Researchers Discover Way to Extend HDD Storage 5X

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]tridon[/nom]Reading this I cannot help but being excited about the new Velociraptor that WD hopefully will make and release next year, or the new Barracuda from Seagate (if there is one in the works). I just love the old HDD-technology, and the progression we are still seeing after all these years.[/citation]VelociRaptor is going the way of the dinosaurs if they don't evolve it. 😉 Seriously, as someone that has owned 3 different VRs, they don't have much of a place anymore in their current form. They cost too much to be used for mass-storage, and they're not fast enough to compete with SSDs for a boot/programs drive. They're pinched between modern SSDs and their slower (cheaper) HDD brethren.

Now, if they make a really good hybrid drive (like the latest Momentus XT only much better) and fit it in a 3.5" form factor (2.5" mechanical drive encased in a heatsink/SSD combo assembly), they might have something. Especially if it has a large SSD cache with a good controller, capable of caching writes and intelligently updating the cache seamlessly in the background (software-independent too). Otherwise? It's a goner.

 

[danwat1234]

[citation][nom]alextheblue[/nom]VelociRaptor is going the way of the dinosaurs if they don't evolve it. Seriously, as someone that has owned 3 different VRs, they don't have much of a place anymore in their current form. They cost too much to be used for mass-storage, and they're not fast enough to compete with SSDs for a boot/programs drive. They're pinched between modern SSDs and their slower (cheaper) HDD brethren.Now, if they make a really good hybrid drive (like the latest Momentus XT only much better) and fit it in a 3.5" form factor (2.5" mechanical drive encased in a heatsink/SSD combo assembly), they might have something. Especially if it has a large SSD cache with a good controller, capable of caching writes and intelligently updating the cache seamlessly in the background (software-independent too). Otherwise? It's a goner.[/citation]

I would love to see desktop form factor hybrid drives. Yup Velociraptor with 32GB of flash would kick butt.

 

[hannibal]

Well, even if you don't need more capasity, it is better to get it in smaller space. You need less blatters, and that means less heat and by that better reliability. But yeah. Some people never need more that 256 Gb of storage space... or do they...
🙂

 

[flowingbass]

I just started jumping on the ssd bandwagon a few months ago. after i got to play around with my first ssd equipped pc i fell inlove with it. and in three months time after i had a taste of ssd, i upgraded all my systems with ssds. making all ex-boot drive hdd as program drives. Yeah reinstalling OS and programs are a chore, requiring a week worth of time to be devoted to it but once you set everything up the way it used to be, everything is just amazing with ssds. And thanks to win 7 you never ever will find the need to format your system.

And one good point is that low memory systems are just begging to be paired with an ssd. my girlfriend has a laptop with a soldered on memory of just 2gb. And the default hdd was kept being hammered from swap file accesses. slowing her laptop to a real crawl. like i mean, the cpu was just idling at 0-10% just waiting data to be fed from the chugging hdd.

now after the ssd upgrade, her cpu is now her laptop's bottleneck.

 

[David Zember]

[citation][nom]CaptainTom[/nom]See. I still can't justify an SSD. My PC boots up in 40 seconds, and my games load in 5 seconds. Why do I need more than that now? I will get an SSD when 1 TB is $100. But by then I would probably require at least 2 TB...[/citation]

(facepalm*

 

[bunz_of_steel]

HDD vs SSD well ... that's a mute point. Only N00b5 argue a HDD is "better" than SSD. HDD gr8 for space, performance SSD wins hands down it's a no brainer and proven time and time again. Boot time is not the reason to buy SSD unless your like my motherinlaw who still uses AOL and thinks Internet Explorer IS THE INTERNET. I would have liked to read some specs on this HDD like possible performance read/writes and actual usable disk space.

 

[mynith]

I see a lot of people talking about how everyone NEEDS an SSD, but that isn't really true, is it? My pc caches a great many things in RAM and every application I launch starts up without delay. Granted, boot-up isn't very quick, but who turns their computer completely off anyway?

 

[nukemaster]

I see a lot of people talking about how everyone NEEDS an SSD, but that isn't really true, is it? My pc caches a great many things in RAM and every application I launch starts up without delay. Granted, boot-up isn't very quick, but who turns their computer completely off anyway?

