Thinkpads Forum

http://www.dvnation.com/nand-flash-ssd.html has a new line of solid state disks (SSDs) that you can put in a Thinkpad. I'm getting the 16GB version, but they even have a 32GB version out, and 64GB coming this month! According to these guys, the PQI Turbo Industrial Flash Disks use Samsung NANDs, so its like getting the Samung before it comes out next year.
A SSD has no moving parts as it is pure NAND flash memory. <1ms access times. No ventilation required, no altitute restrictions (aviation use!), wider temperature operating environment. Immune to shock and vibration, etc! They have a link to an article where a Samsung SSD beat the heck out of a hard disk in benchmark testing.

A 64GB model is coming out, as well as sata models too, for notebooks. Even a dual-interface drive with IDE on one side, and SATA on the other. This technology is really exciting. Read about it at that site and tell me what you think.

5,000,000 write/erase cycles << how does that compare to regular hard.disks? with windows, you can have firefox or your firewall or whatever loging crap to hdd every second

In general, SSDs are reported to have a life expectancy of at least ten years. I saw some guy do the math on that and it comes out to a normal life span. I can't tell you the number of brand new notebook hard drives that fail within a month or two. A solid state disk cannot break. Even desktop drives are warrantied for no more than 5 years, and while the warrany of an SSD is a year, it should outlast a traditional hard disk.

I'm still not totally convinced by Solid State yet.

Recovering data from a bust Flash drive is way harder than trying to recover a Magnetic disc.

Well recovering from a busted magnetic hard drive costs in excess of $1000 anyway. The solution to any type of storage failure is the same: Backup, backup backup. My question about flash durabilities is this: Is 5,000,000 Read's/Writes referring to separate read/write operations, or 5,000,000 read/write operations to each separate sector on the disk, meaning that you'd have to read every bit of the disk 5 million times before it wears out versus 5 million randomly spaced reads?

SSDs employ a technology called "wear-leveling" to maximize life expectancy. I'm not an engineer, but I can kinda imagine what that means. I'm pretty sure that the 5,000,000 r/w cycles referrs to each block. In any case, I'm sure they will outlast a standard hard drive. They put these things in Mar's Rovers. So you know they are built to outlast a mechanical hard disk.

kulivontot wrote:Well recovering from a busted magnetic hard drive costs in excess of $1000 anyway. <snip>

I am one of those still not sold yet (but will keep informed). Now, whether you have to spend that kind of money for a defective HD is up for comment. I had one from a client that I could not read by any normal means. I elected to purchase SpinRite. That got the data (it took a day of reading), but this is one product that does what is says on the can and is less than 100 dollars. Money well spent. ... JD Hurst

if it performs anything like this one
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/su ... dex.x?pg=1

I'd stay away

NO! NO! NO! Super Talent is JUNK. Completely unstable slow. Anything in that 1/2 price price range is the same OEM drive. You get what you pay for.
Check out THIS PC Mag review of a Samsung engineering sample. The PQI Turbo Instrial line uses Samsung NANDs, so it should perform like this test where the SSD spanked the notebook mechanical hard drive in 5 of 6 tests! http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2006082 ... rld/126833

That link, and more are also on the dvnation website.

IMHO for that money, it's just not worth it. Not to mention for the limited writes you get. It's great technology, but far from mature enough for normal use. It's going to take another 12-48 months before it's ready for prime time. Not even considering it before that.

I wouldn't buy it...yet. However, it's great to know it's being worked on and developed as we speak.

As others have mentioned, the read/write cycles are worrying. The 1 year warranty is insufficient. The hardware is very far from mainstream and unproven somewhat. Data recovery concerns me somewhat. I abuse my CF cards to hell and back...not that I'd do it to a laptop, but; they've been washed, heated, stepped on, thrown, sucked on, chewed, whatever...they keep going. That's great! But once, I believe a Viking brand 32MB card died on me...and nothing would recognize it, period. I lost some stuff that I would've been able to get off a completely dead IDE drive, albiet for many a $.

Great and very promising technology!

A mechanical 7200 RPM drives outputs near 56 MB/second.

The SSD at 30 MB/sec doesn't seem impressive.

"64GB, 2.5" , IDE or SATA , 30MB/s on sata model".

.

you buy it for reasons other than speed

1) reliability
2) seek times

jdhurst wrote:I elected to purchase SpinRite. That got the data (it took a day of reading), but this is one product that does what is says on the can and is less than 100 dollars. Money well spent. ... JD Hurst

That's assuming that the hardware on the drive is still functioning properly. If you have a bad disk head or if the drive physically grinds while running, no software recovery utility will help you out. To get data back in these situations, it requires sending your drive to a clean room facility where they must take apart your drive and move your platters into a new drive. And even then there is no guarantee of a successful recovery. I've looked into these services and they're often in excess of $500-1000. Definitely not feasible for most issues. I would imagine repairing a SSD would be a hell of a lot easier, because in general, not all the blocks on the disk would be completely destroyed, only ones that would wear out. Thus you could probably recover most data under common failures. With a mechanical disk, it's much easier to have a complete hardware failure that makes all data on the disk inaccessible.