another limitation is that flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles. Most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 write-erase-cycles, before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage."

 

On average if the write-erase-cycle is 100,000 I'm sure that would go fast compared to a platter drive. The Flash also writes slower. Mechanical hard drives will stay till they think of something more cost effective or flash gets cheaper and more capable.

[insane_alien]

flash writes slower than it reads true, but this is stil lan order of magnitude greater than the read speeds of a fast hard drive.

 

the big clue to flash drives being accepted soon is they are starting to see use in data centers. so 2-3 years and they'll be common for consumers.

[getingwats]

Better flash drives becoming cheaper and faster.Flash drive may be cheaper as time goes by but reliability wise a typical hard drive out perform flash drive, hard drive can be rewritten for thousand of times.Thanking You.

[insane_alien]

flashdrives already have an longer mean time between failure than mechanical harddrives. by an order of magnitude in some cases. it used to be they went down pretty quickly but that has changed. mainly due to advanced wear-leveling algorithms used in the controller and advances in the design allowing for more erase-write cycles to occur before failure.