Solid State HDD from Bit Micro

Cyrix · Post by **Cyrix** » Sat Apr 05, 2003 5:57 pm

I was curious where to purchase the Bit Micro drives. I didn't notice on thier site where to buy them or if they sold them directly. Looking for the scsi (U320) versions inparticular.

wussboy · Post by **wussboy** » Sat Apr 05, 2003 6:18 pm

Yeah, I'm pretty interested in the tech as well. It would be nice to eliminate one source of noise entirely. How much do these puppies run?

Post by **Rusty075** » Sat Apr 05, 2003 6:46 pm

Big money, in the neighborhood of $1,000 per Gigabyte.

But they are completely silent, and higher performance than any ofther type of mass storage. The speed is limited only by the IDE channel.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 5:09 am

Maybe Katana can answer this question. He's using one on his D8000 system that he wrote about here. I asked him about it but the thread was lost in the move. I PMed him too but he hasn't replied to me yet. I asked him how big his drive was, how much it cost and how much faster it seemed than a regular IDE drive. He also posted on OCforums about the same drive, I asked him there as well but haven't got an answer yet.

ez2remember · Post by **ez2remember** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 9:03 am

Yes, I would also like to know about the solid state HD. I have read in a thread somewhere in the forums about a solid state hard disk with pictures. All I need is about 2-5GB to install the whole OS to it, this should speed things up and keep noise more or less to nothing.

Let us know where you got the solid state HD.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 12:47 pm

Katana replied to my post over at OC forums. To paraphrase his answer:

"This drive is 5GB and with my discount it cost me $5400(!!!:shock::shock:) ,but you know how computer prices are. It's only a matter of time. Last time I checked price was 6 months ago"

$5400 for a 5gig HDD!!!

Katana Man · Post by **Katana Man** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 1:48 pm

Yes, I've been getting a ton of questions about the Solid State Disk Drives, and that is very understandable considering their desirable nature.

Pros:
It's a hard drive with no moving parts.
They create no noise.
They create no heat.
You can get them in just about any format: IDE, SCSI Narrow and Wide, Fiber Channel, USB, etc..
The transfer speed is almost as fast as the bus bandwidth.
.048 ms access time.
No drivers needed. Just plug them in as normal.
They are bootable and formattable.
They can handle temperatures better than conventional hard drives. – 60 to + 95 degrees C
They can handle impact unlike conventional hard drives. 1500 Gs Operating Shock.
There is nothing to wear out. It utilized very fast flash memory technology.
You can write 100 Gigs of data per day for 27 years straight.
Bitmicro once posted: In average daily use, the drive will last 127,000 years.
And of course, you can power down and the data is retained.

Cons:
Price. Still very expensive.
Last time I check with Bitmicro for prices was 6 months ago. My discounted price for a 5.12 GB drive was $5,433.
(I'm in the process of contacting my Bitmicro rep, and will let you know the current prices.)

So as you can see, there is only one thing not to like about these drives, the price. I have been watching the prices fall over the last three years and I'm certain they will continue.

There are other Solid State drive alternatives out there.
http://www.web-tronics.com/25idefasflas.html
http://www.m-sys.com/content/products/p ... si&FAM=ffd
http://www.memtech.com/35inch.html
http://www.superssd.com/products/ramsan-220/
etc..

Both of my SSD drives are being used for business purposes, but for a short time now, I've had the opportunity to use one in my local XP workstation. It will soon be shipped out again

To give you an idea of the speed:
At one point, I used it as my main drive and loaded Win98 on it. After I turned on the PC, and after the POST check beeped, you could count 4 to 5 seconds, and Win98 was at it's desktop ready to be used.

And I'm talking ready to be used, like a military soldier reporting at attention asking for your next command.

I have no doubt that these drives are the way of the future. Our kids are going to look at us and laugh when we tell them, "Yes son, back in the day, we actually had to wait for computers to load the operating system and software. And they made noise too!"

wussboy · Post by **wussboy** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 2:28 pm

Thanks for the info, Katana Man. I appreciate you taking the time to fill us in on the specs.

That price is staggering...on the other hand, having windows come up in 5 seconds would sure impress the chicks.

Post by **Rusty075** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 2:35 pm

wussboy wrote:...on the other hand, having windows come up in 5 seconds would sure impress the chicks.

And that my friend, is what its all about.

Cyrix · Post by **Cyrix** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 3:03 pm

I think I'll spend 3k in silent equipment, water cooling, raid, and back up!

dgouldin · Post by **dgouldin** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 3:12 pm

I know this is a less desirable solution, but couldn't you get a RAM drive, load it up with 5 gigs of RAM and get the same effect from a noise standpoint? I realize that RAM has to have a charge to hold its info, but if you loaded everything you needed onto it at bootup (granted it'd take a little while and that part would be noisy) after you booted up you'd effectively have a silent drive. And 5gb of ram seems like it would be much cheaper than the solid state drive.

