Solid State Hard Drives 69
IcePick writes " Solid State Hard Drives made by Quantum.
Installs and is recognized as a regular hard drive.
Has a seek time of under 60 micro-seconds.
Imagine using it as a swap disk for Windoze or other programs that need swap files.
Some versions are even Non-Volatile!
I wonder why Quantum has been so quiet about them?
"
Is the pricing right for robots? (Score:1)
Brock Arnason
M.Eng. Physics
United Bank of Switzerland
SSD are old hat, and still as expensive (Score:1)
For mostly read-only use, the flash disks made by companies such as SanDisk work fine. Laptop IDE connector. Using them as swap will wear them out too fast, as the number of writes is limited. Note that some of the smaller ones are starting to show up in the surplus market; $200 for 20MB.
If you can't add memory.... (Score:1)
put a SSD. Remember on Linux you can only use 2GB RAM (instead of 4) because of the virtual memory.
Non volatile version can be useful for putting important datas that need fast access for example
databases (what a surprise). You wouldn't lose all your data, I suppose. Even though the transfer rate doesn't seem spectacular (">30MB/s") the access time is (two orders of magnitude at least)...
From an actual user (Score:1)
and they are just great for their purpose.
These drives are designed to keep database
logs.
My only gripe with Quantum is that it drags
its feet with FC-AL version of these drives.
I suppose that it is not cost effective to
use them for swap because they cost about
the same as main memory, counting per megabyte.
--P
Re: but why bother (Score:1)
swap files (Score:1)
Nick
swap files (Score:1)
FWIW, I have a GNU/Linux with 96 megs of memory and I go into swap all the time.
It will use swap even if you'll have more RAM than your current swap plus current RAM size -- try to disable swap, and you'll see that things will still work, unless you run something huge.
What they Cost: $25,918, or $8,400. and Why! (Score:1)
Companies like SuperNews that curn so many small little USENET stories, have so many hits to the hard drives, that normal drives litterally break down in no time. They NEED to use Solid state drives, otherwise they're replacing hard drives constantly.
--
Proud member of SVLUG
but why bother: NT :( (Score:1)
For losers that (have to) use NT (as I do ATM), since NT cannot work without a swapfile. We have a machine here that has 1GB of mem and if I set the swap to minimum (2MB) the machine goes bonkers when I start Njetscape.
According to our sysadmin it is because of the way NT allocates memory. Anyone has more info on that? It'll probably be good for a laugh.
- da Lawn
but why bother (Score:1)
Linux Project Idea (Score:1)
Add a UPS and a harddisk for power-off memory retention if you require it. (don't need the floppy then). Much cheaper than SCSI and not much worse.
what would really be great. . . (Score:1)
I must have a couple of gigs worth of 4meg 72-pin simms that would make a wicked-ass RAM drive.
1.6GB max? (Score:1)
--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, timur@tabi.org, http://www.tabi.org
How expensive? (Score:1)
--
C64 CD loaders? (Score:1)
Anyone know how that may have worked? My suspicion would be an interface from the digital output of a CD player to the C64's bus, writing directly to its RAM. Though most CD players didn't have digital outputs, IIRC.
ext2 filesystem fournal (Score:1)
THEY'RE EXPENSIVE! (Score:1)
"I wonder why Quantum has been so quiet about them?"
Because they're EXPENSIVE. NEC makes SSDD's, too. Basically, they're intended for systems that need fast workspace and can't manage memory effectively, but can't be upgraded in other ways. Banks and other transaction-heavy, legacy-hardware operations eat 'em up.
Often, it seems cheaper and easier to retrofit old systems rather than port code to newer, faster systems. Devil you know vs. devil you don't and all that.
Finite Write Lifetime (Score:1)
But 1M-writes is a matter of a few seconds with the right program. Once a cell has gone beyond its endurance of writes it stops remembering your data correctly.
There are remapping algorithms for moving writes around the total amount of memory, but if you will be committing a lot of writes over a long period (fifo type applications, for example) then these devices are not for you.
However, if your data changes seldom, but is read a lot more than written, they can make a lot of sense.
DiskOnChip (Score:1)
check m-sys [m-sys.com] it's cheaper than quantum i think
--
Linux Project Idea (Score:1)
swap files (Score:1)
easily as 8 Navigator windows would.
Navigator under Windows isn't happy about having 8 windows open either.
Your point was what, to compare browsers?
What about RAMDISKS? (Score:1)
I understand the basic issue you don't want to take memory away from cache and the os/application space... my question assumes the computer has enough memory to operate correctly, and the reason you even want a RAMdisk is because many applications -always- create
What about RAMDISKS? No no I meant... (Score:1)
Ever open a Word document with graphics and linked objects? It creates a ton of tmp files and they're not always deleted when you exit. Another example is WinZIP, which for SOME reason will still use your TEMP space even if you open zips on a system with lots of memory. If you have 1.5 GB RAM I don't see why a compression utility should use the hard disk as scratch space.
