A Hard Drive made out of RAM?

[arcenite]

That's pretty fast if I do say so myself.

Bill

 

[arcenite]

Originally posted by: ku
This is quite a real possibility. They are working on it, I believe, in order to create a faster hard drive. Exactly as you've said, they use the same chips as they do on RAM to store data on, but removing the power source would erase all data stored on the chip. But don't worry, I'm sure soon they will successfully create a ram based hard drive

They should just have rechargeable batteries the size of the mobo battery that are recharged everytime the computer is turned on. ..

Bill

 

[BoberFett]

http://www.superssd.com/products/ramsan-220/index.htm

http://www.superssd.com/products/tera-ramsan/

 

[DAPUNISHER]

*Homer* Solid state hard drives....Mmmmmmmmmmmmm *drools*

 

[dullard]

Depending on the application, you could easily create a SCSI setup that would blow away any of the current PCI card RAM drives or SSD's.

The key is why would anyone build a SSD and then transfer data through the PCI bus? Data can be transferred by other means...

 

[ObiDon]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
http://www.superssd.com/products/tera-ramsan/

"Requires 5,000 watts of power"

:Q

 

[OrionAntares]

Yea, if you want to make a RAM "hard drive" in a PC, the only practical thing to do would to max out your boards ram and partition off all but 512MB of it as a RAMDrive. But then of course there's the constent power need, better hope your computer never forcively restarts on you.

 

[sharkeeper]

Another rocketdrive review

Solid State Storage is selected for random i/o capability. Using it on the desktop is a waste. Unless you're doing unusual stuff.

Cheers!

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: dullard

Depending on the application, you could easily create a SCSI setup that would blow away any of the current PCI card RAM drives or SSD's.

The key is why would anyone build a SSD and then transfer data through the PCI bus? Data can be transferred by other means...

If you are using a PCI card with RAM on it, how else are you going to connect it to the computer? As for standalone SSD, I have never seen one that was faster than UW SCSI (40MB/s), so those drives would be even more bottlenecked than today's ATA drives. SSD are not designed for high STR, that can be achieved relatively easily and cheaply using standard mechanical storage. Also, considering the miniature capacities of the drive, a high STR isn't necessary anyway. The benefit of SSD is in extremely high performance in random access applications and their much higher tolerance for environmental extremes and physical shock. I don't want to hear about bitmicro because if you look at their website you'll notice all the specs are astericked with a "preliminary" notation because they aren't actually producing any of those products. They remind me an awful lot of Bitboys as they keep updating the specs but they never seem to be releaing any products.

 

[Mallow]

Originally posted by: Ionizer86
Ramdrive is this 2k/XP driver that lets you make a ram drive with letter Z in MyComp. But I think it limits you to 32mb drive size. It's great for putting temp files in though!

why would you need a space, other than your harddrive, for temp files? I just don't get it

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: Pariah
As for standalone SSD, I have never seen one that was faster than UW SCSI (40MB/s), so those drives would be even more bottlenecked than today's ATA drives.

Apparently you ignored my links. Quantum had their Rushmore drives many years ago that were drop in replacements for SCSI drives. If they had continued to create them (probably dropped due to lack of demand, the price per MB was astronomical) they would probably be available using the highest speed interfaces available today. While the throughput may still be limited to whatever the interface is, a zero millsecond access time can speed highly random accesses such as databases by quite a bit.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Why are some of those cards priced so high? $500 or $600 for a card WITHOUT any ram? I'm guessing it has to do with the supply and demand issues but if they lowered their costs I wouldn't mind getting one and sticking in a couple 256/512mb sticks in it of SDRAM. Is the high price because of the research they put into it? I'm guessing its not a manufacturing issue...

 

[Pariah]

Apparently you ignored my links.

Where do you link to standalone SSD's? I only see one post with a link to a storage array.

If they had continued to create them (probably dropped due to lack of demand, the price per MB was astronomical) they would probably be available using the highest speed interfaces available today.

M-Systems
Imperial Technology
Adtron
Solid Data

I guess all of these companies fell behind the times too as none of them sell any SCSI variant above UW for individual drives. Even after looking I still couldn't find a company that does.

 

[BoberFett]

Define "standalone". I would assume that you mean something that simply plugs into SCSI cable. Doesn't exist anymore. But why are you splitting hairs about the interface? That box I linked to can be hooked up through fiber channel and if you're going to spend the money on that box ($45K for an 8GB unit) you can certainly afford the fiber channel controller to go with it.

 

[CZroe]

I never see this mentioned.

They accept 1GB per DIMM slot.

External stackable rackable 1u sized units.
Internal PCI card units.
Units with battery backup and mirroring onto real HDDs.

They can be scaled and combined to terrabytes of solid-state storage.
Insane.

Their external models are quite flexible. In addition to the standard I/O...

"QikLINK is a 1RU unit that attaches QikDATA to a standard Fibre Channel (FC) connection. This could be to a SAN via a switch, or to a host system via a FC host bus adapter (HBA)."

 

[Pariah]

I would assume that you mean something that simply plugs into SCSI cable. Doesn't exist anymore.

I just linked to 4 companies that sell the nonexistent products.

But why are you splitting hairs about the interface?

The initial poster was looking for a simple plug in drive or add in card at the lowest possible cost. A $50k fibre channel storage cabinet isn't even remotely in that category, and it is not splitting hairs to say it is completely irrelevant in this converation.

 

[BoberFett]

Bah, I had a long post here but the internet ate it. I'll be back later.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

My dad says in his days they used to make these on their own. He says that when they did it back in his times it was cheaper to get it manufactured. Is there some way to make it at home? It'll still be a lot faster than even the fastest SCSI drive. Is there some way to wire it to something or anything that can be done to make this? I'm exploring this not to match the speed of a $500 Solid State Disk PCI card, but instead just do it for fun.