Diskless HDD's

I have just been reading this months edition of PC Answers and it seems the next generation of HDD's is going to use Soilid State Technology.

They are going to consist of an array of SDRAM modules arranged in a HDD type case.

Expensive i think!!!!!

However much quicker obviously than common HDD's, they are expected to have a seek time of between 50-100 MICROseconds as apposes to the traditional hdd's which have a seek time of around 10 MILLIseconds.

They will obvioulsy need a battery of some kind as memory moduled are very volatile and will need a fan of some sort!

I have a feeling these will definatly be the next gen HDD's especially with the price of memory falling so much, it would definatly be worth paying the extra i feel( within reason though!)

The have a web site at www.pcanswers.com if anyone wants to check the article out.

well a super computer is faster than ur p.c then y don't you buy 1.its just a waste of time i say may be tech advanced but it won't make any differnce tilll the cost comes down to earth

Thanks for that.

Isn't it strange how things go in circles. I can remember the days of 20Mb (yep that's Megs :D ), drives. You had a choice betwen a "memory card" or a drive. They were about the same price.

We have solid state memory devices now (those little USB plug in units), and the cards in digital cameras. I would not like to pay for 120Gb worth right now!

There appears to be a technology development in the pipeline, but I think it will be a while before we see affordable prices, because the manufacturers will want to recoup their research & development costs?

Interesting post

Cheers

Yeah, I wouldnt be suprised if it take atleast 2-3 years at least before they fall into the home users price range.

The USB memory sticks you mentioned cost over £500 for 256MB about a yearish ago but they are quite resonably priced now, I think that the HDD's will be around quite soon in servers and similar things so hopefully the big firms will keep paying, until the manufacturers do recoup their costs, so that one day we may all have a diskless HDD!!

Well in fainess its the cost at the moment thats stopping them going to larger sizes, cos ive got a 256mb smart media card in a laptop as a replacement for the hardisk, running a cut down (severly) version of linux, It wont be long before there solid state

i2c

Its a bit of a contradiction in terms really..... Diskless Hard Disk Drive!.. I wonder waht they will call them?

You're very right nihil about tech circles...Haha, going even further back, you had those damned 7 inch floppies for a HD waaaaaay back :)
Pretty soon we'll have hover keyboards, telekinetic mouses....Hell, we have pure fiber internet connections nowadays, so maybe those things aren't that far away, you're talking about in a 10 year period going from 2400 baud modems to modems that go 1000x faster. I'd say the tech industry has reinvented the wheel about 20 times over by now...interesting the things that come out nowadays. Making the previously thought impossible...possible...but expensive.

and maybe M$ will invent a decent O/S!!

Quote:

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Its a bit of a contradiction in terms really..... Diskless Hard Disk Drive!.. I wonder waht they will call them?

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baa baa baa... RAM Drives.. but that is already being used.. and for volitile setups
FRAM-Drives ?? ie Flash RAM
hmm PRAM's....... Programable RAM drives??

Nah.. BUCKET.. you stack ya shite in it and move it from place to place.. and if the data is corrupted or lost.. you only need to replace the B with a F for what you would say about it..

Yep.. a 256Mb USB drive with Knopix and a couple of fav tools.. just started to play.. thought it would be a good idea for service work.. oh and a way cheaper 128Mb for moving my p0rn..ahh ahh MP3's.. yep yep my music.. I use it for moving my music files..yep yep and any urgent data..
excuse the shite.. but these are bloody handy tools..

Cheers


Cheers

Love it!! BUCKET what an awsome idea, I think you should get the copyright on that one before Microsoft releases it next O/S!!

First off, SDRAM modules are Volatile, you kill the power and all your data is lost, I belive what they meant would be Electronicaly Erasable Programable read only memory (EEPROM) Basicaly, a USB memory stick....
We can already get them up in the Gigabyte range, so its really only a matter of time before they take over for the old Disk drives. Disk drives generate alot of heat and noise aswell as being failure prone, The new technology in silicon chips makes them faster for read and write aswell as having better workable enviromental paramiters.

- Noia

I just re read the article, I agree with you that EPROM chips may be more suitable, however the article says that they use SDRAM modules which obviously have a battery to keep them refreshed and charged when the unit is unplugged.

SDRAM modules would have a faster accsess time than any E/E-PROM and wouldnt take nearly as long to erase/re-write data.

But you'd have the ever looming threat of all your data dying....a normal HDD now adays has a head write spead of fractions of miliseconds, EEPROM is still faster than that and your data isn't suddenly going to go poof coz the batteries ran out.

I know, but hey, i didnt invent them!!!

I presume that the people who did are using SDRAM modules for a reason!

I would not buy that product.

I dont think would either, even if I could afford it!

Silicon prices are plumeting, it'll be cheap soon, but as SDRAM modules I wouldn't buy it, I'd rather have the EEPROM edition that will undoubtably be made.

A problem with EEPROM ia an EEPROM chip has to be erased and reprogrammed in its entirety, not selectively and can only be erased in bytes. It also has a limited life - that is, the number of times it can be reprogrammed is limited to tens or hundreds of thousands of times.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definit...213928,00.html

Maybe Flash Memory which is a version of EEPROM would be better as data can be erased in blocks instead of bytes

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/...212130,00.html

Although Flash Memory would need to be constantly powered I beleive.