“Sun today announced a new entry-level addition to its family of Unified Storage arrays. The Sun Storage 7310 array allows smaller IT shops to deploy both solid-state disk and hard disk drives in the same box; it also offers clustering capabilities.”
This looks like a good interim solution for smaller shops that want the performance of SSD but can’t yet afford a full blown SSD array, as they can ease into the technology, buying a new SSD drive and swapping it out with a regular diskdrive when they can afford to.
Looks like more good news for Windows 7: performance with an SSD drive is faster than Vista. Not that I”m surprised. To be honest, I think Vista should just be excluded from all future benchmark tests, and go away as fast as possible. Via Gizmodo:
“A lot of the hype around Windows 7 is predicated on how well it’ll run on modest hardware, especially SSD-equipped netbooks. It certainly feels faster than Vista, but HotHardware’s battery of disk benchmarks confirms: it really, really is.
Their conclusion:
Platter based hard drives and high-end solid state drives, all run faster on Windows 7. Solid state drives see the largest performance boost, which showed up to a 35% improvement in read performance and up to a 23% boost in write performance.
They also found serious jumps in burst read performance, which explains why, given a general speed difference of about a third, Windows 7 feels so much quicker than Vista or XP. Obviously, they weren’t testing the netbook edition, but I doubt this particular metric will differ between versions. Convinced yet? [HotHardware]“
That dire warning comes from SanDisk’s CEO Eli Harari. The capacity of flash chips has doubled 19 times in 14 years to 64 billion bits, currently. But Harari says they’re “running out of electrons.”
The short story is that the number of electrons crammed inside of flash storage now makes them less accurate as they get older—they “start to smear”—and that Harari thinks they can only double chip capacity two more times. When they go from the current 64-billion-bit chip to the 256-billion-bit (32GB) one, that’s the end.
There might be some salvation in stacking the layers, but it’s not ready for prime time yet. Check out more of the grisly bits over there: [Bits]
There’s fast, and then there’s stupid-fast, and a new hybrid SSD drive will fall into the latter category if it can live up to the speed claims being put out by its manufacturer, who says a single DDRDrive X1 can hit a staggering 300,000 IOPS.
The new drive combines 4GB of DDR memory for high-speed operation along with 4GB of NAND flash memory for backup duties. By doing so, the manufacturer claims a full 4GB backup will take no longer than 60 seconds. Equally impressive, the drive scales at a 1:1 ratio with multiple drives, making it theoretcially possible to backup 32GB, 64GB, or even 128GB in 60 seconds with the appropriate configuration.
DDRDrive CTO Christopher George says the hybrid drive was designed with a maximum IOPS performance in mind, and according to the X1’s spec sheet, it offers 512B reads and writes up to 300,000+ and 200,000+ IOPS, respectively, and 4KB reads and writes up to 50,000+ and 35,000+ IOPS, respectively. By comparison, Intel’s fastest SSDs offering 35,000 IOPS in 4KB read and 3,300 IPOS in 4KB writes.
Less impressive is the DDRDrive X1’s read and write transfer rates, which is bound by its PCI-E Gen 1 interface and checks in around 250MB/s (read) and 155MB/s (write).
The 4GB/4GB DDRDrive X1 is available now for $1,495.
If you’ve been keeping up with the Development of SSD drives as they become more and more mainstream, you may have noticed that there is still some ways to go before SSD’s can become as prevalent as regular magnetic hard drives. The biggest sticking point I’m seeing right now is that there is a large speed difference between a brand new never written to SSD, and one that has been used for some time. Because of the way SSD’s work, each write to a cell on the drive sets it as a bit (a one or zero). Once that bit is set, it has to be erased before it can be written to and set again. On a new drive, this erasing operation does not need to be done because the bit has never been set, resulting in much faster write speeds the first time around. As the drive becomes used, and more cells are written to, the result is that more and more cells also need to be wiped again before writing to them. This results in the slowdown that we see. Once the drive has had all cells written to, the speeds reach their slowest, and the drive will now be at its real operating speed.
So what does this mean for you and me? Two things: when you decide to purchase an SSD drive, make sure you do your research, and look for third party benchmarks of the drive that measure both the performance of the drive when new, and the performance of the drive when it has been fully written to, so you can have better expectations of the drives performance. The second thing - and this is just a hunch on my part - I predict that if you hold off on buying an SSD, the manufacturers will eventually figure out a solution to this problem as the technology matures and becomes more mainstream.
