[geeks] Flash drive questions

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 @ 16:30 +0100, Mike Meredith said:

> 1: fixed disks are *slow* and they're getting slower relative to the
>    rest of the computer's speed.
> 
> 2: Moving parts (fixed disks) are inherently slower than solid state
>    parts (flash). I haven't spent much time researching, but consumer
>    flash devices seem to be within reaching distance of fixed disk
>    speed; flash-based enterprise SSD solutions are almost certainly
>    faster. Of course I'm talking about transfer speed here ... seek
>    time for flash is about 1,000 times faster.

Seek time is not all of paging.  Lot's of paging is big chunks.

You can get SCSI drives that run many times faster than flash, and with
several levels of cache, the seeking isn't terrible either.

Plus, they are more reliable, the interface is faster under stress and
in general, and they have extensive diagnostics.

A flash drive goes: work work work work *DEAD*, with little warning.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [There is a limit to how stupid people really
are -- just as there's a limit to the amount of hydrogen in the Universe. 
There's a lot, but there's a limit.  -- Dave C. Barber on a.f.c.  ]