Samsung Debuts 32GB Flash HDD

[DaMadFiddler]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/21 ... veils_ssd/

Samsung rolled out a 2.5-inch, 32GB flash drive that the company intends to market as a hard drive replacement unit. As it is with solid-state anything, it uses up just a fraction of the energy of devices with moving parts?in this case, 5% of the power of an old-fashoined spinning hard disk.

This technology will be especially well-suited for laptops, where Samsung, the world?s largest manufacturer of NAND flash memory, has been trying to push its products. Samsung didn?t reveal pricing for the 32GB unit, but it will probably show up first in notebooks manufactured in Taiwan.

...to be honest, this is a technology I have been waiting some time for. I used to tinker with old computers as a kid, and the hard drive was *always* the first thing to go. I've also been holding off on getting myself a proper MP3 player, because I felt that hard drives weren't really the right technology for the job...and this looks like what'll do the trick.

[az_bont]

Flash memory can usually withstand over one million re-writes, with some of the higher grade stuff managing closer to 10 million. Combined with chip firmware or a file system that dynamically re-writes blocks so that wear is spread roughly equally between all blocks, and you should have a device that can last for decades.

[Gav-X]

While a nice technical achievement, that doesn't do much for me. 4GB sticks are still too expensive, which makes flash-based devices like the GP2X much too expensive if you want a halfway decent data storage.

[Sweater Fish]

Yeah, I'm almost scared to learn what that will cost. May be great in a few years, but I'm sure it will be way way too expensive for my uses until then.

However, a 1GB SD card can be got for $60, which doesn't seem like too much to me at all. You don't need a 4GB card for a GP2X (it can't even use them yet), two 1GB seems like a better solution to me; one for emulators and the other for homebrew. That should be plenty of room as long as you actually think about what ROMs you'll ever actually play and skip the rest (my own ROM collection for all 8 and 16-bit systems, minus MAME, is only 500MB)


...word is bondage...

[Sir Savant]

These devices will be about $650 to $1000 dollars, but still, the price should go down in a few years.

[stagg]

Yeah, I'm almost scared to learn what that will cost. May be great in a few years, but I'm sure it will be way way too expensive for my uses until then.

However, a 1GB SD card can be got for $60, which doesn't seem like too much to me at all. You don't need a 4GB card for a GP2X (it can't even use them yet), two 1GB seems like a better solution to me; one for emulators and the other for homebrew. That should be plenty of room as long as you actually think about what ROMs you'll ever actually play and skip the rest (my own ROM collection for all 8 and 16-bit systems, minus MAME, is only 500MB)


...word is bondage...

Actually, for around 80-90 bucks, you can find a 2 gig now.

[Nick]

These devices will be about $650 to $1000 dollars, but still, the price should go down in a few years.

Considering a 72 GB Raptor costs around $150, that ain't that bad.

[Ex-Cyber]

This would probably be a fine device to keep /usr on...

[Gav-X]

Oy, this is a flash based HDD, not a card . Oh well, the criticism still applies

Sweater Fish: I know, and I would trim my 8+16bit emulation collection to probably 1GB. Thing is, I'd like to have a huge amount of movies in permanent storage and that would require at least 4GB, plus if SegaCD emulation arrives that will mean a few more GBs will be needed. Also, like you said, there's MAME as well, and Amiga, and many more.

stagg: 80-90 bucks for a 2GB card? Where?

[Strapping Scherzo]

These should be much faster than an actual hard drive, right?

[DaMadFiddler]

These should be much faster than an actual hard drive, right?

I believe the article said they're about 3x as fast as a standard hard drive and consume roughly 1/10 the power.

[Roofus]

I've also been holding off on getting myself a proper MP3 player, because I felt that hard drives weren't really the right technology for the job...and this looks like what'll do the trick.

I've had a hard drive-based player for two years now and it's certainly been as reliable as anything else I've used. Battery life's not super (8-12 hours) but again, it's perfectly useable. I have to charge it maybe twice a week.

What I'm more excited about is the prospect of completely doing away with conventional hard drives. I don't imagine that'll become viable until they break 100 gigs and figure out a way to bring the price down.

[Sweater Fish]

These devices will be about $650 to $1000 dollars, but still, the price should go down in a few years.

