Report: SSDs Can't Replace HDDs

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SSDs are definetly not for swap files. That is a big no no.

The two biggest downfalls of SSDs are cost and lifespan. Cost will go down slowly but surely. I'm not sure about lifespan.

I do tech support for a company that just released new laptops with SSDs. We are not allowed to run a chkdsk on them as that will add a tremendous amount of wear on them.

This is good technology if they can get the lifespan part right. I think I will wait for next generation SSDs before spending more on one than a GPU or CPU. I want it to be an OS install and right now they suck for that purpose due to the constant writes that will reduce the lifespan to a couple of years at most.

We have over 5k of them deployed right now. I'll give you an update if I see any trends.
 
"use single/multi-layer cell"
that should be s/m-level-c, at it refers to how many (as a power of 2) discrete level bands are used in a single storage cell

"128-bit AES encryption that has been officially registered with the US government (FIPS PUB 197)"
back-door anyone?
 
I think its Andy Cordial who is "doomed to failure", especially when in 24 months time SSD drives will cover 50% of all notebooks being sold.

You, sir, are a bloody idiot... along with whoever gives you your paycheck!
 
[citation][nom]Tindytim[/nom]So the only issues are the limited number of writes...[/citation]
I don't recall the numbers but I recall one estimate that if it were written to non-stop you wouldn't get to the mtbf number for 10 years. I imagine that was calculated at 100MB/s or something so ymmv depending on drive specs.
 
What a bunch of misinformation, I wonder who's paying them? On top of what has already been commented here, the number of write cycles mentioned is very misleading.

That 50k-100k is per FLASH IC sector, but there's something that goes on inside these drives called wear leveling which moves often written data (like the FAT) to less written sectors so they don't wear our a single sector. For example if the 16GB SSD is made up of 128kB sectors then it has 125,000 sectors each with 50k-100k write cycles, so in theory you can do 125,000 sectors x 50,000 cycles = 6.25 billion write cycles. This isn't just theory, I've tested longevity on 128MB Compact FLASH cards and even they were able to endure millions of writes to the same ATA logical sector.

So SSDs may not replace every laptop application out there as few technologies can, but they will replace most in a very short time.
 
Typical performance of SSD for last 19 months & unforetunately, that terrible. Company at this late date be better of figuring out if OCZ new Mock up prototype actually gets 400 Mb/s into main or how to step up with 10 or even 30 lines into SSD each with 20-40 Mb/s capability. added together. right now, featured unit is still using ver. 0, so to speak of quite few revisions needed SSD technology.

Signed😛HYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART von DRASHEK M.D.
 
This story isn't entirely correct.. check MLC lifetime, and ruggedized drives..
 
I would rather just deal with the limited capacity until an extremely cheap external drive comes out. But its easier just to keep large files on my desktop and only put what I need on a notebook. I'm sure some people could never properly manage a 60GB SSD, but its not a problem for me. But I simply will not accept the performance of any 2.5" magnetic hard drive. If people didnt want to pay more money for better performance, then why does intel sell so many T9600s when a T8100 would suffice? In fact the average user would rarely even perceive the difference between those two processors, despite the $350 price difference. Yet people pony up the dough for those kinds of upgrades ALL the time. Even just half of that money spent on a good SSD upgrade delivers much more notable performance.
 
I wonder if Origin Storage realizes that we really don't care what they think? SSD drives are very very new and have a lot of growing room (pun sort of intended...) SSD will probably lag behind platter drives for space/cost ratios for a very long time, but in the end the cost difference will be so small it won't matter. After installing an SSD drive into my laptop, I'm not going to buy another platter based drive for a system's main hard drive ever again. It's that good.
 
I don't understand the point of this article.

A small-name company launches products with ho-hum specs. A person nobody has ever heard of from a group nobody is familiar with makes the absurd claim that magnetic storage will always be the dominant storage device in laptops because it is "flexible" and has great longevity. Tom's Hardware chooses to draw attention to obscure news and bickering for reasons which escape everyone.

I'm confused, because I was under the impression that SSDs were more rugged as they don't have moving parts with the potential to collide with each other and destroy your data. Also, I thought that access time and lack of noise were two big pros for SSDs, and these weren't mentioned at all.

