just curious... solid state hard drives

[Matthew]

other than cost/GB are there any other problems that I should be aware of
with these new drives? I see that there are a lot of smaller memory
companies that are now turning these out in addition to the major
manufacturers with slightly lower costs like with flash memory...

Also... how do they stack up in performance compaired to say a WD 10k Raptor
drive? (I'm about to google this, but thought I'd ask in here as well)

 

[Paul]

other than cost/GB are there any other problems that I should be aware of
with these new drives? I see that there are a lot of smaller memory
companies that are now turning these out in addition to the major
manufacturers with slightly lower costs like with flash memory...

Also... how do they stack up in performance compaired to say a WD 10k Raptor
drive? (I'm about to google this, but thought I'd ask in here as well)

1) High cost
2) Good read performance, bad write performance (anywhere from 3 to
100 writes per second, without a caching driver of some sort).
3) MLC versus SLC. MLC offers better density than SLC, but has
poorer write cycle limitations (wearout). SLC might also be faster
to complete a write. Many "cheap" products may use MLC, with
complaints from users about them. Wear leveling algorithms are
what makes these things even begin to be viable.

http://mtron.easyco.com/news/papers/07-12-01_mtron-benchmarks.pdf

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3167&p=2

Check the reviews on Newegg, to spot the garbage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16820208317

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16820609302

Paul

 

[Matthew]

read all about it
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/enterprise-flash-ssd,1971.html

Thanks to both of you!