Futuristic Question

[dukebound85]

When do you think laptops will be implementing flash based drives instead of hard drives? For stationary computers its not big deal but laptops go through some abuse. I would be interested once this is doable on the order of 60gigs.

 

[neocell]

Well not very long for the technology (to actually get it up to 60, at 32 right now), how long it takes for someone to actually implement it? Maybe a year (PC), 2 years (Apple)???
link

 

[Peyton]

Absolutely. Here's why

 

[Kreamy]

Not anytime soon. Wasn't it something like $40,000 for the solid state drive?

 

[ManchesterTrix]

I think the limited write-cycles of current flash would also pose a slight problem.

 

[miniConvert]

I can't see solid state hard drives being an affordable option for 4-5 years yet, not in mainstream laptops anyway. Love them or hate them, current disks work remarkably well and are so very much cheaper for huge capacities.

 

[bigandy]

if this is anything to go by, i think it'll be sooner than people think...

 

[virividox]

would be cool, but once they are corrupted, you cant recover the data as easily compred to current drives

 

[NYmacAttack]

I would also wonder about the speed of these devices. Most flash based devices are still rather slow.

 

[Kreamy]

I would also wonder about the speed of these devices. Most flash based devices are still rather slow.

Reading data off of a chip is much quicker than firing up a mechanical drive and seeking data. Hard drives were never truly non linear in the sense that the head still has to get to the sector - flash instantly retrieves data.

Not taking into account what can happen if data is lost, flash drives are much less prone to shock damage and use considerably less power, making them ultimately all for the better.

Due to the aforementioned costs though, some people (was it intel and MS?) were working on a 1GB cache buffer for a standard mechanical hard drive that could call all data required for bootup into the cache and thus exponentially reduce startup lag - i've got no substantiation for this though.

 

[nbs2]

I think the limited write-cycles of current flash would also pose a slight problem.

Using a combination would avoid this issue. If the primary drive was hard disk and the OS (and maybe applications?) were on the flash, that could allow for smaller solid state drives and reduce the write-cycles. But, I don't know about the speed of the drives. Also, I am pretty sure I am just repeating someone else form somewhere on MR. I know there are arguments against it. I just don't know what they are.

 

[Subiklim]

I would also wonder about the speed of these devices. Most flash based devices are still rather slow.

What are you basing that on? A HD needs time to spin up, and seek. Flash doesn't. I've tried using a microdrive in my camera and my FPS was reduced HUGELY compared to a flash drive of the same size.

Also, have you used an iPod nano? MUCH faster than a HD based iPod.

 

[Kreamy]

What are you basing that on? A HD needs time to spin up, and seek. Flash doesn't. I've tried using a microdrive in my camera and my FPS was reduced HUGELY compared to a flash drive of the same size.

Also, have you used an iPod nano? MUCH faster than a HD based iPod.

Appears to be based on USB pendrives, which in most cases is true, they're slower than hard drives, but thats due to a number of other factors.