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32 GB flash drives within a year.

extremetech.com — It reads data about 300% faster and writes 150% faster. I long for the day when the only moving part in my computer is a fan.

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  • Daiken, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Interesting, but Flash memory has its drawbacks as well.
    • McGrude, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22Right, like the number of write cycles.
    • SquirrelOnFire, on 10/12/2007, -11/+27And sometimes my Flash player says i need to upgrade it so it will keep play.

      /kidding
    • Fidodo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Well flash drives typically have about 1,000,000 read write cycles. If you access a part of the flash drive 100 times a day it would last about 27 years, much longer than a hard drive would last. The problem occurs with running programs off it like an operating system which might be accessed much more often than that. A temporary solution could be using flash drives for information, like files and such that need the stability of a flash drive, and have a mini hard drive to run programs off of. That way if you have a hard drive failure your files will still be saved on the stable flash drive.
    • transfire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Well, the thing to do is have an equal RAM buffer, so except for the initial read, you do all subsequent reading from there. Then you only need to do writes to the Flash memory.
  • rocke86, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28At tigerdirect they already sell a 32 GB usb flash drive
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2074957
    and a 64 GB one
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2074958

    Cool but too pricey.
    • GrendelT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Wow, then this story is true.
    • palegolas, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Cool, but the 1MB/s write speed isn't that impressive. .. oh, when checking on Kanguru's own site it looks like write speed is 5MB/s and read speed 9MB/s. Not too bad.

      But.. digg this instead:
      http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/06/08/23/apple.32gb.flash.ipods/
      Apparently Intel and Apple are supporting Micron's Flash solution that reportedly is 10 times smaller than today's Flash technologies.. I guess they could produce something that could really compete with harddrives.
    • dralezero, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1BUSlink use to have 32gb and 64gb on their site. They say they do but its not in their list. 20 Mb/s read and 15 Mb/s write
  • rocke86, on 10/12/2007, -42/+2dupe, digg down
    • pcgeek101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Yes indeed, I dugg down your comment and dugg the story.
  • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Not to sound like Bill Gates ("640K is all anyone needs"), but I'm wondering, at least at THIS point in time, what use I or practically any other computer user would have for 32GB on a flash drive. Perhaps people's uses for them are different than mine. I just use them as ways to transfer data from one PC to another (work to home) -- or as a way to take some snapshots over to a friend's place and show them. I have no use to be transferring gigantic files (or huge numbers of files) from work to home, nor am I going to show my friends thousands of snapshots.

    Anybody have a real use for a 32GB flash drive? I'm not asking that rhetorically; I'm genuinely curious to know.
    • GrendelT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I have a USB port on my JVC car stereo. 32Gb would be almost all of my MP3s - so I, for one, would use it for holding music for my stereo.
    • nreynolds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18couldn't these replace hard drives eventually (especially in laptops)?
    • Ashex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I'm one of those crazy guys who runs an OS off their thumbdrive, I have various disk utilities, anti-spyware/virus programs, and some media programs along with portable abi word and portable firefox. I managed to cram this all into a 256 MB thumbdrive, but i sacrifice a lot of good utilities, if i had 32GB, I could create a full fledged OS maintenance/recovery suite that boots off usb!
    • guardian653, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Main reason: Battery life
      Flash drives take so little battery power to operate compared to say a 7200 RPM hard drive. Though I wouldn't use it for anything then OS and Apps---needs more write cycles
    • ViktorVaughn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This has great potential in video and film production. The current state of the art in production flash technology is an 8 gig flash card called a P2 card for the HD Panasonic AG-HVX200 and 2 other professional standard def cameras. It's really just 8 1 gig flash drives crammed together on one card. You can get about 1 min per gig at HD quality, 5 min standard def, which for anything but fictional narrative and commercials is very limiting, plus they cost like $1500 a piece. In the realm of video, especially HD, 32 gigs goes pretty fast.

      This technology and other competing technologies like XDCAM and Blu-Ray will eventually phase out the need for tape media, which is a godsend for production types, especially editing assistants (which I am known to be from time to time). No more 1 to 1 real time capturing or scrubbing back and forth to log. Everything shot is split into separate files by take and can be randomly accessed and just dumped onto a hard drive. Plus no moving parts or tape heads to wear out. You could put a P2 card in a paint mixer while you pull footage off of it with zero loss in quality and zero dropped frames.

