Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] ultra cheap notebooks with solid-state "disks"

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> I wonder how they plan to deal with the fact that you can only get so
> many writes to flash before it starts to fail (far fewer than on
> winchester technology).  Also, read/write times to flash aren't that
> great.
>   
I've always seen flash memory have way faster read/write times than a 
standard disk. Also it's easy enough to do things to extend the life of 
flash as a hdd by turning off things such as access time recording or by 
making the drive read-only except for upgrades. The best, all flash, 
concept is to store your OS and apps on on flash card and your personal 
files either on another flash card or on a usb drive. Anyway - better 
quality flash drives are now rivaling the read/write life of 
conventional hdds while being way more durable against handling.
> Perhaps it isn't a flash disk at all.  One could build a solid-state
> storage device using ordinary RAM chips and a battery.  It would still
> be fairly cheap and fast as lightning.  Even slower RAM chips from, say,
> five years ago (to save on price) would knock the socks off of both
> winchesters and flash drives.  Plus, they ought to be available used by
> the truckload.  ;)
>   
RAM drives are very fast but are even more expensive than flash, not as 
reliable as flash, and usually bulkier than flash. I think the best idea 
though might be a flash drive w/ a large RAM cache (w/ battery backup). 
Might as well put those frequent reads and writes in RAM. Rather than 
sell stand-along RAM drives I'd rather PCs come w/ more available RAM 
slots. In Linux it's easy enough to create a RAM-based drive if you need 
it. I'll assume that there is some Windows util available that could do 
the same.

I think once they can get to about 20GB of Flash-based drives that are 
of similar life to a regular hdd and of reasonable cost we'll see the 
concept sweep across laptops at least. Possibly consumer PCs too as 
really most people don't need 200GB hdds but they do need the 
reliability of no moving parts. :)

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