I personally have a SSD(Windows + programs/games) + HDD(documents/desktop/video/music/download/ect) solution and it works great. I recently moved most of the HDD contents off to a network disk so ALL my systems have the same files. Even with Windows caching, The SSD gave a noticeable improvement in many programs(More than I thought it would to be honest. It is still not the everything is instant for EVERYTHING, but still much faster).

 

[mynith]

I personally have a SSD(Windows + programs/games) + HDD(documents/desktop/video/music/download/ect) solution and it works great. I recently moved most of the HDD contents off to a network disk so ALL my systems have the same files. Even with Windows caching, The SSD gave a noticeable improvement in many programs(More than I thought it would to be honest. It is still not the everything is instant for EVERYTHING, but still much faster).

Maybe it's because I run Linux that caching works very well, because I run a fairly lightweight distro. I'd have an SSD too if I they were cheaper, but when I configured my computer I had a maximum budget in mind of €1000 and I thought it was better spent elsewhere. Of course, moments later I heard of Intel Smart Cache, which makes this whole ssd thing a lot more attractive. Shame my machine doesn't support it. But I reckon this laptop will serve me well for at least another two years, until I graduate, and probably longer still. Maybe when my harddrives get full I might replace them with Momentus XT's, but not now.

 

[nukemaster]

I personally have a SSD(Windows + programs/games) + HDD(documents/desktop/video/music/download/ect) solution and it works great. I recently moved most of the HDD contents off to a network disk so ALL my systems have the same files. Even with Windows caching, The SSD gave a noticeable improvement in many programs(More than I thought it would to be honest. It is still not the everything is instant for EVERYTHING, but still much faster).

Maybe it's because I run Linux that caching works very well, because I run a fairly lightweight distro. I'd have an SSD too if I they were cheaper, but when I configured my computer I had a maximum budget in mind of €1000 and I thought it was better spent elsewhere. Of course, moments later I heard of Intel Smart Cache, which makes this whole ssd thing a lot more attractive. Shame my machine doesn't support it. But I reckon this laptop will serve me well for at least another two years, until I graduate, and probably longer still. Maybe when my harddrives get full I might replace them with Momentus XT's, but not now.

In 2 years, maybe more ssd's will fit into the €1000 budget as well. I would not tell anyone to upgrade if they are happy with the current performance they get. The Momentus XT has already increased the ssd cache size once, maybe when you get one of those, it will be even better. Technology moves very fast.

 

[mynith]

In 2 years, maybe more ssd's will fit into the €1000 budget as well. I would not tell anyone to upgrade if they are happy with the current performance they get. The Momentus XT has already increased the ssd cache size once, maybe when you get one of those, it will be even better. Technology moves very fast.

That's what I'm hoping for, yes. Especially since, if you run two of them in RAID0, and if they do indeed double the cache again to 16GB, you essentially get 32 GB of cache, or at least, I hope that's how it works. In a laptop that doesn't have an mSATA-slot, that seems like a very attractive upgrade to me.

 

[nukemaster]

In 2 years, maybe more ssd's will fit into the €1000 budget as well. I would not tell anyone to upgrade if they are happy with the current performance they get. The Momentus XT has already increased the ssd cache size once, maybe when you get one of those, it will be even better. Technology moves very fast.

That's what I'm hoping for, yes. Especially since, if you run two of them in RAID0, and if they do indeed double the cache again to 16GB, you essentially get 32 GB of cache, or at least, I hope that's how it works. In a laptop that doesn't have an mSATA-slot, that seems like a very attractive upgrade to me.

If it works anything like Intel SRT(caching blocks and not the files them selves) then yes it will give you extra cache

 

[InvalidError]

I wonder when SSDs will hit a similar wall.

Flash manufacturers are already worrying about the reliability and speed of higher density chips - you have to handle future multi-level cells containing only a few hundreds electrons a lot more carefully than today's chips with thousands of electrons per cell.

Because of the inherent problems to cramming more bits in smaller cells containing fewer electrons, most of the focus is shifting towards cell stacking instead of shrinking. Once cell stacking is mastered, there will be almost no limit to how many GBs they can cram in one chip.