Solid State Drive

[j0ckser]

my trusty dell latitude d600 is 6 years old, and i should probably purchase a new machine. recently i learned that USB flash drives are available at 64 Gb. since my current machine has a 40 Gb HDD, that size of drive would be sufficient. also since windows XP is still available, i know there will be no drive size issues.

i am considering this to solve 2 issues: speed and the limited life of mechanical HDDs.

HOWEVER, i just experienced a USB flash drive failure. maybe it's trip through the washing machine may have had something to do with it's failure (although it took 2 months to fail).

any thoughts about this idea. also this hardware needs to be available in canada.

per ardua ad astra

 

[BadBigBen]

recently i learned that USB flash drives are available at 64 Gb. since my current machine has a 40 Gb HDD, that size of drive would be sufficient.

You will have a nice time trying to get XP to boot from a USB drive...

it is possible, but not right out of the box...

and with a USB max (theoretical) transfer rate of 480mbit/s, they are slower than internal drives which have theoretical transfer rates of 800mbit/s (ATA100), 1064mbit/s (ATA133), 1200mbit/s (SATA I) and 2400mbit/s (SATA II)...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[Grenage]

USB flash drives aren't cut out for running an OS all the time; you can easily do it (I have several OSs as such), but they will quickly max out their upper write count.

Get a mechanical or 'real' SSD.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[kjv1611]

Here's a start for you, if you really want to go SSD:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Solid-State-Disks

There's a HUGE difference between USB and SSD.

And if for some reason you want it to connect external via eSata or USB, there are at least a few eSata/USB SSD drives out there so far. And if you can't find what you want, I suppose you could always slap one in a 2.5 inch external HDD enclosure.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[j0ckser]

thank you all for your ideas.

per ardua ad astra

 

[paparazi]

Also guys....I've never used an SSD but I'm guessing that they come in SATA interface and jOckster's old laptop is almost definately going to have an IDE connection.
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[Grenage]

Good spot, Martin.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[BadBigBen]

Then maybe a CF-Card with adapter could be the solution...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...rder=BESTMATCH&Description=cf+adapter&x=0&y=0

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[j0ckser]

well...
some of this 'tech talk' is a little to jargonny for me.

max out upper write count? (do HDDs have this too?)
SATA?
IDE?
CF-card?

per ardua ad astra

 

[kjv1611]

Upper write count just has to do with how many times the individual pieces of the storage medium can be written to before it says "no more", at which point your OS would say "no more".

==>do HDDs have this too?
Anything that can store data has one. But on some things, such as standard IDE/SATA hard drives, for home users, that count probably doesn't matter.

SATA - It's basically the little (most commonly red, so far) wires used to connect hard drives, optical drives, etc, to the computer main board. They have several benefits, such as: a higher headroom for higher performance while being smaller, and b/c they are smaller, they are easier to route in a case and they therefore are less likely to restrict air movement.

IDE[/LINK] - The old desktop standard for hard drive, optical drive connections. Parallel vs. Serial technology.

CF-Card - Compact Flash Memory Card - Commonly used in digital cameras, particularly higher-end digital cameras (professional, SLR).

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Grenage]

Indeed; flash drives have a rough figure of writes before they start going a bit pear-shaped. For casual USB-flash document storage you may never encounter a problem, but with an OS installed you eventually would.

'Proper' solid state hard drives take this into account and automatically write-off bas sections as they appear. While I haven't done too much research on them, I'd wager their max write count is also significantly higher.

Mechanical drives don't suffer from the same problem in the same way.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[BadBigBen]

max out upper write count? (do HDDs have this too?)
SATA?
IDE?
CF-card?

Google and Wikipedia are your friends...

I mean, come on in a PROFESSIONAL Forum it is expected that you do your own homework first...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"