"Todo tiene su final nada dura para siempre... así dice la famosa salsa del fenecido cantante de los cantantes Héctor Juán Pérez Martínez, mejor conocido como Héctor Lavoe, pero no es de farándula que les hablaré, sino, de los pesados y en ocasiones traidores discos duros de las computadoras.

Se prevé que su final está a la vuelta de la esquina y el sustituto lo será el increíble SSD(solid state drive) el cual es un dispositivo de almacenamiento de datos que usa memoria no volátil (NAND) tales como flash, o memoria volátil como la SDRAM, para almacenar datos, en lugar de los platos giratorios encontrados en los discos duros convencionales.

No requieren de energía eléctrica para mantener los datos, no pesan y aguantan caídas de hasta 2,5 metros. Ya han invadido el mercado en MP3, MP4 y móviles. Si bajan los precios -y se prevé que bajen. Samsung ha anunciado para finales de año un disco de 256 MB ultraliviano. Así que, Goodbye, goodbye hard drive.

El país / Wikipedia

]]> http://exc1ting.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/flashssd-hd-masa-depan/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:45:00 +0000 Lord M1k35 http://exc1ting.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/flashssd-hd-masa-depan/ Kebutuhan akan piranti penyimpanan digital dengan akses kecepatan yang cepat, makin diminati oleh konsumen. Ungkapan "Size is matter!" menjadi pertimbangan para produsen elektronik. Maka dikembangkanlah sebuah hardisk berkapasitas penyimpanan besar, akses cepat, stabil dan tentu saja dengan ukurannya kecil. Muncullah, FlashSSD.

Jadi apa itu FlashSSD??

FlashSSD (Flash Solid State Drive) media penyimpanan berbasis memori flash. Awalnya teknologi ini diperkenalkan hanya untuk industri militer dan penerbangan, serta aplikasi mission-critical. Dikembangkan oleh M-Systems mulai tahun 1995. Dan pada tahun 2006, M-Systems diakuisisi oleh SandDisk.

Selain berbasis memori nonvolatile flash NAND, ada SSD berbasis (memori volatile) SRAM atau DRAM, yang biasanya disebut RAM drive. Adapun SSD flash kecepatannya dua hingga lima kali lipat hard disk. Ia juga lebih hemat energi dan lebih tahan banting.

SSD adalah kelas yang baru bangkit dalam perangkat penyimpanan. Bentuknya menyerupai hard disk. Namun, data tidak disimpan di dalam sebuah cakram magnetik berputar, tapi pada chip memori flash.

Bagaimanakah ketahanan penulisan dalam drive FlashSSD? Berapa kali flash drive dapat bertahan dengan kondisi write-erase? Kebanyakan SSD modern, menggunakan level alogaritma canggih yang akan menyebarkan data, bahkan keseluruh sel-selnya sepanjang waktu. Ingatlah, ini adalah teknologi solid-state device, sehingga isu klasik dari fragmentasi data yang mungkin terjadi saat berputarnya sebuah jarum drive tidaklah berlaku, karena waktu akses yang sangat cepat.

karena teknik gunakan-pergi, dan fakta perangkat NAND dapat bertahan hingga satu juta putaran, keseluruhan masa dari sebuah SSD lebih panjang. Sehingga kehilangan kapasitas di saat perputaran penulisan pada flash tak menjadi masalah. Drive Mtron memiliki 1 juta jam MTBF (Mean time between failures)/rata-rata waktu antara kesalahan, dan dapat menyimpan data selama 10 tahun, jika penyimpananya sesuai.

According to SanDisk chief Eli Harari, the architecture of Windows Vista is hindering his companies ability to roll out SSD (Solid-State Drives), saying that it's not optimized for using this type of storage device.

"The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls," said Harari, though he did not mention exactly where the flaw was.

If they way Vista access files were to be improve, by Harari's logic SSDs would perform much better than they do now. That could be, but it also could be that he is jumping on the "Vista sucks" bandwagon to make up for the fact that some consumers aren't experiencing the performance or battery life gains they expected when choosing an SSD over a traditional mechanical hard drive.

[Via Electronista]

The next generation of SSDs will use multilevel cell (MLC) technology, which will require a more sophisticated controller--a crucial component in solid state drives. These drives will have capacities ranging up to 128GB, 160GB, and later, 256GB. MLC drives are expected to appear in a wider selection of notebooks later this year.

Speaking during SanDisk's second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari said that Windows Vista will present a special challenge for solid state drive makers. "As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk," he said.

