The prospect of having a HDD without a spinning platter is an enticing one. The pluses of no moving parts, and the lowered power consumption which is a huge buzzkill on laptops mean there really aren’t any huge downsides. Except for the fact that the sizes aren’t anywhere near where they need to be.
Some of us will probably never be able to ditch the old-school platter based HDD. The computer I’m at right now has two 250gb drives and a 500gb one. Suffice to say for the time being I won’t be stepping away from the standard storage methods.
But 160gb flash based HDD for a laptop? That’d be enough for most people, myself included. And that’s what Adtron recently announced. No prices listed in the press release, and I’m quite sure it’ll be crazy-expensive. But it’d be perfect for the military and it’s a harbinger (but a good one) of things to come.
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34 Responses to “160gb flash drive? Why, that’s fine!”
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Say something incredibly witty, insightful, or l33t
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February 24th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Man, stick this baby in the next MacBook please!
February 25th, 2007 at 9:07 am
160gb would be perfect for most lalptop users, but i can see a price tag or atleast 10x that of a standard hardrive. And L.T why would you want to put something amazing like this in the piece of filth that is a Macbook
February 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Yes it would be a great option for a Macbook. Even if you don’t like OSX Macbooks and Macbook Pros are some of the bestr laptops on the market. Besides you can install windows on them, if you hate OSX that much.
February 25th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Dave, get back to CS:S. Anyways, I hope it doesn’t only come in PATA
February 25th, 2007 at 11:00 am
That would be uber.. The only issue though is that at 160gigs Apple would prob have to add about $20,000 to the price. So lets see, you could buy a Macbook at $1250 then add the drive of $20,000 so for a mere $21250 you can have an uber laptop. Or.. you could spend that $20,000 about buy a 20tb array and 5 macbook pros..
February 25th, 2007 at 11:03 am
The usual downside is that flash memory has a limited number of write cycles. This isn’t usually a problem for most uses, especially if the drive uses wear-leveling, but putting a paging file on such a device usually isn’t a good idea.
February 25th, 2007 at 11:04 am
40gb is currently at 11000, 56gb at 15000.. yuck
February 25th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Puppy Linux OS will run your whole PC, OS and APPS in less than 90 MB of RAM.
Currently I am browsing with Puppy Linux 2.14, running from a 1GB flash drive, with most of the flash drive used for music, video and document storage. Browser, Email, HTML editor, GIMP, Graphics, Music, Video, Chat, all running from a $14 1GB flash drive.
The real plus of running your whole OS+Apps from a flash drive:
Run Anywhere, Anytime - just unplug and reboot on another PC from the USB stick.
Have additional hours of Battery Life from your laptop - no hard drive needed!
No hard drive needed. No modifications to the PC hard drive.
When you unplug your USB flash drive, back to the original C: drive, with no changes.
www.puppylinux.org - The future of Keychain Computing!
February 25th, 2007 at 11:57 am
USB Keys average at least $10+/GB so a 160GB flash HD might cost something like $1600 and upwards. This would be great for somebody who uses their laptop for video editing, considering 160GB drives don’t even exist in 2.5″
February 25th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
It would be cool if they could put one of these in the macbooks/macbook pro’s, will it do something good with the weight as well? I can’t say that my macbook is one of the lightest models on the market …. but I still like it
February 25th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
genrally with video editing your going to be wiriting alot so I dont think flash drives would be a viable option, anywaz usb2.0 isent near as fast as a sata connected 2.5 drives.
not to mention that video editing on a laptop wouldent work very well because in todays world you really want a core 2 duo at the least, and even if you have a c2d laptop if it is running on batterys it will be vastly reduced in performance.
fyi: my macbook pro has a 200 gig hd.
February 25th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
What about linux, Ben? would you let me install it on a macbook?
February 25th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Yeah, keep dreaming. You can’t run a swap file on Flash. It gets rewritten so often that you’ll run up against the maximum number of rewrite cycles of the flash chips in short order.
February 25th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Note: an HDD without a disc shaped platter is not longer an HDD, but just an HD. It is hard, and it is a drive, but it has no disc. Ergo, it isn’t a hard disk drive but rather a mere hard drive.
February 25th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
@ Dave,
Why is it up to Ben whether or not you run Linux on a MacBook? FWIW I run Linux (Ubuntu), Windows XP and Mac OS X on my MacBook Pro and they all work flawlessly. What is your point? Ah yes, it was that the MacBook is a “piece of filth”.. Any particular reason for that or are you just trying to stir things up by vomiting garbage via your Microsoft Natural® Ergonomic Keyboard. Dammit, look, you made me fall for the troll.
February 25th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
who runs a swap file these days? my laptop has 2GB of ram - it’s cheap. i’ve yet to run into problems while simultaneously having 2 dozen browser pages open, eclipse, and gimp. maybe a video power user that has dozens of layers of a high resolution photoshop document.
