Solid state hard drives?

Cptn Pants

I've been seeing a lot of news chatting about these new Solid state hard disc drives and I really want to get one for my notebook. I hear the new SSHD's use less voltage so i assume i would get better battery life, and i also hear they load faster then standard drives, so does anyone one know what kind of improvment i could expect?

Oh also, would i even be able to put a solid state hard drive in my MacBook Pro without any problems? I mean i'm sure i'd had to reinstall but that's no big deal.

Brodo Faggins

There are tons of articles about them on engadget and other tech sites, do a quick search. One thing though, is that it's insanely expensive compared to regular hard drives.

DrFrylock

Solid state flash drives generally implement standard interfaces (like IDE) and therefore appear just like a normal hard drive in whatever application they're used in. Although early flash memory "wore out" over many (100,000+) read/write cycles, new flash technology disperses writes around the flash and also improves the reliability, so you'll see reliability of 5-10 years with modern flash drives.

Flash drives are improving in performance but are still only really competitive with fast spinning-platter drives. With new models, you might get a slight edge in read performance. You will pay a premium, and the larger flash drives on the market right now are probably about 32GB with 64GB right around the corner.

misbehavin

I actually want to add a question, if allowed:

Do solid-state HD's have better crash protection than standard platter drives? I thought I remember hearing that...

Ruckus

Well, due to the fact that they are solid state, they shouldn't actually "Crash" in the same manner current disks do (no mechanical failures like armatures smashing into platters or motors wearing out).

The failures of these devices will most likely be stuff like interfaces getting fried by power surges or electromagnetic exposure damage over time. It's really hard to say. We have 20+ years of platter hard drive experience to refer to, but flash/solid state hard drives have only been around for a short time, we don't really know what the pitfalls of this type of usage are going to be.

embrik

Ruckus wrote: »

Well, due to the fact that they are solid state, they shouldn't actually "Crash" in the same manner current disks do (no mechanical failures like armatures smashing into platters or motors wearing out).

The failures of these devices will most likely be stuff like interfaces getting fried by power surges or electromagnetic exposure damage over time. It's really hard to say. We have 20+ years of platter hard drive experience to refer to, but flash/solid state hard drives have only been around for a short time, we don't really know what the pitfalls of this type of usage are going to be.

This is the "biggest deal" with these drives. It's what makes them perfect for laptops. Powerbooks/Macbooks and some pc laptops have those "Sudden Motion Sensors" in them to secure the drive if the laptop is being manhandled, but with flash media, it's not needed. That's why things like iPod Nanos are great for jogging, because they have essentially infinite shock protection (through normal use, can't really drop one off a building )

Cptn Pants

DrFrylock wrote: »

the larger flash drives on the market right now are probably about 32GB with 64GB right around the corner.

Actually I just saw someone came out with a 130GB 2.5" Solid state hard drive which is why i started this little thread. It's bigger then the hard drive in my laptop at the moment.

Caelum Militis

Hold off a bit longer before putting down the major money for one of these. 256GB of solid state goodness in a handy dandy 2.5" form factor.

SSDs are going to be expensive, but the price on them is dropping pretty rapidly.

supabeast

Personally I’d wait a year or two unless you can afford to just toss money around. Solid-state drives are still pretty new and are mostly used in laptops designed for them. Just popping one into your laptop and hoping that it works might not be the best idea, especially with on OS X, which isn’t usually the right place to go for funky new hardware support.

JWFokker

The problem with solid state drives is that they're fucking EXPENSIVE ($10/GB vs $0.30/GB) and while access times may be lower because there is no physical seeking required, read/write speeds are less than half the speed of a traditional hard drive, so they are not a high performance alternative, unless of course you go with a DRAM based SSD which is far more expensive than even flash and is a volatile storage medium. If power cuts out on a DRAM based drive, the data is GONE.

The only benefit of a flash based solid state drive is that they're not prone to mechanical failure, they're quieter and they use less power. They are more vulnerable to damage from magnetic fields and static discharges however.

MKR

JWFokker wrote: »

The problem with solid state drives is that they're fucking EXPENSIVE ($10/GB vs $0.30/GB) and while access times may be lower because there is no physical seeking required, read/write speeds are less than half the speed of a traditional hard drive, so they are not a high performance alternative, unless of course you go with a DRAM based SSD which is far more expensive than even flash and is a volatile storage medium. If power cuts out on a DRAM based drive, the data is GONE.

The only benefit of a flash based solid state drive is that they're not prone to mechanical failure, they're quieter and they use less power. They are more vulnerable to damage from magnetic fields and static discharges however.

Every modern OS (even windows) has Read/Write caching, so as long as you have enough memory that shouldn't be a problem. You could still lose data in a crash, but it's no more likely than with a mechanical drive and RW caching.

nestea_monster

MKR wrote: »

Every modern OS (even windows) has Read/Write caching, so as long as you have enough memory that shouldn't be a problem.

Unless you're working with video or a multitude of other things modern computers are used for.

But yeah, if your aren't doing anything that really requires you to read from the hard drive, hard-drive speed doesn't matter.

MKR

nestea_monster wrote: »

MKR wrote: »

Every modern OS (even windows) has Read/Write caching, so as long as you have enough memory that shouldn't be a problem.

Unless you're working with video or a multitude of other things modern computers are used for.

But yeah, if your aren't doing anything that really requires you to read from the hard drive, hard-drive speed doesn't matter.

With enough memory you can still do those things in cache.

Fristle

JWFokker wrote: »

The only benefit of a flash based solid state drive is that they're not prone to mechanical failure, they're quieter and they use less power. They are more vulnerable to damage from magnetic fields and static discharges however.

That is what is written on Wikipedia. But, I am not so sure about its truth.

From PC World: "Fortunately, most modern storage devices, such as SD and CompactFlash memory cards, are immune to magnetic fields. "There's nothing magnetic in flash memory, so [a magnet] won't do anything," says Bill Frank, executive director of the CompactFlash Association. "A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells," says Frank."

Another advantage of a flash-based drive is that if you overwrite a location once, it is securely erased. You don't need to worry about magnetic residue patterns and all that stuff. If you are suddenly anxious about the contents of your disk, you can "Boot N' Nuke" a flash drive (even at 32 MB/s write speed) much faster than a 7200rpm SATA hard disk (~55 MB/s), which requires 5 or more passes.

Echo

misbehavin wrote: »

Do solid-state HD's have better crash protection than standard platter drives? I thought I remember hearing that...

Random sidenote: my dad sent me a picture of a crashed drive he sent to recovery. There was zero information to recover - the drive head was bent and scraped all the metal off the platters, so it was just a clear glass disk left. :P