This is due to Vista's design. "The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls," he said. (link)

The solid state disk (SSD) market is really starting to heat up. Super Talent threw down the gauntlet with its low-priced MX series SSDs. OCZ then returned the favor with its Core Series SSDs.

OCZ held the upper hand with not only lower pricing for its Core Series SSDs, but also the advantage of faster read/write performance. Super Talent's MX SSDs clocked in with read speeds of 120MB/sec and write speeds of 40MB/sec. OCZ's Core SSDs feature read speeds of 120 to 143 MB/sec and write speeds of 80 to 93 MB/sec depending on the capacity of the drive in question.

With OCZ breathing down its neck, Super Talent worked a little magic on its MX drives. The 15GB and 30GB models now feature read speeds of 120MB/sec and write speeds of 60MB/sec. The 60GB and 120GB have the same read speeds, but now have write speeds of 80MB/sec. (link)

Anton Shilov at Xbit Labs reports that Seagate is co-chairing a JEDEC committee with Micron to develop SSD standards.  Contrary to Anton's comments, Seagate is on record as being pro-SSD.

Standardization will accelerate adoption of SSDs into the storage device world currently dominated by spinning disks.  Having leaders from both worlds drive the standards means the job will get done right the first time. 

For those with doubts about Seagate embracing a future that includes SSD, actions speak louder than words.

Auf jeden Fall möchte ich auf einen anderen Punkt zu sprechen kommen. Nachdem wir das heute Nacht so vereinbart hatten, machte ich heute Morgen den Selbstversuch.

Versuchsaufbau:
Zwei Esslöffel Salz in 0,3 Liter Wasser geben.

Versuchsdurchführung:
Wasser-Salz-Gemisch trinken.

Ergebnis:
Sofortiger Würgreflex führte zum frühzeiten Abbruch des Versuches.

Also ich habe nur an dem Glas genippt, aber es schmeckte abartig. Aber wenn ihr mal diesen Test durchführen wollt: Ich sammel Erfahrungsberichte.

We looked into all of that to find answers to the questions. You will see that there is indeed one Flash SSD that beats the living daylights out of any hard drive now, and you will see that answers can only be found for specific applications. (link)

I prodotti Acer non mi hanno mai ispirato...ma sono rimasto subito colpito dal nuovo Aspire ONE, che verrà venduto in esclusiva da Mediaworld dal 26 Luglio.

Questa macchina si pone in concorrenza diretta con eeePC di Asus: le dimensioni sono le stesse, la fetta di mercato la stessa.

Ma perchè preferire questo oggetto rispetto all'ottimo eeePC?

Qui di seguito riporto quelli che secondo me sono i vantaggi di Aspire ONE rispetto ad eeePC:

1- Design: è sempre una cosa molto soggettiva, ma personalmente mi piacciono di più le forme arrotondate di Aspire ONE rispetto a quelle più spigolose di eeePC.

2- CPU: Intel Atom N270 1.6 Ghz. Atom è una piattaforma prodotta quasi esclusivamente per gli UMPC. Una cpu Atom @ 1.6 Ghz è sicuramente meglio del Celeron @ 900 Mhz che monta eeePC.

3- Prezzo: 100 euro in meno non sono pochi...

ovviamente c'è da dire che eeePC monta 512 Mb di ram in più e che il suo SSD è di 20 Gb contro gli 8 di Aspire ONE, ma personalmente questi particolari non influenzano il mio giudizio. Chi acquista questo genere di macchina secondo me non ha bisogno di 20 Gb.

Attendiamo l'uscita sul mercato per dare un giudizio sulla "robustezza" e solidità della macchina...

but of course, i wouldn't let a week pass without any scrapping! lol here's a few that i've finished. haven't scrapped any of our europe pics yet. somehow, i like to scrap children more than us! hahaha! :D

and now for SSD's FOB2Y,  we need to post our favorite vacation location. since we just got back from europe, i can say that my favorite location right now is switzerland! i love the cleanliness of the country and all that nature places! everywhere you look there's mountain or lake! you'll really feel relaxed here..  and not to mention, lots of delicious swiss chocolates! *wink*

Chris Evans points out the challenges of disk drive capacity outgrowing performance.  Sound familiar?  Until recently, these complaints were perennially aimed at linear-access tape technology, with random-access disk in the role of savior.

As disk now faces the same "can't get the data out fast enough" problem, the solution is clear: SSDs.  Flash is the new access king in storage.  Or will be, because early products are struggling with reliability, write performance, and other capabilities that disk drive device and interface technology have fine-tuned over the decades. You can't expect a breakthrough technology to hit the ground running.