February 25th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
These are also known as SSD hard drives. (solid state disk)
Read/write cycles of flash is improving.
Expect to see these offered in new laptops this year, for about a $600 premium.
I addition to lower power consumption, lower heat production is another major bonus in laptop applications.
If you wanna talk smart see-
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmarketmodelupdate.html
February 25th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Wow good deal. I would love to use that to upgrade my MacBook, 74 GB just doesn’t cut it anymore.
February 25th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I’d hit it!
February 25th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
*drools*
February 25th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
i think some outfit out of isreal has already been making hi capacity flash hds for military satilites for a while now. in the 10K’s of dollars range.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:31 am
The previous 2.5-inch SSD record holder was 128GB by A-Data
http://www.ministryoftech.com/2007/01/26/a-data-128gb-25-inch-solid-state-disk/
February 26th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Actually, macbooks aren’t even close to the best laptops around. Their exactly in the middle range as far as build quality and durability goes, with (suprisingly) Sony at the top. Yes, I know the shiny plastic can be confusing to some, but it’s just an ordinary laptop with about $700 tacked on to the price tag in Apple Fanboy Fees.
February 27th, 2007 at 5:06 am
I agree that it would be most useful in a MacBook. When the user throws the MacBook in frustration, this drive would be much more resistant to damage. =D
February 27th, 2007 at 11:04 am
@redaphid
I have a c2d macbook for home. I also have a lenovo c2d for work (as well as a dell but lets not talk about that).
I like OSX a lot. I wish I could run it on Lenovo hardware, though. I have used most major laptop brands (Toshiba, HP, Sony, Dell, IBM/Lenovo and Apple). I have a lot of computers.
In my opinion the only two laptop brands for hardware that stand out are Lenovo and Toshiba. Whenever I am in a position to recommend hardware to a client I recommend Lenovo laptops. If you are a touch typist the keyboard alone will convert you. Everything else feels cheap by comparison.
The Apple laptops are slightly above middling for hardware. I love OSX for personal use but Apple hardware is only ok.
February 27th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
You remind me of certain person in the 80s with his memory statement.
March 4th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
This is going to be great in Vista:
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http://www.WindowsVistaUserGuide.com
March 18th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
All we can hope for is that the military will buy a crazy large amount of these so that we can see the pricing go down to an affordable one.
June 4th, 2007 at 3:08 am
What makes you think that the military doesn’t already use these? Don’t forget - the original pentuim was an old processor that the military no longer needed. I would not be suprised if the military had something to do with the creation of such a beast.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Exactly. And the writer of this article looks a real dumbass when he said “But it’d be perfect for the military…”
Jesus, how naive can you get. The ‘military’ is, at a bare minimum, 10 years ahead in this particular field.
Nice piece of hardware though.
August 8th, 2007 at 5:09 am
“Say something incredibly witty, insightful, or l33t” = PHP with MySQL running from a flashdrive (or on a computer) without IIS installed. Possible? Yes, SSD is going to rock once it is out on the main market.
October 14th, 2007 at 1:01 am
The only reason Dave thinks macbooks are filth is because ol’ Davy boy hasn’t taken the time or expended the energy to discern that Apple makes a better, more reliable and in the end more cost-effective computer and operating system. Much like how the average driver of gasoline automobiles hasn’t expended the energy or put in the time to discern that electric vehicles are more reliable, cost-effective, safer and environmentally un-paralleled. Of course, it’s also because Dave is susceptible to doing what other people tell him to, buying what advertising wants him to. Which makes Dave a cunt.
Of course, the fact that I, a stranger from nowhere, would call Dave a cunt on a forum makes me a cunt. so does the fact that I didn’t bother reading all the forum posts before typing this. And so does the fact that I drive a gasoline powered car.
‘Fact, face it -we’re all cunts.
Cheers.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:18 am
I agree:
1- Lenovo notebooks are supperior.
2- The flash HD great idea fo notebooks.
and for $21250 I can buy an used 2006 Accord V6Hybrid w/NAV and a really nice Lenovo notebook for my video editting.
3- Fact is we are consumers of a huge consumer market based market, we look weight our options, look at the price and choose to buy something based on what our values are.
but “I’m preaching at the choir”, right?
so unless we are holed up in some cave like cavemen or farm like the first agrarian humans. we’ll be buying and arguing who has the best based on our values.
Anything else?…..
P.S. watch “who killed the electric car”, couldn’t buy one (lease only), and that only in California. What happened to the cars after? Who got paid off?
November 18th, 2007 at 9:44 am
When are cell phones and cameras going to FINALLY catch up to this stuff man. Cell phones, cameras and other storage needing devices should TOTALLY be using flash drives STANDARD by now… Or at least, for the most part, standard. I suppose they want that extra buck in proprietary storage - that gets outdated after a few years, renders the phone, camera, or other device useless by modern standard. You know, the usual.