Flash Memory HDD for Notebooks Launched 277
ukhackster writes "Traditional magnetic hard drive platters could be on the way out, thanks to SanDisk's launch today of a hard drive based on flash memory chips. The device can store 32GB of data and is meant for notebooks . SanDisk claims that using flash chips means faster access and better reliability, so less danger of a serious system crash wiping out all your valuable data if you drop your laptop. The downside, though, is price. At an extra $600 dollars, are price-conscious consumers going to be interested?"
No. (Score:4, Informative)
nomenclature (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Effect on Battery life? (Score:5, Informative)
Averaged, the biggest power-draw of a modern notebook is the display, followed by the cpu. (this may of course vary if the notebook has a very small display. With equal brightness, power-draw of course increases with display size, until it dominates everything else with those 17" 200cm/m^2 display). After that is chipset and GPU (of course depending on with model you use).
2.5" HDs are actually not very power-hungry. Typical power-draw figures are 5W during spinup, and about 2W while in use (dropping to 0.5W or so during spindown).
The FLASH drive mentioned draws about 0.6W in use, so in average you might gain 1.5W thats about 3-5% of the average power-draw of a modern notebook, and should give you about 10-15 minutes or so more.
Re:What about lifespan? (Score:3, Informative)
A mixture of:
Re:flash memory limited rewrites (Score:4, Informative)
The kind of flash controllers used for designs like these are built with wear levelling [wikipedia.org] approaches that manages this problem at a level below where the operating system will see errors. I wouldn't want to run a database server that's being written to all the time on one of them, but for normal notebook computer use 10^6 writes on every block should last several years.
Now imagine your swap space being on flash.
Why would you possibly do that? Add more (cheap!) physical RAM instead until there's no need to swap.
Re:Just in time for Macworld? (Score:3, Informative)
Not if you are rushed off of the plane to care for another passenger (turns out was VIP and foreign national) who is having a medical emergency. We did not even get to the gate where you are officially supposed to present your materials, yet you are still told that you have to endure an inspection of belongings and documentation even when trying to obtain medical care for someone. Kind of absurd if you ask me.....
Re:nomenclature (Score:3, Informative)