HDD

[Ragnar Lonn]

Bob Willcox wrote:

>On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:45:53PM +0100, Alexandre DELAY wrote:
>  
>
>>Don't you think that flash drives are also a good solution?
>>
>>I am sure that it will be the future replacement for hard drive disks.
>>see http://www.memtech.com/ for example
>>
>>With no buffer and 1ms access delay you minimise write failures. It is an
>>interresting solution.
>>    
>>
>
>Hmm, I see no prices listed on the Memtech web site (did I simply
>miss them?). So, what does a 96GB flash drive cost in comparison to a
>magnetic disk hard drive of similar capacity?
>
>Stories of the impending demise of magnetic disk drives have been
>circulating since at least the late '70s (back then I seem to remember
>that bubble and/or CCD memory was to spell their doom). So far, it
>appears that nothing has come along that has been able to compete on a
>cost per byte basis. Flash memory might be the technology to do it, but
>somehow I doubt it.
>  
>

I like to build silent PCs on my spare time and avoiding any moving 
parts is of course
a good way to achieve this goal. This makes me very interested in any 
memory-based
hard disk replacements but so far, they seem to be hideously expensive. 
You have to
pay over $1000 for 8 GB of storage. Multiply that with 10 or so and 
you're likely
to have the cost of that 96GB flash drive.

I too thought that memory disks would take over some five years ago or 
so, but
conventional hard disk technology has managed to stay ahead all the 
time, providing
lots more storage per dollar and often also throughput rates almost 
matching that
of the solid state memories. I think we will see a shift sometime, but 
I've stopped
trying to predict it. Hard disk technology has such a big lead that it 
may take a
while yet, I think.

  /Ragnar