      Eventually this technology will make it's way to consumer level products. I can't wait until it gets as cheap as hard drive storage is today.
    • palegolas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I'm an animator, illustrator, graphic designer and hobby musician. I do all my work on a laptop with a 60 MB hard drive. I would love the hard drive to go flash because of read- and write speed, weight, size, heat, power consumption etc. A laptop harddrive would probably equal in size at least 8-16 flash circuits or something like that... perhaps more. When a flash memory is built in it doesn't need the plastic casing and all that, so it can get even smaller. Also there could be high speed flash slots in a laptop where you could insert extra flash hard drives. (Not slow usb flash memories, but the real deal.)

      Flash cards I only use in my phone and cameras. USB flash memories I never use. A speedy internal flash drive I would use all the time if available at an affordable price.
    • harmlessinc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Honestly I didn't think I'd have a reason for the 4gig flash drive I bought last year (which is now selling for only about 75 USD), but after a couple of months I found I was having to delete data off of it because I was running out of room.

      Lots of PC and Network troubleshooting software and I had started to keep VMWare images on it to work with on different workstations. It was much easier than carrying a CD/DVD wallet for the number of disks I would have needed.
    • transfire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Camcorders. Current miniDV tapes hold about 13GB. SO you can that a 32GB flash would be the bomb --no moving parts!
    • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wow, thanks for all the responses. The hard disk replacement is something I didn't really consider (since I thought the speed wouldn't really be good enough due to more write cycles), but I do see the convenience of that. I'm not a big movie fan, so storing movies doesn't interest me (and if it did, I'd probably just store them on the internal hard disk of my laptop rather than on a USB key), though I see how it could be pretty cool for certain uses.

      For now, for my own uses, I usually have trouble filling up a 1GB stick. I use my iPod for music, camera flash cards/readers for my photos, etc. But I do see now that for some uses, it would do well.
    • AngryBoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@Wavey

      The military has thousands of uses for these devices. Ever thought about what would happen if you put a normal hard drive in a F-22? The G-forces would destroy the platters in seconds. That's why the F-22 uses all solid-state flash memory. Also, flash would be ideal for satellites because it uses less power and it wouldn't be as prone to failure in the extreme cold of space.

      Basically anywhere vibration or extreme environments would destroy platters is where flash drives will be used.
    • Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yeah, you're right, but I was solely asking about normal uses for the average computer user.
  • KenMo, on 10/12/2007, -17/+4I blame Bush
  • treelovinhippie, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4I long for the day when my computer is hard-wired into my brain and I can stream information from around the Net directly into my thoughts... and can view it all through my eyes.
    • Ashex, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28And then I haxx0r your brain and make you see tubgirl when you look at your wife!
    • Araya213, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13OMG now that would just be ***** cruel! That settles it, I will never get a brain chip.
    • bejitunksu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I have to say, I lol'd damn hard at this thread.
    • Murdats, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2And we could call this new neural internet "The Link" and have it based off an artificial inteligence so it can take care are us and itself
  • ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Still not big enough for my MP3 collection. :( Be a while before they pop up in an iPoo.
  • negativenancy, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2Another nail in PS3's coffin LOL
    • nreynolds, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5.... makes sense.....
      oh wait, what i meant to say is: not funny. stupid comment. you are probably of low intellect. go away.
    • negativenancy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1UR JUST JELOS THAT WII60 PWNS SONY SONY SUX LMAO LOL NINTENDO 360 FOREVER HAHAHAH SONY IS GAY I HATE SONY. WII FOREVER LOL [/digg user]



      I love digg.

  • cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6And I long for the day when the only moving part in my computer is NOT a fan.
  • uuuuut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The flashtop seems pretty stupid and overpriced, but they really ought to be talking about using this technology for high-end audio and video recording.

    32 GB of flash storage would accommodate 10 hours of high quality, 8 channel audio or 3 hours of DV footage. Oh god, I want it.
  • komputes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Samsung's Q30-SSD: Look ma, no moving parts!
  • UnseenLlama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"I long for the day when the only moving part in my computer is a fan"...

