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#21
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New hard disk architectures
George Macdonald wrote:
Two different initiatives though: the HDD mfrs are trying to extend the life of rotating platter systems; Intel's Robson is a fast startup "technology" http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123053,00.asp. Well, flash isn't going to extend the life of the platters, it's only good for the fast startup. In order to extend platter life you'd need ram mostly. Yousuf Khan |
#22
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New hard disk architectures
GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
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. The problem you'd have with such a dynamically updated hibernate file is that if you keep writing to the flash drive, it will quickly lose its entire limited allocation of write cycles. The hard disks and ram have unlimited write cycles (virtually), flash doesn't. However, in a laptop environment, with a battery backup already available, I can see them possibly going into save-to-ram (standby) mode, followed by a save-from-ram-to-flash mode. You can completely turn off the hard disk when power is lost, and make all updates only to the flash disk, which would then proceed to update the disk when power is restored. Very much like a journalled filesystem. Yousuf Khan |
#23
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New hard disk architectures
On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 20:06:21 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:
GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote: 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. The problem you'd have with such a dynamically updated hibernate file is that if you keep writing to the flash drive, it will quickly lose its entire limited allocation of write cycles. The hard disks and ram have unlimited write cycles (virtually), flash doesn't. However, in a laptop environment, with a battery backup already available, I can see them possibly going into save-to-ram (standby) mode, followed by a save-from-ram-to-flash mode. You can completely turn off the hard disk when power is lost, and make all updates only to the flash disk, which would then proceed to update the disk when power is restored. Very much like a journalled filesystem. Yousuf Khan A solution looking for a problem... With all of that in place, there's really no gain on the play: a laptop with a functional battery shouldn't scram to disk just because it lost its mains source, it should just pop a warning and keep on running. If the operator decides to bail, (s)he can simply enter Hibernate. End of story, no flash required. At best, all the extra flash and code to use it could even hope to accomplish is to save a few milliwatts of battery life when shutting down... /daytripper |
#24
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New hard disk architectures
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote: 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. I don't think they're talking about using flash in the sense of a dynamic disk cache, but as a static disk cache, or a ramdisk in other words. Namely, they're aiming to cache the boot sequence into the flashdisk to speed up boot times. That would not make much sense IMO. 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. Well, they explained it in article, they're saying that the reason this is needed is because with only 512 bytes you don't have enough bits for error correcting code with today's big hard disks. That is nonsense. The size of the disk has no impact on the per-sector error corection. Maybe they mean that with 4096 byte sectors they can use more efficient codes. Arno |
#25
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New hard disk architectures
On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:51:27 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:
George Macdonald wrote: Two different initiatives though: the HDD mfrs are trying to extend the life of rotating platter systems; Intel's Robson is a fast startup "technology" http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123053,00.asp. Well, flash isn't going to extend the life of the platters, it's only good for the fast startup. In order to extend platter life you'd need ram mostly. I did not mean reduce wear of the platters but extend the lifetime of hard disks in general as a mass storage solution, i.e. delay the switch over to flash as a replacement for hard disks. It gets them a foot in the door with the technology too... hopefully, from their POV, fending of Sandisk et.al. from taking over the mass storage market eventually. -- Rgds, George Macdonald |
#26
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New hard disk architectures
On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:24:38 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote: On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:51:27 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote: George Macdonald wrote: Two different initiatives though: the HDD mfrs are trying to extend the life of rotating platter systems; Intel's Robson is a fast startup "technology" http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123053,00.asp. Well, flash isn't going to extend the life of the platters, it's only good for the fast startup. In order to extend platter life you'd need ram mostly. I did not mean reduce wear of the platters but extend the lifetime of hard disks in general as a mass storage solution, i.e. delay the switch over to flash as a replacement for hard disks. It gets them a foot in the door with the technology too... hopefully, from their POV, fending of Sandisk et.al. from taking over the mass storage market eventually. Until cost per bit for flash at least enters the same arena as magnetics - never mind approaches parity - I doubt the magnetic media companies are all that worried about flash encroaching in their bread-and-butter markets... |