Considering a 72 GB Raptor costs around $150, that ain't that bad.

Four to seven times the price for less than half the space seems pretty bad to me.

I don't really know what the intended market for these 32GB flash drives will be. I mean, it's ridiculous for a laptop because the savings on power consumption would be fairly small compared to all the other stuff in a laptop (you could probably get the same effect by adding something like .5Ah to the battery capacity) and I've really never worried about damaging the HD in my laptop. It's useless for a portable player because it would be prohibitavely expensive; the extra battery life would be nice as that's my main complaint with the hard drive players I've owned, but knowing the MP3 player market they'd just use these drives as a way to put even smaller batteries in to shave off a few millimeters here or there and the things would still only get 10 hours to a charge.

The closest I could see to a market for them is field GPS and data collection units for forestry and fire fighting and stuff like that. Cost is not much of a concern there, but battery life very much is. However, I've had a job like that and I don't see how 32GB would be needed. We used 512MB SD cards in our units and they were more space than we ever needed. Maybe for doing really high resolution transects while recording multiple characteristics or something. Even then.

I suspect that this is just a proof of concept technology for now until the price comes way down. Or maybe we're all totally wrong and these things will be like $200.


...word is bondage...

[DaMadFiddler]

I've also been holding off on getting myself a proper MP3 player, because I felt that hard drives weren't really the right technology for the job...and this looks like what'll do the trick.

I've had a hard drive-based player for two years now and it's certainly been as reliable as anything else I've used. Battery life's not super (8-12 hours) but again, it's perfectly useable. I have to charge it maybe twice a week.

What I'm more excited about is the prospect of completely doing away with conventional hard drives. I don't imagine that'll become viable until they break 100 gigs and figure out a way to bring the price down.

My experience is that hard drives tend to crap up more than solid state memory...and they're more prone to shock and/or impact damage.

Plus, I'm a battery whore--I'm sorely tempted to upgrade to the DSLite, for example, simply because of the doubled battery life. I play a fair amount of GBA games in my DS, and those would be rather bulgy and unsightly in the Lite (the system clearly wasn't designed with heavy GBA use in mind), but the battery alone is *really* tempting me. I bought a tiny Fujitsu subnotebook instead of something with more respectable specs, because I use it on the go a lot, and it gets nearly six hours with normal use. My MP3 Discman gets between 30 and 40 with regular CDs, and at least double that with MP3 discs.

Batteries can only be recharged so many times before they start to fail...and proprietary batteries will eventually come off the market. When I buy something, I expect to get several years' use out of it; that's why I balance price with build quality rather than going for the cheapest option. I've had my Discman for 3 years, my Walkman for 10, and though my stereo and TV are relatively new (to me...the stereo is actually about 13 years old), I expect them to be the heart of my entertainment center for at least the next decade or two. In my opinion, an MP3 player with a hard drive just doesn't have it all together enough to go the mileage.

While I seriously doubt that hard drives will vanish completely (they're still the best technology for making financially feasible ultra high-capacity storage for servers, studios, and such), I do see a day in the next 10-15 years where they are pretty much unnecessary for consumer goods.

[Sweater Fish]

My experience is that hard drives tend to crap up more than solid state memory...and they're more prone to shock and/or impact damage.

Theoretically, yeah, for sure, but in reality I don't know of too many stories of people with hard drive MP3 players, who've done damage to their HD. Actually, I don't know of any. I have no doubt that it happens, but it must not be that common.

I agree with on the battery stuff, though. The battery life from MP3 players and PMPs is just ridiculous. My current HD-based player got 7 hours to a charge until that battery crapped out and I replaced it with a larger external battery, which still only gets about 17 hours. Even my flash-based player only gets 20 hours (on a AAA battery) because companies try to make their players as small as possible so they're afraid to put larger batteries in. The iPod Nano has horrible battery life even though if Apple had made the thing just a tiny bit bigger and it would have been *MUCH* better. People who buy these products just don't demand good battery life, I guess. My minidisc player can get 40 hours on a single AA battery, which is one of the main reasons I still use it regularly.


...word is bondage...

[Wagh]

my archos lasted ~3 years with its 20gb hdd. I was pulling 16 hour battery life. It finally died because I dropped it so much. Several times out of my car.