SSD; Which of us will be eilite first?

**Rootstonian** · September 28th, 2008, 11:13 AM

Great write-up in the current Maximum PC on Solid State Drives.

General consensus is that they're still too pricey for mainstream (and too small; most are in the 64 gig size range).

But, no mechanical parts; some estimated MTBF's (mean time between failures) is 60 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!

Less heat, less noise; I'm still a little iffy on the volitilaty of the data; how long will it stay with power off, what happens with a power surge or outage etc.

So guys & gals, who's going to drop $800 (that's low-end; most are double that price) on a 64 gig drive first? LOL

I don't know if I posted this on here when I joined or if it was just talking to other tech guys, but I always have said that your basic OS should be on like an EPROM chip or some such device. Boot time would be like 2 seconds. Maybe SSD is heading us down that way...who knows

**dr_roberts49** · September 28th, 2008, 02:21 PM

I'll take the wait and see approach myself. Remember how expensive it was when the USB flash drives came out? $30 for 256MB. You can get 8GB flash drives now for the same price. I find it interesting how we've gone away from mechanical devices over the years. Think about all the devices that were once mechanical and now have no moving parts.

Robert

**RamonGTP** · September 28th, 2008, 02:35 PM

60 years maybe if you never read/write to it. SSD's have a fininte number of read write cycles before they go bad.

To early for me to jump ship. They need to be cheaper, larger capacity and proven reliable before I start using them.

**Rootstonian** · September 29th, 2008, 08:16 AM

Yes, they do. And from what I've researched, it's anywhere from 10 to 30 years with average use.

The life span is actually based on WRITE cycles, READS are unlimited. A "wear leveling" algorithm is implemented to not have a certain block of the flash drive written to contstantly. (from what I've read-up on them).

I know I'll wait for prices to drop (as they will when supply and demand catches up). Would love to store just the OS on it and then use conventional drives for programs, games and storage

**RamonGTP** · September 29th, 2008, 02:29 PM

Eh, I have a hard time saying any electronic device has "unlimited" anything really.

**ShyguyXPC** · September 29th, 2008, 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by dr_roberts49

I'll take the wait and see approach myself. Remember how expensive it was when the USB flash drives came out? $30 for 256MB. You can get 8GB flash drives now for the same price. I find it interesting how we've gone away from mechanical devices over the years. Think about all the devices that were once mechanical and now have no moving parts.

Robert

Dang I remember paying $50+ for my 16MB Trek Thumbdrive, back when they first came out... (the original Thumbdrives, before everyone started copying it & everyone associated Thumbdrive with any & all USB flash storage sticks), & I was still running Win98

worst part of it, was that for me to use it with Win98 or similar OS, it required me to carry around the "bulky" 3.5" Floppy with the drivers for it on the disk... which was almost pointless for using the thing if I couldn't just plug & play the thing... wasn't till I moved to WinXP that I was really able to use the damned thing & by that time much greater capacity drives had come out for much cheaper.

**Rootstonian** · October 1st, 2008, 08:01 AM

And I think in time, maybe 3-5 years, the capacities will be up there and we'll have a nice LONG-TERM storage device.

I'm paranoid about backups and have images of my computers on at least 3 hard drives be it internal or external. And all important data is burned to DVD; but even a DVD can go bad or get scratched.

It would be cool to write a 500 gig SSD and then have that data available for decades!

**BipolarBill** · October 1st, 2008, 11:08 AM

I shudder at the term "elite". SSDs are not yet proven better. At this point, they are just different. We know nothing about susceptibility to dirty power or possible data corruption from same.

To me, newer is not necessarily better. Remember RDRAM? New technology adopters can be viewed as really cool or really stupid depending. We late adopters are perfectly willing to let the "pioneers" buy the newer tech because it helps get the price down for us. You know what happens to pioneers, right? You can tell who they are by the arrows thru their heads.

**Rootstonian** · October 1st, 2008, 11:13 AM

Agreed 100%...I've always been a late adopter...let the prices fall, let 'em work out the bugs etc.

Yeah, I had a computer that took RAMBUS...I think I traded it for some stuff with JPMiller if I remember correctly