    Something tells me with a flash drive and lower heat output from processors, you won't even need a fan. :-)
  • dubbin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"I long for the day when the only moving part in my computer is a fan"

    What a half-assed longing. That's like saying "I long for a day when there's a computer in every home except one".

    I want no fans in my computer!
  • CyberGhost, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I can't wait for the day when Flash drives replace hard drives! will be so awesome, I'll probably get 2 100gb flashers, one for the os, the other one for the apps, and I'll probably throw in a 1TB hard drive too for all kinds of things
  • Arawn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I long for the day the only moving part on my computer is the optical drive tray. And it seems it might not be so far away after all.
  • iXneonXi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Well if you don't want a fan you can always switch to liquid cooling.
  • ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Uh...they are talking about Solid State drives with are different from everyday run of the mill flash drives. The SS drives aren't limited in the same way as flash drives.
  • smohan123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I hope this'll be the death of mini HDD-based mp3 players. Apple iPods break so often -- I work for the Geek Squad, so I see them come in for service all the time -- and it's mostly because of the hard drive getting messed up when they get dropped or from excessive movement when are on (or because of the battery, but that's a separate can of worms). Flash memory seems to be much more durable and seems to eliminate many of the downsides of conventional hard drives. Hopefully the capacity will be up to snuff, though. I have about 70 GB of music on my computer (and growing), so having to pick and choose what to put on a given mp3 player is frustrating.
  • Resilient, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I have to say I agree with Fidodo. That's a great concept.
  • Recluse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Hmm maybe I should wait to buy an MP3 player.
  • greyhacker45, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2So many people are in a rush to dump hard drives in favor of solid state. While solid state has some definite advantages, hard drives aren't dead yet. We will have to see solid state jump above 100 GB to see a mass adoption. I know that I personally couldn't fit even my music on just 32 GB. However, I long for the day when the lights don't dim because the hard drives are spinning up.
  • grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Most current file systems are designed with hard drive characteristics in mind. Hard drives are significantly faster on the outer tracks than the inner tracks. Most file systems attempt to use and reuse space in the outer tracks because this gives the best performance. This works quite nicely for hard disks, but can seriously reduce the lifespan of flash memory. Ideally, you want a uniform write pattern for flash memory.

    On the other hand, hard drives have bearings, and in cheap consumer drives these have a limited lifespan. In fact one of the problems with external hard drive enclosures is that many of them (particularly the cheaper ones) don't spin down which leads to unnecessary wear and tear on the hard drive. So providing the write cycles managed well, there is no reason why solid state memory could not be even more reliable than hard drives.

    Laptops are the most obvious place for the technology to start to take a hold. The form factor is a lot more flexible than hard drives, allowing them to become smaller. They draw less power giving more battery life. Laptop hard drives are both smaller and slower than their desktop and server counterparts, which add together to make solid state storage a good solution.

    Although hard drives are cheaper 'per Gigabyte', a 32 GB solid state drive in a laptop is still large enough for most people. It would be foolish to assume people will stop buying hard drives in the near future, but it would be equally foolish to assume we will not see hard drive free computers start to become popular. I don't think their is a magic capacity where mass adoption will take place, it will be a steady trend. Regardless of the capacity, hard drives have a fixed base price because you have the parts, controller chips and assembly. Solid state drives are cheaper at lower capacities. It is cheaper to manufacture a 1GB solid state chip than a 1GB hard drive.

    I have used a solid state computer running Windows XP Embedded in my work lab, and it is pretty amazing, even though it only had about 600MB once the OS and everything was installed. Indeed the only noise was the fan, slightly exagerated because the form factor of the machine meant it was a small fan. It is certainly possible to implement a thin workstation on such a capacity, and with 8GB you are looking at a basic office computer with OS / Office / Email / Web (documents stored on a file-server). It will be a little while before we hit the high capacity required for multimedia storage at the same price as a hard drive, so in the short to mid term hard drives will still be around. Longer term they will have a more restricted niche (your Dell or Mac won't ship with a hard drive unless you specifically ask, and most people wont need to ask).
  • TheZorch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1People are forgetting that this technology is improving all the time. The next generation of Flash Memory will likely lhave no read/write limitations like current flash memory. This will open the door for hybrid hard drive to replace existing drives. I look forward to computers with fewer moving parts.
  • funduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1...fan...?
  •  

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