I'm really puzzled about various specs and statements given here, though. See, by my calculations, at 55 MB/sec it would take 1.9 to 3.8 years to fill the drive with data 50,000 to 100,000 times over. Even with constant writing to the system disk, which no reasonable laptop would do, the drive should last longer than the practical lifespan of the laptop. Laptops aren't supposed to be working 24 hours a day for 4 years, they're supposed to be on < 8 hours a day for 3 years.

Also curious about the storage and speed figures. The drives I'm looking at are 128+ GB and advertise well over 200 MB/sec and 100 MB/sec for read and write, a far cry from the 64 GB and 95/55 that TDK is claiming. Why are their specs so low? Was this article written in 2007?

You guys can have fun with your magnetic hard drives. I'll be rockin' with one or two 128s or 256s in RAID with .1 ms access times, 400 MB/sec and no moving parts or noise. Watch out for head crashes.
 
I'm so tired of reading these articles. ssds are good hard drives are better blah blah we know. ssds have the wicked fast access times and hard drives are cheaper, and offer better capacities. What ever happened to hybrid drives using both technologies?
 
@twile: about the speculations over lifetime:
Write amplification is worsening a lot the reality, over simplified theoretical "estimations". The block to be erased is much larger than the sector written, thus scattered writes, in different blocks, will have as effect the erasing of a number of blocks, just to write a number of sectors, thus greatly reducing the "optimistic" simplified calculations.
The same effect is affecting also real write speed, as a whole block must be read, erased, and rewritten for updating just a sector. Wear leveling algorithms are worsening performance even more, to enhance drive (global) lifetime, as more data is pushed around.
 
[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]So, um, TDK basically announced they made a line of SSDs that can compete with HDDs from about 10 years ago in capacity and performance, but with the brand new (read: 6-yera old) SATA interface that every other SDD already uses?Is the revelation here supposed to be that TDK is supporting extended SATA features such as hot-swap, etc... that other SDDs don't yet support? I'm sort of confused, because there is no such thing as SATA II.It must be my ignorance, but other than the hardware security these sound like pretty mediocre drives (down right pathetic when capacity is taken into account).[/citation]

yes there is a SATA II. Its the common naming that has been given to SATA Gen 2 AKA SATA 3.0Gb/s.

SATA III, AKA SATA 6.0Gb/s, will be out soon. SATA itself was 1.5Gb/s. So with each GEN they double the interface speeds with plans up to SATA 12.0Gb/s.
 
[citation][nom]dillon_99[/nom]I'm willing to bet that some company is going to come out with a HYBRID drive that has BOTH SSD and HDD technology inside![/citation]

Believe samsung tried that with there HDD's - spinning down to save power and storing changes to a Flash like segment etc - didnt go anywhere tho as far as i am aware.
 
[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]Believe samsung tried that with there HDD's - spinning down to save power and storing changes to a Flash like segment etc - didnt go anywhere tho as far as i am aware.[/citation]
It'd still be worth it though if they made it in a different way. Imagine a 320gb 2½" drive with a 32gb flash drive built in that you'd use for os. Obviously that won't work with sata2 as you can only have one 'drive' per cable, but I suppose there'll be options in sata3 or sata4 for that.
 
Yeah, likes it so hard to make a "rugged" metal case SSD? And sometimes metal doesn't make it stonger... best it be soft-rubber to absorb a fall.

SSDs are were HDs were in the 1980s, actually ramping up far better.
My first HD was a used $100 100mb drive! I have several Flash-drive keys, 1-4GB each that nowadays costs about $5~20. My 1998 HD was only a 2GB $275 drive!

SSD will:
A - get better life-span (a must)
B - better multi/random-access (their worst performance issue)
C - more capacity
D - Lower price
E - Even faster performance.

A $200 120GB SSD drive would be a dream for a notebook. When they have $100~150 500GB SSDs, the HDD market will really be taking a hit.
 
The tipical SSD always must to have two differents ways to reach the our happiness, this ways calls -Faster Performance- -robust case- I think that We can't wish imposible. The price and capacity don't be a good friends :)
 
"SSD's limited capacity range--from 1 GB to 64 GB--"

What year is this guy living in? there are SSDs with a capacity of 128, 256, 512 GB and even 1 TB.
 
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