Comments on: An SSD For The Rest Of Us http://storagemojo.com/2006/10/20/an-ssd-for-the-rest-of-us/ Data storage info & analysis Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:10:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Miro http://storagemojo.com/2006/10/20/an-ssd-for-the-rest-of-us/#comment-6849 Miro Sun, 22 Oct 2006 06:18:54 +0000 http://storagemojo.com/?p=282#comment-6849 The killer application for SSD is probably in mobile devices. That seems to be the driving force for SSDs, at least so far. HDDs and mobile computing (is there other type now?) do not mix. Have you dropped your 30GB iPod on the floor recently, or used your 'working horse' notebook on the table in moving train/plane? It is not funny! There is a business case for SSD - it will be everywhere, GPSs, cell phones, players, TVs with DVR, web and file servers, notebooks, toasters... did I miss anything? If I was a HDD manufacturer I would be seriously worried. The only thing that can keep them alive is the lower price for HDDs compared to SSDs, but not for long. I really hope Samsung will drop the prices for the SSDs real soon now, after all, there is market waiting for it! Although recently they pleaded guilty on RAM prices fixing...so... I don't know. There are still some issues with SSD though, no OS knows how to handle them properly, and there are just a few flash optimized file systems (for Linux) - more like proof of the concept, but they will catch up. ZFS looks like it will be able to work with SSD just fine. Micro$soft's Vista will try to boot 'faster' from hybrid flash drive cache - only to boot, probably because NTFS is just a thing from the past (I loved your article - 'Bring me the head of WinFS's project' :) I read somewhere about hypothetic Google OS, it is suppose to be optimized to work exclusively with flash, and boot from USB flash drives. You plug in the Google USB flash, boot, and there you go, all your email, calendar, office tools - online, on demand. No licensing fees, no 'genuine advantage'... infect me with all the viruses you want - I will reimage the flash. What I really liked is Tom's Hardware charts... web server's benchmark is just sweet! Given the nature of web servers - read only files - a flash drive will probably last 'forever'. There is a limit on r/w cycles for flash, but the limit for just read cycles should be much bigger, right? Not much corp. web sites are bigger than 8GB, it makes me wonder why am I still using HDDs for web servers. What I really hope is one day SSDs to get into the file servers! That will save so much space and power. Sun's Thumper with its ~70kg will look like a dinosaur from the Jurassic period of the storage. "- Look son, we used to use these for storage... -geee dad, how did you survive as an IT guy in that era?" :) The killer application for SSD is probably in mobile devices. That seems to be the driving force for SSDs, at least so far. HDDs and mobile computing (is there other type now?) do not mix. Have you dropped your 30GB iPod on the floor recently, or used your ‘working horse’ notebook on the table in moving train/plane? It is not funny!

There is a business case for SSD - it will be everywhere, GPSs, cell phones, players, TVs with DVR, web and file servers, notebooks, toasters… did I miss anything?

If I was a HDD manufacturer I would be seriously worried. The only thing that can keep them alive is the lower price for HDDs compared to SSDs, but not for long.

I really hope Samsung will drop the prices for the SSDs real soon now, after all, there is market waiting for it! Although recently they pleaded guilty on RAM prices fixing…so… I don’t know.

There are still some issues with SSD though, no OS knows how to handle them properly, and there are just a few flash optimized file systems (for Linux) - more like proof of the concept, but they will catch up.

ZFS looks like it will be able to work with SSD just fine. Micro$soft’s Vista will try to boot ‘faster’ from hybrid flash drive cache - only to boot, probably because NTFS is just a thing from the past (I loved your article - ‘Bring me the head of WinFS’s project’ :)

I read somewhere about hypothetic Google OS, it is suppose to be optimized to work exclusively with flash, and boot from USB flash drives. You plug in the Google USB flash, boot, and there you go, all your email, calendar, office tools - online, on demand. No licensing fees, no ‘genuine advantage’… infect me with all the viruses you want - I will reimage the flash.

What I really liked is Tom’s Hardware charts… web server’s benchmark is just sweet! Given the nature of web servers - read only files - a flash drive will probably last ‘forever’. There is a limit on r/w cycles for flash, but the limit for just read cycles should be much bigger, right?

Not much corp. web sites are bigger than 8GB, it makes me wonder why am I still using HDDs for web servers.

What I really hope is one day SSDs to get into the file servers! That will save so much space and power. Sun’s Thumper with its ~70kg will look like a dinosaur from the Jurassic period of the storage. “- Look son, we used to use these for storage… -geee dad, how did you survive as an IT guy in that era?” :)

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