hard drives made of flash memory

[BriGy86]

anybody hear anything about companies making hard drives out of flash memory instead of platters in the future?

my guess is that they would be faster quieter, and more reliable

ill look around the net and see if i can find somthing

what does everyone else think?

 

[DaveSimmons]

This gets asked a few times a year here. The main problems are that
(a) seeks are instant but reads-write speeds are not so great
(b) flash memory can only sustain a limited number of erase/write cycles vs. essentially unlimited for platters.

There are drives available now that use DDR RAM for super-high seek and read-write performance, but of course the cost per GB is several hundred times that of normal hard disks.

 

[BriGy86]

i found this (although it doesn't say a whole lot)

"At present the drives are almost exclusively used embedded into digital music players or in a Compact Flash form-factor case in high-end digital still cameras. Apple Computer uses HGST's drive in its recently launched IPod Mini music player and Cornice has found a number of customers for its drive, including IRiver and Digitalway, for use in MP3 players."

link

i can't really find much though, are the drives in the iPod and what not actual platters?

 

[DaveSimmons]

iPod shuffle uses flash RAM. All the 4GB - 60GB players use microdrives, minidrives, or laptop drives (all using platters not flash RAM).

Google "solid-state hard disk" for what you're looking for (but they will mostly be dynamic RAM not flash).

 

[BriGy86]

ah i c,

i was thinking of somthing similar to my flash drive

is that the right idea?