That is going to up the game! The only problem with these drives is the limited number of accesses you get before it fails. I think that is what keeps them from going mainstream and making rotating HD's go the way of the tungsten light bulb.
Originally posted by sonhouse http://techxplore.com/news/2015-05-fixstars-six-terabyte-solid-state.html
That is going to up the game! The only problem with these drives is the limited number of accesses you get before it fails. I think that is what keeps them from going mainstream and making rotating HD's go the way of the tungsten light bulb.
What makes you think SSD's are not mainstream?
My computer has 3 of them.
The main factor up until now has been cost, they are way more expensive per GB than HDD's.
But that cost is going way down, HDD's wear out too, SSD's are no worse in that regard.
Originally posted by googlefudge What makes you think SSD's are not mainstream?
My computer has 3 of them.
The main factor up until now has been cost, they are way more expensive per GB than HDD's.
But that cost is going way down, HDD's wear out too, SSD's are no worse in that regard.
The problem with SSD's is that they tend to fail catastrophically and with total data loss. Hard drives tend to fail a sector at a time, and so it is unlikely (but not impossible) that meta-data (things like File Allocation Tables if you have Windows) will be lost. When SSD's fail the metadata gets clobbered and the device does things like report it has 1Mb of space (it was a 64Gb drive 🙁) leaving the data unrecoverable by an average user. A lab can probably get the data off it, but it's a lot of hassle.
The technology is getting better, but I'd regard twhitehouse's suggestion from another thread that the operating system and data that doesn't change much (like system settings) much should go on an SSD, with user data, especially irreplaceable stuff, going on a conventional hard drive as being sensible for the time being. A hard drive is definitely the cheaper option.
Originally posted by sonhouse http://techxplore.com/news/2015-05-fixstars-six-terabyte-solid-state.html
That is going to up the game! The only problem with these drives is the limited number of accesses you get before it fails. I think that is what keeps them from going mainstream and making rotating HD's go the way of the tungsten light bulb.
As Googlefudge says, they are mainstream, but just a bit expensive. Nevertheless One of my computers uses one as its only drive, the other has a hybrid drive (8Gb SDD with 1TB standard HDD) and a 256GB SSD for stuff we want to be extra fast.
The first computer mentioned above was a bit old and used to freeze up due to poor communication with the SSD. I had to buy new innards and now it works great.
Originally posted by DeepThought The problem with SSD's is that they tend to fail catastrophically and with total data loss.
I have not had much experience with SSDs yet so have not experienced total failures as yet. However, with fast internet these days I now keep almost all essential user data in a folder that is synced to the cloud (and to both my computers and the laptop as well when necessary). That way I can work from any of my computers and I have 3 copies of my data plus some amount of history too.
I do agree that standard HDDs often fail slowly and you can usually get your data off and if that fails then data recovery companies can usually still get it for you.
It promises much larger SSDs much faster SSDs and the possibility of SSDs replacing much of your RAM. So think of having a PC with 500GB RAM - that doesn't get lost when you turn off the power.
And most importantly, it should be available some time next year.
Originally posted by twhitehead I have not had much experience with SSDs yet so have not experienced total failures as yet. However, with fast internet these days I now keep almost all essential user data in a folder that is synced to the cloud (and to both my computers and the laptop as well when necessary). That way I can work from any of my computers and I have 3 copies of my data pl ...[text shortened]... t your data off and if that fails then data recovery companies can usually still get it for you.
It's not that frequent. I don't think they fail much more frequently than hard disks, but when they fail they fail. Apparently they tend to be sensitive to being switched off when they aren't ready to be, which isn't exactly great for HDD's either but I've never known one even lose a sector from it, never mind become unusable.
Originally posted by DeepThought It's not that frequent. I don't think they fail much more frequently than hard disks, but when they fail they fail. Apparently they tend to be sensitive to being switched off when they aren't ready to be, which isn't exactly great for HDD's either but I've never known one even lose a sector from it, never mind become unusable.
I heard of a company that found a heat pulse to the circuitry renews it. This problem also might be amenable to a software solution. Like the SSD itself knowing when a turn off would be dangerous and not allowing it to happen before it secures itself or something like that.
