New hard disk architectures
 

They're talking about integrating flash with hard disks, as well as
increasing the sector size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes.

Revamping Hard Disk Architecture
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1901955,00.asp

New hard disk architectures
 

YKhan wrote

They're talking about integrating flash with hard disks,

Cant see the point myself, better on the motherboard.

as well as increasing the sector size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes.

Revamping Hard Disk Architecture
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1901955,00.asp

New hard disk architectures
 

Well, actually, that's one of the things they were talking about,
integrated flash on the motherboard vs. in the drive. Also they're
figuring out whether to go with NOR or NAND. NOR would be easy to
integrate, NAND would be cheap but a little more finicky to program.

New hard disk architectures
 

YKhan wrote:

Well, actually, that's one of the things they were talking
about, integrated flash on the motherboard vs. in the drive.

Yeah, I read the article. I was commenting on your subject line.

Not convinced for most desktop systems tho, even on the motherboard.

Could be useful in laptops.

Also they're figuring out whether to go with NOR or NAND.
NOR would be easy to integrate, NAND would be cheap
but a little more finicky to program.

New hard disk architectures
 

Bitstring , from the wonderful person
Rod Speed said
YKhan wrote:

Well, actually, that's one of the things they were talking
about, integrated flash on the motherboard vs. in the drive.

Yeah, I read the article. I was commenting on your subject line.

Not convinced for most desktop systems tho, even on the motherboard.

Could be useful in laptops.

It would allow an even deeper level of coma than 'Hibernation' I guess
... you could turn the power off or pull the wall plug and still resume
where you left off. If the speed was right (which could be arranged)
then maybe you could use it as some place to store %bloatwaredir% and
get even cold boots going PDQ.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

New hard disk architectures
 

GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote
Bitstring , wrote
Rod Speed said
YKhan wrote:

Well, actually, that's one of the things they were talking
about, integrated flash on the motherboard vs. in the drive.

Yeah, I read the article. I was commenting on your subject line.

Not convinced for most desktop systems tho, even on the motherboard.

Could be useful in laptops.

It would allow an even deeper level of coma than 'Hibernation' I guess

Faster than hibernate anyway.

.. you could turn the power off or pull the wall plug and still resume where
you left off.

And it could choose to leave the hard drive off most of the time.

If the speed was right (which could be arranged) then maybe you could use it
as some place to store %bloatwaredir% and get even cold boots going PDQ.

Yeah, that's what the article is mostly on about.

I just leave desktops on all the time and hibernate the laptop.

New hard disk architectures
 

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 23:25:50 +0000, GSV Three Minds in a Can
wrote:

Bitstring , from the wonderful person
Rod Speed said
YKhan wrote:

Well, actually, that's one of the things they were talking
about, integrated flash on the motherboard vs. in the drive.

Yeah, I read the article. I was commenting on your subject line.

Not convinced for most desktop systems tho, even on the motherboard.

Could be useful in laptops.

It would allow an even deeper level of coma than 'Hibernation' I guess
.. you could turn the power off or pull the wall plug and still resume
where you left off.

You can do that with a five year old peecee and an even older hard drive.
Hibernate doesn't depend on any circuitry maintaining state, it's a boot-time
function that loads the current hiberfil.sys file if it is valid...

New hard disk architectures
 

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 20:31:51 -0500, daytripper wrote:

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 23:25:50 +0000, GSV Three Minds in a Can
wrote:

Bitstring , from the wonderful person
Rod Speed said
YKhan wrote:

Well, actually, that's one of the things they were talking
about, integrated flash on the motherboard vs. in the drive.

Yeah, I read the article. I was commenting on your subject line.

Not convinced for most desktop systems tho, even on the motherboard.

Could be useful in laptops.

It would allow an even deeper level of coma than 'Hibernation' I guess
.. you could turn the power off or pull the wall plug and still resume
where you left off.

You can do that with a five year old peecee and an even older hard drive.
Hibernate doesn't depend on any circuitry maintaining state, it's a boot-time
function that loads the current hiberfil.sys file if it is valid...

THe hybernate file isn't kept up-to-date. It takes time to hybernate
(maybe even 30sec with 2GB of RAM ;-). Kick the plug out and you *won't*
go back to where you were.

--
Keith

New hard disk architectures
 

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage YKhan wrote:
They're talking about integrating flash with hard disks, as well as
increasing the sector size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes.

Revamping Hard Disk Architecture
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1901955,00.asp

This has been around for some time. The flash does not really help,
unless you write very littel to disk. Personally I think SRAM
and batteries are a better choice, also because flash has relatively
low number of write cycles before it breaks. Not so bad with a disk
mapped 1:1 to flash (e.g. because it is entirely flash), but a serious
problem if a small flash has to buffer all writes to a large disk.
Maybe they are just trtying to create disks that break after 2
years or so...
Note that SRAM+battery has been around for at least a deacde in more
expensive RAID controllers, so the basic idea is old.

As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point. Multi-sector
transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already. Clustering also
provides the possibility to use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon
unit.

I think this is mainly some HDD vendor trying to make themselves
more interesting to a public that does not really understand what
they are talking about.

Arno

New hard disk architectures
 

Arno Wagner wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage YKhan wrote:
They're talking about integrating flash with hard disks, as well as
increasing the sector size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes.

Revamping Hard Disk Architecture
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1901955,00.asp

This has been around for some time. The flash does not really help,
unless you write very littel to disk. Personally I think SRAM
and batteries are a better choice, also because flash has relatively
low number of write cycles before it breaks. Not so bad with a disk
mapped 1:1 to flash (e.g. because it is entirely flash), but a serious
problem if a small flash has to buffer all writes to a large disk.
Maybe they are just trtying to create disks that break after 2
years or so...
Note that SRAM+battery has been around for at least a deacde in more
expensive RAID controllers, so the basic idea is old.

As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point.

The point is that that allows more data to be stored on
the drive, essentially because less is wasted for headers.

Multi-sector transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already.

Different issue.

Clustering also provides the possibility to
use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon unit.

I think this is mainly some HDD vendor trying to make
themselves more interesting to a public that does not
really understand what they are talking about.

It isnt just one vendor.