Yesterday I found this Microsoft presentation in the blogosphere on the topic from 2006: flash_is_good

I guess I wasn't original with my "Disk is the New Tape" thing.  Makes the idea all the more interesting! 

Next question:  Is there room in the flash future for SSD, Disk and  Tape?

One thing about the Asus Eee and the PC900 is the fact they have SSD Flash Drives. It make you wonder why Asus would design the B51E "Rugged Laptop" with an HHD. Seems like backwards logic, but we will have to wait for more views and reviews.

Tom's Hardware compared the power draw of SSDs and 7200 rpm disk drives in notebooks under real-world usage scenarios.  The SSD-based notebooks had shorter battery life! 

How can this be, given that the idle and active power ratings of both devices are comparable?

Disk drives almost always run at or close to idle power consumption rates.  SSDs do not.  Read the Tom's Hardware post for a detailed explanation.

This throws another bucket of the cold water of Reality on notebook SSD hype. 

The lesson here is to thoroughly evaluate new technologies like SSD in your environment before jumping off the deep end.  SSD is no doubt exciting; it just needs a little time to mature.

Can anyone confirm that their SSD laptop has less battery life than their drived version?

However, when we posted our story, we heard from users that Tom’s Hardware, a site we admire a great deal, recently published an article which claims that SSDs use more power than traditional hard drives. The Tom’s Hardware story got some major attention from sites like Engadget and even got a responses from SSD-makers Super Talent and Micron, who both claim that the drives used in the Tom’s test are “early generation” and therefore more power hungry than newer models.

Is Tom’s Hardware right? We don’t think so. (link)

When Tom's Hardware came out with an article suggesting that the power performance of leading hard drives was better than that of SSDs,
the results seemed counter-intuitive. The lack of moving parts on NAND Flash-based drives should translate into power savings, but the tests ran counter to that.

A number of possible explanations may be work here. Perhaps the inherent better random access of SSDs means that the testing program involved was able to run faster, and in completing more cycles, such up more energy. Another possibility is that the percentage fill of the hard drives under test tipped the scale towards the hard drive makers. The reasoning goes that the performance of traditional hard drives deteriorate as the drive gets more full - since a hard drive is mechanical in nature, the hard drive consumes more power as a little reader within the drive has to travel longer distances across the surface of the hard drive. SSDs don't suffer from this problem as it's just a bunch of flash chips wired together.

A second series of tests from Laptop Magazine seems to refute the article from Tom's Hardware showing a 10% improvement in battery performance, though their test was problematic as well because only two SSD makers and one traditional HD maker were represented in the tests. The test scenarios were different from Tom's set of tests, performing more typical day-to-day activities like surfing a web page repeatedly.

While a 10% is not enough a differential to get excited about, the bottom line is that the reduced form factor, light weight, and resistance to shocks (through no moving parts) are equally important for mobile notebooks and netbooks. Very good unit growth in this area is a virtual certainty over the coming twelve months (and with the 3G iPhone hitting stores on July 11th), though as always, the falling prices in this area suggest that we are some time off in getting a huge amount of manufacturing capacity in NAND flash matched up with end market demand.

However, the bottom line is that this assessment of the relative performance of SSDs versus traditional hard drives is showing that there is a compelling case for more SSDs in portable laptops and smartphones. And with SSDs still having some upside in power performance as manufacturers move up the knowledge curve, SSDs will likely hit a "tipping point" in price/performance which could see much more penetration of SSDs across the board, which would be a negative to legacy drive makers like Western Digital and Seagate.

Now is a good time to search out my old library of Palmtop Magazine. Again, strange to remember that Psion was so popular at one time that it had it's own dedicated magazine. Searching through my old copies I have found all sorts of useful information. One thing I always wanted to try, but never got around to, was programing in OPL. These magazines offer lots of help, so maybe now is the time to try. Incidentally, Palmtop Magazine is still going, but with a more general approach to pdas. Check out their website here for details.

Now the difficult part is looming. If you thought Windows ActiveSync was bad, try PsiWin - UUUUUUUGH!

The Siena with my 5mx.

Once open, the size difference seems to shrink thanks to the brilliant sliding keyboard on the 5mx.

Un reciente estudio que sometió a dos de estos discos a un "test mas realista" (navengando por páginas de internet una y otra vez) frente a un disco estándar, arrojó como resultado que en vez de gastar la batería terminaba por tener un menor consumo que su oponente. La diferencia?...10 minutos mas de batería extra.

