solid state disks

fetjesus · Post by **fetjesus** » Mon May 08, 2006 10:33 am

I was wondering if anyone know where I can find solid state disks... need one for the operative system swap file and possibly one game so say an 8 gig solidstate disk should be enough...

Any ideas? price thoughts?

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Mon May 08, 2006 7:03 pm

BiTMICRO sells SSDs, but they are VERY expensive. Like thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, I believe, depending on capacity and speed.

A more affordable option would be a Gigabyte iRAM. It uses system memory that is provided by the user, as opposed to flash. Unfortunately, current versions are limited to 4GB (4x1GB DDR1), although an updated iRAM is on the way that supposedly supports eight sticks of DDR2, for up to 16GB.

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Thu May 11, 2006 2:21 am

Given that a 2GB stick of DDR2 goes for around $275, 8 of those will run a couple thousand $$ as well. Solid state is always going to be more expensive than the disk alternative.

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Thu May 11, 2006 5:25 pm

i-RAM 2 was supposed to come out in February this year and hasn't been spoken of since. To think I was considering waiting for it when I bought mine in about March.

It is, however, possible to run 2 i-RAMs in RAID. Again, by no means a cheap option but the options are few and far between at this time.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:23 pm

I am surprised no one has asked the logical question.

Why.???

Or more specifically "Why" SSD, vs HDD.??? There are many reviews of the iRAM to look at, they all say the same thing, its faster, but its damned expensive. In UK money a 4GB iRAM would set you back a cool Â£400 all in, for a tiny 4GB HDD.

Andy

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:01 pm

Some are willing to pay for true silence and no vibration.

And while the iRAM is expensive, it is also faster and cheaper than most industrial flash-based drives.

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Fri May 12, 2006 9:25 pm

The other thing I like is the reliability. Aside from the battery issue, the elimination of moving parts means a much longer life. My non-SSD is used solely for data and as a 'backup' OS in case of battery failure; the i-RAM does all the normal OS work.

eXa · Post by **eXa** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 7:02 am

Well im soon to try out some CF cards as SSD. Got some cf-ide adapters and a 2(4)channel pata raid card(since my MB doesnt support raid on pata)
Also going for a couple of 2gb 150x cf cards. with only 2 cards the transfer rate will be pretty low. 45MBps but the latency will be pretty low. Should be only like 0.2 or something like that, maybe lower(compared to a normal drives latency around 12).
so if it works okay ill get 2 more for more speed and space.

So then it will be 1 pci raid controller, 4 cf-ide adapters and 4 150x 2gb cf cards.
I think that would be about less than 200$ with shipping to norway!

You could use a raid controller with more channels but you will soon encounter the pci bus limit(133MBps) but even with "only" 90MBps the system should be alot faster than a hdd due to the low latency. Low latency is what you want in a os disk!

oh the speed im talking about is read speeds, write should be a bit slower!