Flash Hard Drive in a Thinkpad?

[BigWarpGuy]

Could one use a flash hard drive in a Thinkpad?
http://www.bitmicro.com/products_edisk_35_ide.php
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/storag ... 739,00.htm

[matman]

Pros:
- performance
- power saving
- thermal/acoustic performance

Cons:
- expensive
- low data density
- really expensive per MB

It is technically possible to create a flash SSD that wipes the floor with current hard drives in all respects except for data density. Unfortunately current products are not the floor wipers you might expect. The material I have seen for current generation flash SSDs tout "high performance" with sustained transfer rates of "up to" 65MB/sec (writes are slower). Bitmicro quotes 14 - 28 MB/sec. This is, at best, merely on par with todays desktop hard drives. Random access times are much more impressive but of limited use in typical single user duties where transfer rates have a bigger impact on overall disk performance.

The real killer is of course the cost per megabyte, which must have improved a lot over the last few years on account of the boom in nand flash production. It's pretty hard to find comparitive pricing on the internet but my rough guess is about that flash SSD products are about 50-100 times more expensive per MB than HDDs.

Things may be set to change in the coming months though. Intel's Robson technology and hybrid flash-magnetic drives may be in products on shelves as early as the release of Windows Vista. I expect the exposure of flash products in the consumer HDD market will trigger a round of R&D that will result in the next generation HDD product we have been waiting for. The next WD Raptor killer might be a pure flash SSD but more probably will be a hybrid.

To answer your question from a mechanical perspective... There are various products packaged in a 2.5" HDD form factor that could fit in the HDD bay or second HDD ultrabay adapter. The catch is that the height limit for both is 9.5mm and most SSD products are thicker than that, up to 2 inches. The ones that are under that height are limited to about 8GB.

The Samsung drive you link to showcases bleeding edge 16Gb nand flash silicon and like all coming-real-soon-and-better-than-everything-else products I want it now!!

Can you use it in a ThinkPad? Assuming it is ATA/SATA compliant and conforms to standard 2.5" or 1.8" dimensions and is actually made available for consumer purchase and you can afford the 4 or 5 digit price...

Sure! Probably.

[BigWarpGuy]

Thank you for the information. It is very informative. Eventually they not get better and lower in cost. One article shows it is ide. I try to find a bargain or wait till the newer ones come out which the not so new ones come down in price.