Hi Folks,
This morning's Guardian "Technology" section has an item about the possible replacement of the classic HDD by flash-memory modules. See:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1856508,00.html
While reading the article (mostly about cost comparisons), I was wondering about whether the data stored on a flash module would be as solidly stored as on a HDD. Finally, there was a brief discussion of the issue:
"But besides cost, there are other obstacles for Flash memory replacing hard drives. Flash memory is typically guaranteed for around 1m read/write cycles, which sounds a lot, but in the context of the working life of a PC (which is continually writing, erasing or rewriting data) is not. So designers have to use techniques known as wear-levelling to shift data around the Flash memory block to reduce the risk of data error. "We can design around the problem," says Walsh."
I was also wondering about how long data would "stay in place" over time anyway. Does the "bit-state" of an element on a flash module tend to "diffuse" away over time?
Admittedly I have never experienced data corruption on a flash drive (though the number of read/writes to such that I've made is far from the millions); aqnd I've certainly had problems with hard drives! (But then I do hammer these).
Any views?
There's also an interesting insight into XP and Vista. Booting XP from a flash would be 25%-50% faster than from a HDD. And, it says, "Vista is about five times bigger than XP, and what comes along with that large size is a speed issue, even with faster CPUs. We've been working with Microsoft on ways to speed up booting and application loading by complementing the hard drive with Flash."
Hmmm
Best wishes to all, Ted.
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