Originally posted by sonhouse I heard of a company that found a heat pulse to the circuitry renews it. This problem also might be amenable to a software solution. Like the SSD itself knowing when a turn off would be dangerous and not allowing it to happen before it secures itself or something like that.
The obvious move is to give it a small rechargeable battery of some sort (a capacitor maybe) so that when it loses external power it can shut itself down tidily. The hardware could refuse to write (I doubt that reads are such a problem) if there is not enough charge stored to complete the write on a power failure.
Originally posted by DeepThought The obvious move is to give it a small rechargeable battery of some sort (a capacitor maybe) so that when it loses external power it can shut itself down tidily. The hardware could refuse to write (I doubt that reads are such a problem) if there is not enough charge stored to complete the write on a power failure.
I believe my current SSD already has that built in.
Mine is a Crucial drive, but here is a description of the same thing by Samsung:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/downloads/document/Samsung_SSD_845DC_05_Power_loss_protection(PLP).pdf
Originally posted by twhitehead I believe my current SSD already has that built in.
Mine is a Crucial drive, but here is a description of the same thing by Samsung:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/downloads/document/Samsung_SSD_845DC_05_Power_loss_protection(PLP).pdf
So it looks like you need only to protect power for around 50 milliseconds and they use a cap between 1 and 2 microfarads to provide that short extension of power. Simple fix for that problem anyway.
Originally posted by DeepThought The problem with SSD's is that they tend to fail catastrophically and with total data loss. Hard drives tend to fail a sector at a time, and so it is unlikely (but not impossible) that meta-data (things like File Allocation Tables if you have Windows) will be lost. When SSD's fail the metadata gets clobbered and the device does things like report it ha ...[text shortened]... hard drive as being sensible for the time being. A hard drive is definitely the cheaper option.
My OS's and programs live on SSD's, my data lives on a much larger HDD and BACKUP drives.
It's that last bit that is vital, because I have seen entire systems totally trashed with all the drives
of any sort put beyond all but the most expensive data recovery by a simple power surge.
Originally posted by googlefudge My OS's and programs live on SSD's, my data lives on a much larger HDD and BACKUP drives.
It's that last bit that is vital, because I have seen entire systems totally trashed with all the drives
of any sort put beyond all but the most expensive data recovery by a simple power surge.
Yeah, they want megabucks to retrieve data from ruined sources. I had an Olympus pocket sized vocal recorder and it died, but I didn't know if the sound was stored in the internal memory or in the micro SD card you insert. I called a data retrieval service and they said, between $500 and $2000 to get the data out, IF they could do it at all.
I got a microSD to regular SD adapter for $4 from Newegg and I lucked out. There was 10 gigabytes of audio on the little SD card! I couldn't remember if I had set the recorder to always send audio to the SD card but it turned out I had, one smart move I didn't even remember doing🙂
So I dodged a big bullet there! I used that recorder for a rough draft record of new tunes I compose on guitar or mandolin and such. They were all there, tunes I had composed a couple of years ago and would have for sure lost forever had I not recovered the data. Also had long talks by my mom, she is 95 years old and I wanted to get as much of her story down before she died. It was all there.
Originally posted by sonhouse So it looks like you need only to protect power for around 50 milliseconds and they use a cap between 1 and 2 microfarads to provide that short extension of power. Simple fix for that problem anyway.
Which does raise the question as to why they didn't think to include a capacitor in them from the start.
Originally posted by DeepThought Which does raise the question as to why they didn't think to include a capacitor in them from the start.
New technology takes a while to get the kinks worked out.
I have noticed that thumb drives have got much more reliable and easier to use over time. When they first came out you had to tell the OS to 'disconnect' the drive before unplugging it or risk damaging it. Improvements were made to both the software and hardware to overcome that difficulty. I haven't had a thumb drive die on me for quite a while now.
Ultimately though, whatever your storage mechanism is, if its important to you, back it up!
Six terabyte Solid state drive!:
29 Sep '15 17:12
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