I just want one for booting (Score:1)
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
I just want one for booting (Score:1)
The real speed demons were the old tape drives. What was the throughput on those, 'anyone remember? Maybe about 10 kB/minute? Kids today just don't know how easy they've got it... ;^)
One could do some pretty funky things with those 1541 drives. The on-board processor and memory made for some fun times.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
ACC (Score:1)
ACC (Score:1)
btw, URL is
ACC (Score:1)
uh duh (Score:1)
One of these would be great for your / partition though if you want to boot fast... then again, considering the prevalence of the uptime fetish...
What about RAMDISKS? (Score:1)
The ultimate car mp3 storage (Score:1)
All you would need is a motherboard with built in sound and scsi, one of these, and some hack of an interface to the serial or parallel port. With a low profile socket-7 processor, you could probably fit the entire contraption under the passenger seat!!!
Sweet.... (Score:1)
Those three pieces of technology should date the little bugger for ya.. I haven't seen one in several years...
maybe cheapER RAM? (Score:1)
This isn't really news. (Score:1)
Anyway, yes they exist. They are a bit expensive, and several media makers (seagate, quantum) sell them.
They are a specialty item (Score:1)
With DRAM prices having been in the tank lately, they ought to be almost reasonable (considering what they used to cost). Of course, working in the DRAM business, I say buy 'em!
1 gig = $15K (Score:1)
$15,000. You could buy more than a dozen GIGS
for that much of PC100 DIMMs...
Here some pricing... ;( (Score:2)
CALL EH54E-TY QUANTUM CORPORA ESP5047 475MB W 1+ 10824.000 CALL
CALL EH54E-YF QUANTUM CORPORA SLDSTATE 475MB 1+ 10190.000 CALL
CALL EH54F-TY QUANTUM CORPORA ESP5047W 475MB 1+ 10824.000 CALL
CALL EH54G-TY QUANTUM CORPORA ESP5047WD 475MB 1+ 10824.000 CALL
CALL EH54G-YF QUANTUM CORPORA ESP5047WD 475MB 1+ 10190.000 CALL
CALL EH59E-FP QUANTUM CORPORA SOLID STATE DRI CALL CALL CALL
CALL EH59E-TY QUANTUM CORPORA ESP5095 950MB W 1+ 19645.000 CALL
CALL EH59E-YF QUANTUM CORPORA ESP5095 950MB W 1+ 19011.000 CALL
CALL EH59G-TY QUANTUM CORPORA ESP5095WD 950MB 1+ 19645.000 CALL
Quantum Has Not Been Quiet (Score:1)
like COMPUTER SHOPPER all the time! There is no
reason to really push advertisement of these items
because they are extremely expensive and very few
of us can afford them.
This article about solid state disk drives is not news in any way whatsoever. There is nothing new here...
AFS Cache Manager (Score:1)
has a similar process, but I don't remember if
it's called a cache manager or not. Also, and
this is really repeating what a couple of people
have already said, if a job is IO bound, then
actually using it for a filesystem would not be
unreasonable. Like all things, an engineering
decision would need to be made on the cost/benifit
ratio. I do think they are cool, but last time
I saw prices I shuddered!
SSDs are OLD hat.. But usefull... (Score:1)
In some fields such as supercomputing they will
be with us for a while. When 2 gigs of memory
costs upwards of $2million USD, SSDs are worthwhile.
For home use their used to be a few companies
that sold enclosures that were SCSI-1/2 compat. and took standard 30 pinn simms. The first I recall was on Mac, and used mac simms (ugh)
Later I built one myself using 30 pin parity
and built the parity into SCSI parity.
Wish I could find a home kit to reuse all
these 30 and 72 pinn simms, sipps and dimms...
It would make a NIFTY addition to an online
server for something like Tribes or quake.
AFS cache or NFS cachefs space...
fly on the wall...
Why? 'Cause they're stinkin' expensive! (Score:1)
It's not as if this is news (Score:1)
And most are non-volatile. Actually I can't remember seeing ads for anything but non-volatile solid state disks... After all, it's meant to replace a normal harddisk, not RAM.
Embed SSDs (Score:1)
One place SSD's are VERY useful is in embedded systems - no mechanical motion will affect them, they work on low power - great for logging data that's being collected (drop a PIC with an SSD into a shipping container to monitor heat/humid/vibration and make the shipper honor agreements (not an uncommon use). Don't use them for Swap - RAM is a gazillionth the price and just as useful.
C