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Intel Entering Solid State Drive Market

SSDs make sense only in the MacBook Air, which has a very slow 1.8" HDD.

By the time a 256GB SSD is available, 1TB 2.5" HDD will probably be shipping.

Right now there's a 500GB HDD shipping to OEMs for $299 (MSRP)

It'll be $200 from newegg by the end of the year.
 
dual-storage MBP?

It will be several years (at least) before SSD prices are low enough to serve as the sole storage for MBP's. In the meantime, wouldn't a two-drive system give us the best of both worlds? A smaller SSD as the boot-drive to hold the OS and many apps; and a larger HD for archived work files and media libraries? Users could manage the two drives the same way multiple drives are managed on MacPros. Unlike Air and MB buyers, most MBP users would accept a tad extra thickness/weight for the premium performance. Would there be other major design challenges here? It would seem to be worth working them out because the basic arrangement could scale up for years, with Apple and users choosing SSD/HD capacities in response to market conditions and user needs (e.g., relatively large SSD to maximize battery & performance; relatively large HD to maximize media storage). What would be the smallest capacity SSD that could serve as boot disk and store at least some core apps?
 
Capacity is what I want out of a hard drive.

Posner, 16 or 32GB does not leave us much room for "many apps." 120 options would be best for a "boot drive."
 
PeckhamBog said:
What advantage, if any has PATA over SATA? Is there any compatability? [Is it interchangeable at all?]
Click to expand...

Apple can use the drives they ordered for the iPod classic. Same reason they're still using 16x PATA optical drives on the Mac Pro and 3-year old panels on the cinema displays. Its much cheaper to use what you already have.
 
iBunny said:
There is no advantage. PATA is old, debuted in 1990s and was replaced by SATA a few years ago.
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not true. serial offers higher transfer rates over parallel. parallel ata was first used when processors and hard drives were slower than they are today. Once things got faster, parallel had known synchronization issues (ensuring that all the transfered bits in a frame arrived at the same time). serial ata was then introduced because since you're only sending one bit at a time, you do not need to worry about synchronization.
 
Woot, loving the SSD market competition. This can only mean more options, more competitors, and lower prices.

PS, I love how for every macrumors article posted, there will always be at least 1 negative. I can't see what's so negative about this news. 😕
 
Why are people suggesting SSD's of 80GB and 120GB.😕

Its solid state!!!!! All storage capacities will be in 2^n amounts 32/64/128/512 etc.

Hence 64 currently available for Macbook air's!

You call yourselves computer enthusiasts?
 
Wolf04 said:
Woot, loving the SSD market competition. This can only mean more options, more competitors, and lower prices.

PS, I love how for every macrumors article posted, there will always be at least 1 negative. I can't see what's so negative about this news. 😕
Click to expand...

I voted positive (I love this technology and cannot wait to ditch most of my mechanical storage), but to some this might be construed as negative because of some fear of being forced to upgrade at a premium price (a la the Airbook), losing capacity along the way.
 
ivahardy said:
Why are people suggesting SSD's of 80GB and 120GB.😕

Its solid state!!!!! All storage capacities will be in 2^n amounts 32/64/128/512 etc.

Hence 64 currently available for Macbook air's!

You call yourselves computer enthusiasts?
Click to expand...

Strictly speaking, when formatted a 64GB hdd won't be 64GB, and then there's the matter of GiB's vs. GBs.

Anyway, if someone wants 120GB, then 128GB will give them that, no?
 
Hope one of these is in MacBook Air v2, and a BTO option on MBPs and maybe MBs.

It should be IN the new MBA as it is a BITCH to change the existing one - u gotta jump through a LOT of hoops.
 
Tosser said:
Strictly speaking, when formatted a 64GB hdd won't be 64GB, and then there's the matter of GiB's vs. GBs.

Anyway, if someone wants 120GB, then 128GB will give them that, no?
Click to expand...

yes and no.
if somebody wants 160GB, then they have to choose between 128GB or 256GB. and i'm sure their will be a big price different between the two. tough call.
 
ivahardy said:
Why are people suggesting SSD's of 80GB and 120GB.😕

Its solid state!!!!! All storage capacities will be in 2^n amounts 32/64/128/512 etc.

Hence 64 currently available for Macbook air's!

You call yourselves computer enthusiasts?
Click to expand...

There is no reason at all why SSD's shouldn't come in 80GB or 120GB sizes.

Every SSD is based on individual chips with much lower capacity, for example 16 GiBit = 2 GiB. The SSD is also limited in its size because it should be compatible with an 1.8" or 2.5" drive, including the size. So you take as many individual chips as you can pack into the space of an 1.8" or 2.5" drive. If you can fit 40 or 60 chips, why would you leave 8 chips out to ship a 64 GiB drive, or not ship a 120 GiB drive at all?

I am _so_ glad that Intel is planning to introduce a CPU with 6 cores, and 9 GiB of L2 cache. Maybe there are no computer enthusiasts at Intel 😀
 
posner said:
Unlike Air and MB buyers, most MBP users would accept a tad extra thickness/weight for the premium performance.
Click to expand...

Uh, no. I think Apple is heading in the direction of "a tad" less thickness/weight and still get premium performance. If you want a ton of HD or SSD space on your laptop (meaning more than is offered in an MBP), get an external drive - that will give you the tad extra thickness/weight that you were looking for. For many of us, we want a faster CPU, more storage capacity AND a lighter slimmer form. If this sounds like asking too much, think iPod evolution.
 
notjustjay said:
What? Really?
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there are ssd's that use flash memory, but flash is significantly slowed than sram or dram. a ssd using flash memory runs at about the same transfer rate as a sata hard drive. so if any company were to have a ssd in their laptop's and advertise it has a faster machine because of that, they must be using sram or dram technology, or else they'd be lying.

the ipod touch uses flash memory because speed isn't an issue.

the only advantage of using a ssd using flash memory over a sata hard drive is that it's more reliable... which is also questionable.

i'm a computer engineer, incase anybody thinks i'm full of it.
 
heads up said:
there are ssd's that use flash memory, but flash is significantly slowed than sram or dram. a ssd using flash memory runs at about the same transfer rate as a sata hard drive. so if any company were to have a ssd in their laptop's and advertise it has a faster machine because of that, they must be using sram or dram technology, or else they'd be lying.

the ipod touch uses flash memory because speed isn't an issue.

the only advantage of using a ssd using flash memory over a sata hard drive is that it's more reliable... which is also questionable.

i'm a computer engineer, incase anybody thinks i'm full of it.
Click to expand...

OK, maybe the write times on flash SSDs are slow, but the read access times are faster than hard drives (in the tests that I've seen).

I agree that the reliability of SSDs is questionable. They may be mostly immune to physical shock, but how do they hold up under daily heavy use? Don't the cells eventually lose their ability to change state? I haven't seen any tests of long-term reliability.
 
sleepingworker said:
Let's hope that Apple prices SSD's accordingly and doesn't use same same pricing rational that makes their RAM so unreasonably expensive.

And why 2010 for larger capacity SSD's? That's happening constantly. Look at the iPhone which has been out for less than a year - 4 gig, 8 gig, 16 gig.
Click to expand...

I'm just saying by then not only will the price be lower , but you may be looking at a 500GB or larger SSD.
 
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