#27
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New hard disk architectures
Oh, wonders of a journalled filesystem... BTW, you can do the same tricks
with NTFS. I'm afraid, you folks argue two different concepts: 1. Filesystem robustness against power failure or system reset; 2. Complete system state restore across power-off (which is achieved with hibernation, but requires some time for writing the state). IIRC, OS/360 allowed the applications to restart from a saved checkpoint, but it's not what's discussed here. If anybody hopes to restore complete system state after an arbitrary power failure (as if it didn't happen), you're out of luck without battery backup. "Robert Redelmeier" wrote in message . net... In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips daytripper wrote: Because that very hiberfil.sys *is* being updated, and until it has completed successfully, the hiberfil.sys *is not* up to date. But that isn't the point. Why does "up to date" matter? Does it need to be within the last 17ms of an AC cycle? For many PC purposes, a _consistant_ image for 15 seconds ago would do. Once a system has successfully created the hiberfil.sys and shut down, you can kick the plug all you like, but when you finally get tired of that and plug it back in and hit the power switch, the system should successfully return from hibernation. Actually, I was more brutal while testing FreeBSD: I kicked the plug towards the end of kernel compiles. In 3 out of 4 trials, the compile restarted cleanly, taking a combined 30 sec longer. Once it had to be restarted from scratch. In no case was the filesystem damaged, thanks to Kirk McCusack's SoftUpdates (essentially carefully ordered disk writes). -- Robert |
#28
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New hard disk architectures
On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 18:32:22 -0500, daytripper wrote:
On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:24:38 -0500, George Macdonald wrote: On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:51:27 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote: George Macdonald wrote: Two different initiatives though: the HDD mfrs are trying to extend the life of rotating platter systems; Intel's Robson is a fast startup "technology" http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123053,00.asp. Well, flash isn't going to extend the life of the platters, it's only good for the fast startup. In order to extend platter life you'd need ram mostly. I did not mean reduce wear of the platters but extend the lifetime of hard disks in general as a mass storage solution, i.e. delay the switch over to flash as a replacement for hard disks. It gets them a foot in the door with the technology too... hopefully, from their POV, fending of Sandisk et.al. from taking over the mass storage market eventually. Until cost per bit for flash at least enters the same arena as magnetics - never mind approaches parity - I doubt the magnetic media companies are all that worried about flash encroaching in their bread-and-butter markets... OTOH, do people really pay more for 200GB drives? Ok, I bought one on BlackFriday for $29 (I would have bought a smaller drive at $29). Will people pay for a flash drive it it were a similar price and half the capacity? ...forgetting the write-cyle issue. My bet is yes. BTW, what happened to MRAM? I thought we'd be swimminng in it by now. ;-) -- Keith |
#29
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New hard disk architectures
On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:47:41 -0500, Keith wrote:
On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 18:32:22 -0500, daytripper wrote: On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:24:38 -0500, George Macdonald wrote: I did not mean reduce wear of the platters but extend the lifetime of hard disks in general as a mass storage solution, i.e. delay the switch over to flash as a replacement for hard disks. It gets them a foot in the door with the technology too... hopefully, from their POV, fending of Sandisk et.al. from taking over the mass storage market eventually. Until cost per bit for flash at least enters the same arena as magnetics - never mind approaches parity - I doubt the magnetic media companies are all that worried about flash encroaching in their bread-and-butter markets... OTOH, do people really pay more for 200GB drives? Ok, I bought one on BlackFriday for $29 (I would have bought a smaller drive at $29). Will people pay for a flash drive it it were a similar price and half the capacity? ...forgetting the write-cyle issue. My bet is yes. Geeze...."forgetting that the drive has a profound problem with wear-out" kinda changes the nature of the comparison....But, ok, at only twice the price, you possibly could be right - if in fact there's some perceivable performance advantage, because capacity is still important. But at the current rate of cost-per-bit closure, even you'll be an old gummer before that happens. BTW, what happened to MRAM? I thought we'd be swimminng in it by now. ;-) ahahahahahahahahaha! Reminds me of the annual visits from the FeDRAM folks... /daytripper |
#30
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New hard disk architectures
On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:47:41 -0500, Keith wrote:
OTOH, do people really pay more for 200GB drives? Ok, I bought one on BlackFriday for $29 (I would have bought a smaller drive at $29). Will people pay for a flash drive it it were a similar price and half the capacity? ...forgetting the write-cyle issue. My bet is yes. US$29 for a 200GB drive? New? I gotta get a truckload of these :P They are going for like at least US$100 a piece here. -- A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations, Lost to the world, Lost to myself |
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