SSD Drive manufacturers point out that even after an SSD has been written to, it will still have faster speeds than a magnetic hard drive, so if performance is the most important factor to you, an SSD drive is still the way to go for enthusiasts.
This is a tiny drive with a retractable USB connector, which makes it so you don’t have a cap to lose, which is nice. Comes with 16 GB storage, it’s very inexpensive, and gets a 4.5 star review on Amazon.
Well this is certainly interesting. Apparently, PNY has released a 2 GB USB Flash Drive that is preloaded with the full Ghostbusters movie. From the press release:
“2GB USB preloaded with movie for download
PNY Technologies and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announce the launch of a new 2GB USB preloaded with Sony Pictures’ 80’s comedy classic, GHOSTBUSTERS starring Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. This marks the first time for the release of a full length movie via a USB flash drive and will enable consumers to watch the film with one simple click on their PC or Laptop. The PNY GHOSTBUSTERS USB will be available from Argos stores nationwide from now, just ahead of the 25th anniversary year of Ghostbusters in 2009.”
So uh.. who you gonna call? PNY! (sorry, that was awful, I know.)
Here’s a fantastic presentation for those of you that may be new to the tech world, or if you are just getting up to speed on all the fancy new gadgets out there. It explains what a flash drive is, its benefits, and uses.
ComputerWorld has this to say regarding the state of SSD:
“Most observers agree that solid-state disk (SSD) will eventually overtake magnetic disk drives as the storage medium of choice. SSD is lighter than traditional hard disk drives, is faster, is more durable and consumes less power. Still, SSD doesn’t measure up to the hype, particularly when using it in a desktop or laptop PC.”
“There are a host of problems with SSD,” says Avi Cohen, head of research at Avian Securities LLC in Boston. “There’s no reason to pay the extra $600 to $800 — or a 40% to 80% premium — for a solid-state drive.”
This sounds like the same growing pains every new technology goes through. Slow adoption, high prices, and lackluster performance at first; But eventually the price comes down, the technology improves and it becomes mainstream. Early adopters typically get burned - either because they overpayed for the “cool” technology, or because it is riddled with performance or reliabilty issues. I am still convinced that Solid State Drives are here to stay, and there is no doubt in my mind that they will be replacing magnetic media very very soon. If I had the money, I would snatch up an SSD and stick it in my desktop anyway.
This USB flash drive combo has been my absolute favorite for a long time, hence the reason for it being my first review. I’ve owned many iterations of the drive, ever since they came out with the first 256mb capacity flash drive. The features have stayed the same, except for incremental increases in drive capacity. It’s an absolute must have for any computer technician, and has proven useful in many ways time and time again. Since it’s attached to my keychain as a normal Swiss army knife would be, the USB drive is always with me, but doesn’t take up any more of my valuable pocket real estate. It’s small enough to not be bothersome while carrying it around, but the knife and screwdriver portion are sturdy enough to actually be useful. I would like to see a phillips-head attachment added to the drive, but otherwise I have absolutely no complaints. The speed of the USB drive is fast enough for normal use, and I’ve yet to have a drive die on me. As a matter of fact I still have my first 256MB drive kicking around. The USB drive also pops off of the main part, in case you ever need to bring it with you on an airplane. Here’s the official list of features:
Compact, multi-purpose tool; transport image, music, and data files
Includes: 2GB memory stick, knife blade, nail file with screwdriver, scissors, keyring, LED mini-light, and retractable ballpoint pen
Compatible with USB 1.1/2.0 interface, Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP/MAC OS X, OS 8.6 and higher, Linux 2.4 and higher
Free, downloadable SecureLock software; protects data from unauthorized access
I highly recommend this flash drive. It has served me well, and let’s face it - what self respecting computer geek could possibly be without one of these? Every time I pull it out of my pocket people bow down to me in awe of my uber-geekyness. (Okay I may have made that part up – but still you know it’s awesome.) Go get one!
If you are always on the go and need to keep your data with you at all times, then check out this flash drive. It holds all your documents in an affordable, convenient device and allows you to easily store and move large files in a device no bigger than a pocketknife! Click here to grab one now!
Well this is certainly interesting. Apparently, PNY has released a 2 GB USB Flash Drive that is preloaded with the full Ghostbusters movie. From the press release:
