solid state hard drives?

[Steaksauce]

I don't know about the transfer rates of that Samsung HD but here is one that Adtron makes: http://www.adtron.com/products/A35fb-SerialATAFlashDisk.html
It's in SATA format and sports: Reads: Up to 65 MBytes/second, Writes: Up to 55 MBytes/second. correct me if I'm wrong, ATA HDs sport 100+ MBytes/sec transfer rates?

So, for now, it's not faster than what we have, much more expensive, capacity sucks. I think in 5 years though it should slowly be taking over the laptop market, IMO.
SSDs are impractical for Desktops since, noise isn't really an issue, price per Byte will always be the advantage of traditional HDs (now and for a long time to come) and if the SSDs aren't faster than traditional HDs... why move to that technology? Even if it was faster, you'd only use it for your OS and still would need a traditional HD, since there is no way the prices are going to drop that much for regular consumers to use any time soon. 10+ years 'til consumers get regular shots at purchasing this technology for their desktops, imo.

But this technology is great for mobile computing... for those who can afford them.

 

[Jiggz]

Originally posted by: Steaksauce
I don't know about the transfer rates of that Samsung HD but here is one that Adtron makes: http://www.adtron.com/products/A35fb-SerialATAFlashDisk.html
It's in SATA format and sports: Reads: Up to 65 MBytes/second, Writes: Up to 55 MBytes/second. correct me if I'm wrong, ATA HDs sport 100+ MBytes/sec transfer rates?

So, for now, it's not faster than what we have, much more expensive, capacity sucks. I think in 5 years though it should slowly be taking over the laptop market, IMO.
SSDs are impractical for Desktops since, noise isn't really an issue, price per Byte will always be the advantage of traditional HDs (now and for a long time to come) and if the SSDs aren't faster than traditional HDs... why move to that technology? Even if it was faster, you'd only use it for your OS and still would need a traditional HD, since there is no way the prices are going to drop that much for regular consumers to use any time soon. 10+ years 'til consumers get regular shots at purchasing this technology for their desktops, imo.

But this technology is great for mobile computing... for those who can afford them.

What makes a SSD superior over HDD is not the transfer rate but the access speed! This has been demonstrated by the I-Ram which has an access speed of less than 1ms compare to 8~12ms to hdd. Sustained Transfer Rate for both drives is almost identical although the SSD is still a little superior because overtime it never droops in transfer rate compare to a hdd. SSD's development has to wait until higher ram density chips hit around 2Gb or 4GB. We've seen a dramatic increase in ram chips density in the last 2~3 years that's why the development of SSD is almost on the horizon. I still do not see anybody using pure SSD's both for OS and storage for the very near future. I believe we will have to do exactly what the auto industry is doing which is basically an hybrid drive. This can be two separate drives, i.e. OS drive will be ssd while the storage will be hdd. Or it can be a single drive which consist of like 32GB ssd and the rest in hdd.

As for the actual STR of today's hdd, theoretical is about 150MBS for SATA's (both I & II) and about 133MBS for PATA. Actual STR is around 40~60 MBS (both SATA's and PATA's)depending on your brand and model and system.

 

[w00t]

Ive heard something about a glass cube from a friend that writes with a laser seriously...

 

[thorin]

correct me if I'm wrong, ATA HDs sport 100+ MBytes/sec transfer rates?

Not "sport" but "support" I've never seen an ATA drive that saturated the 100 or 133MB/Sec bandwidth available to them, most drives barely manage to challenge 66. Even the latest WD Raptors (SATA not PATA but doesn't matter for this discussion) max @ 88MB/Sec (according to storagereview).

Thorin