DWatch: Very true. In OSX's Disk Utility, the standard "Erase" Simply writes Zeros to all bits on the disk. However the magnetic characteristics of an HD Platter allow special equipment to be able to see where the 1's obviouslty used to be. Hence there is also a 7-pass delete, and a 35-pass! delete option for the paranoid! (obviously takes 35x as long to format)
If there were a way to put only the software on the flash drive (system files, executables for the OS and programs), it wouldn't be so bad. Put all the scratch files, registry, data, etc. (anything repeatedly rewritten) on a spinning hard disk drive.If that could be done, it would be great.
Better yet, put at least 2GB of RAM into the thing and run the temp and scratch files off a RAMdisk. By the time 32GB flash drives become a reality, so will 2GB of RAM be the norm.
Most computer NAND Flash memory is at about 100,000 write cycles. But, let's go-ahead and assume they have it up to a reliable 500,000 write cycles.1) In Windows and other operating systems, some specific areas of the disk are constantly updated. They will fail relatively quickly unless a MAJOR effort is undertaken to revamp the OS architecture. There will also probably be a considerable period of maturation time before such an OS revision is stable enough to be used with important data. Personally, I wouldn't touch it or recommend it to clients for at least 2 years after it comes out.2) What is going to reliably prevent some virus, piece of spyware, adware, etc. from spawning processes that are designed to do nothing but continually write to your storage and "wear" it out prematurely? How would an AV tool distinguish between a legitimate program that must perform frequent storage I/O and a virus that does exactly the same thing? Remember that in this case such a virus is not doing anything that corrupts data...it's just performing normal I/O operations...that will eventually result in failed or re-allocated memory cells.3) What is going to prevent some poorly written or malfunctioning piece of regular software from spawning processes that continually write to your storage? A single process could perform 100's of thousands of writes very quickly. Some of these writes could be highly localized. I've seen such failures happen in virtually every OS I've used.Any of these events could rather quickly take a significant portion of your storage media to end-of-life, or force the OS to re-allocate the storage to another region of memory...effectively continuing to shrink the size of your "disk".Because the memory hardware will be compromised if something like this goes wrong, you won't be able to simply reinstall the software. Under such conditions, the lifetime of this "disk" could be measured in days or weeks, not years.
Does anyone here have any insider news from Samsung about when the solid state notebooks will go into production? Looking to pick up a notebook, but am waiting for a solid state unit to be released...
I just saw an add for 12GB of flash memory for $99. That would make 36GB of memory come in at around $300. It looks like the price has already dropped to a third of the $900 for 32GB in this model!
the_snitchMar 11, 2006
DWatch: Very true. In OSX's Disk Utility, the standard "Erase" Simply writes Zeros to all bits on the disk. However the magnetic characteristics of an HD Platter allow special equipment to be able to see where the 1's obviouslty used to be. Hence there is also a 7-pass delete, and a 35-pass! delete option for the paranoid! (obviously takes 35x as long to format)
petronskiMar 11, 2006
If there were a way to put only the software on the flash drive (system files, executables for the OS and programs), it wouldn't be so bad. Put all the scratch files, registry, data, etc. (anything repeatedly rewritten) on a spinning hard disk drive.If that could be done, it would be great.
elranzerMar 12, 2006
Better yet, put at least 2GB of RAM into the thing and run the temp and scratch files off a RAMdisk. By the time 32GB flash drives become a reality, so will 2GB of RAM be the norm.
acidosisMar 12, 2006
@ elranzer- don't you think they're trying? It's up to about 500,000 read/write now.
ulbrachtMar 23, 2006
Most computer NAND Flash memory is at about 100,000 write cycles. But, let's go-ahead and assume they have it up to a reliable 500,000 write cycles.1) In Windows and other operating systems, some specific areas of the disk are constantly updated. They will fail relatively quickly unless a MAJOR effort is undertaken to revamp the OS architecture. There will also probably be a considerable period of maturation time before such an OS revision is stable enough to be used with important data. Personally, I wouldn't touch it or recommend it to clients for at least 2 years after it comes out.2) What is going to reliably prevent some virus, piece of spyware, adware, etc. from spawning processes that are designed to do nothing but continually write to your storage and "wear" it out prematurely? How would an AV tool distinguish between a legitimate program that must perform frequent storage I/O and a virus that does exactly the same thing? Remember that in this case such a virus is not doing anything that corrupts data...it's just performing normal I/O operations...that will eventually result in failed or re-allocated memory cells.3) What is going to prevent some poorly written or malfunctioning piece of regular software from spawning processes that continually write to your storage? A single process could perform 100's of thousands of writes very quickly. Some of these writes could be highly localized. I've seen such failures happen in virtually every OS I've used.Any of these events could rather quickly take a significant portion of your storage media to end-of-life, or force the OS to re-allocate the storage to another region of memory...effectively continuing to shrink the size of your "disk".Because the memory hardware will be compromised if something like this goes wrong, you won't be able to simply reinstall the software. Under such conditions, the lifetime of this "disk" could be measured in days or weeks, not years.
pizpumpApr 1, 2006
Does anyone here have any insider news from Samsung about when the solid state notebooks will go into production? Looking to pick up a notebook, but am waiting for a solid state unit to be released...
wkbarnettSep 20, 2006
I just saw an add for 12GB of flash memory for $99. That would make 36GB of memory come in at around $300. It looks like the price has already dropped to a third of the $900 for 32GB in this model!
jbiggs12May 28, 2007
Just wait until you see the price tag...<a class="user" href="http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=SSD32G-2.5&c=fr&pid=bef56ca13e9439701b989ea2682b13703bc37d4ca425576df63f8c533cc554fb">http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=SSD32G-2.5&c=fr&pid=bef56ca13e9439701b989ea2682b13703bc37d4ca425576df63f8c533cc554fb</a>Considering that, I'll stick to hard drives for now until the price gets, maybe $300 LOWER!?!?
Closed AccountDec 23, 2008
samsung does a goood job. i like samsung laptop brand. used well and nice looking.<a class="user" href="http://www.babatek.com">http://www.babatek.com</a>
vkamobileAug 29, 2009
anyone bought from <a class="user" href="http://www.vkamobi.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.vkamobi.com</a> ? thanks.