Fuente: http://gizmodo.com/

Bajan los precios de los discos SSD y Apple ha decidido rebajar su producto más aéreo. A mí me sigue pareciendo caro, pero ya sabemos desde que apareció ante nuestros ojos, que el MacBook Air iba destinado a una franja de mercado un tanto selecto y exclusivo. Para muestra la rebaja. El precio antigüo con la configuración incluído el disco de 64GB SSD costaba 2.798€ y Steve Jobs ha pensado: "Venga va, rebajadles a los españolitos 479€ que además de ganar la Eurocopa nos van a llenar los bolsillos con el iPhone a partir del 11 de julio, y se lo merecen"

Por tanto, ahora tenemos la misma configuración pero por un precio de 2.318,99€, nada mal (para Apple). En cualquier caso hay que reconocer que el MacBook Air cumple a la perfección su cometido, es liviano, portable y anoréxico hasta el extremo. A mí me sigue sin convencer pagar tanto dinero por tener un teclado tan feo, pero esto ya son cosas mías... El que se quiera comprar el MacBook Air ahora es buen momento.

Apple.com

SSD (Solid State Disks),

Os modelos ultra portáteis já utilizam esta tecnologia, que também está migrando para os notebooks convencionais.

Sem partes móveis, motores, braços que se movem, cabeças leitoras e gravadoras de dados e outras partes fazem com que os discos tipo SSD tenham alta confiabilidade e tempo de acesso bem mais rápido se comparado aos discos rígidos convencionais.

Verificando algumas de suas características, claramente podemos visualizar sua vantagem frente ao HD convencional.

MTBF (Tempo médio entre falhas) > 2 milhôes de horas
Consumo típico: 1Watt em operação, 0,1W em repouso e 0,06 se inativo
Resistência ao choque físico: 1500G por 0,5ms
Vibração: 20G
Ruído: zero

 Começando pelo tempo médio entre falhas, onde no HD convencional é de aproximadamente 700.000 horas já temos uma boa vantagem. A resistência ao choque faz com que seu uso em notebooks tornem este equipamento praticamente livre de problemas, já que grande incidência de problemas nos notebooks são ocasionados por problemas no HD (o notebook está sempre em movimento, sendo transportado de um local para outro).

Seu menor consumo proporcionará maiores tempos de autonomia das baterias dos notebook. Não mencionei acima, mas a quantidade de calor gerado pelo SSD é bem menor que a quantidade de calor gerado pelo HD. Assim, parte do problema de aquecimento no notebook fica minimizado.

Um vídeo bem interessante, é o disponibilizado no site da Samsung, que realiza a comparação entre o SSD e o HD:
 http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/products/flash/ssd/video/ssd.html

Outro local interessante é o site da Sandisk, com bastante informações sobre esta tecnologia no link: http://www.driveyourlaptop.com/

Aos interessados sobre esta tecnologia, leiam também o artigo disponibilizado pela Sandisk:
SSD Technology for Notebook Computers:
http://www.driveyourlaptop.com/images/download/SSD_Technology_for_Notebook_Computers.pdf

……………………………………………………………….
Arnaldo Mefano
Computer Solutions
Prof. Universidade Estácio de Sá

Outras publicações do Mefano
Boletim de Dicas do Arnaldo Mefano
Blog do Mefano

One wonders if the more pimped out configurations weren't selling, or perhaps this report about Solid State Drives using more power than regular hard drives (despite claims to the contrary) made them take a pre-emptive move. Either way, buying a MacBook Air just got a bit cheaper.

--------------------

and also a belated happy father's day to my papa & all the fathers out there. :)

here are 2 new LOs i did using JenLin Designs - C'mon Get Happy kit.

i'm sad to say that one of my CT Maja Designs will not be designing anymore. but here's my last LO as her CT and at the same time, our team's farewell token to our PM who's leaving the project.

lastly, here's my entry for SSD's FOBTY's for 7/3/08.

What These Fireworks Say About You

You are deeply passionate about a few things in your life. Everything else, you couldn't care less about. Your passions tend to hold steady over time. If anything, they intensify. Once you hold on to something (or someone), you don't let go!

The half-grand markdown is a result of price cuts to two separate components. First, Apple reduced the price of the Air's 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor upgrade by $100 to just $200.

Secondly, the company slashed the cost of the Flash memory-based 64GB SSD drive upgrade to $599 from $999. That means customers can now configured a 1.6GHz MacBook Air with an SSD drive for as little as $2398.

Via Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/397856/macbook-air-with-solid-state-drive-gets-500-price-cut