But I must admit, those drives are rightfully the object of much techno-lust. Geek cool factor off the charts!

Post by **Rusty075** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 3:40 pm

RAM drives aren't exactly cheap. The RocketDrive that Mike tested was $2999 for 2gigs. And it's volitile and non-bootable

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 5:07 pm

Katana Man wrote:...At one point, I used it as my main drive and loaded Win98 on it. After I turned on the PC, and after the POST check beeped, you could count 4 to 5 seconds, and Win98 was at it's desktop ready to be used...

I'm curious, why did you stop using it as your main drive?

pingu666 · Post by **pingu666** » Mon Apr 07, 2003 7:57 am

im sure u can make em cheaper, but r and d etc
and they like phat profit

i think a cache system for a normal hd would be good
u get a passthru box, and it caches the hd contents, owner could upgrade the ram etc
maybe u could select what u want tobe in cache dir/exes etc
i rekon its possible to make that, there are corporate raid cards where u add a stick of ram. say similer theroy

CRT_Leech · Post by **CRT_Leech** » Tue Apr 08, 2003 12:24 pm

The Rocket Drives were supposed to come out with a version that had an internal battery and that were bootable, but, I have not checked back to see if they indeed did start offering them yet.

They currently use an external power supply to maintain the information on the RAM.

The next solution would be a Rocket Drive in conjuction Magnetic RAM, so you wouldn't need to keep a constant electrical charge to it.

Someday....

Laters,
CRT_Leech

mudboy · Post by **mudboy** » Wed Apr 09, 2003 4:01 am

/me sits quietly in a corner and waits for trickle-down economics to affect SS hard drives

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Wed Apr 09, 2003 5:22 am

mudboy wrote:/me sits quietly in a corner and waits for trickle-down economics to affect SS hard drives

You'd better make sure you have a lot of food and a pile of good books to read while you're wating.

ez2remember · Post by **ez2remember** » Wed Apr 09, 2003 11:36 am

Ralf Hutter wrote:
mudboy wrote:/me sits quietly in a corner and waits for trickle-down economics to affect SS hard drives
You'd better make sure you have a lot of food and a pile of good books to read while you're wating.

haha

That cheered me up..

mudboy · Post by **mudboy** » Thu Apr 10, 2003 3:07 am

Ralf Hutter wrote:
mudboy wrote:/me sits quietly in a corner and waits for trickle-down economics to affect SS hard drives
You'd better make sure you have a lot of food and a pile of good books to read while you're wating.

I think it'll follow the same pricing model as CD-R, CD-RW, and recordable DVD -- a couple of years ago, recordable DVD drives (of either standard) were prohibitively expensive, costing in the thousands of dollars. Nowadays, with a coupon, a pricematch, and a good sale at Staples, you can pick one up for $149. In 3 years, that $5k solid state drive will be bigger and cost just $500. 2 years after that, it'll be standard in most PC's...again, look at CD-RW drives, which nowadays are pretty much standard. Granted, they are standard because they are the near-perfect floppy replacement, but I think as PC's pervade our lives and living spaces more and more, heat and noise will become huge issues, making silent components such as this de rigeur for mid to high-end machines.

My apologies for any early-morning verbosity, I hope I didn't scare anyone.

Pete

mpteach · Post by **mpteach** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 11:44 pm

Are prices per GB still higher on the Rocket Drive than on A Good SS HD?

alock · Post by **alock** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 12:06 am

Or you could try this:

4 x 1Gb CF Card (£100 each) = £400
4 x CF->IDE adapters (£25 each) = £100
4 channel RAID card = £50

Total = £550 for a 4 disk 4GB RAID 0

(All prices in GBP, should be about $1000 or even cheaper with US prices)

mpteach · Post by **mpteach** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 1:03 am

yeah but CF cards are insanley slow

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 5:19 am

CF cards will also die a quick death if used as a boot drive...all those repetitive saves to the same location will result in dead sectors in the CF card in a matter of months. Normal CF media is designed as transportable storage, not a full service HDD.

The memory and firmware used in the BitMicro SS drives is optimized for this sort of abuse. It's MTBF is actually far beyond standard spinning plater drives. (something like 5 million hours, if my memory is functioning)

As for pricing....I have no idea. I still haven't found a store that sells them retail.

shunx · Post by **shunx** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 4:03 am

If these things follow Moore's 'Law' over the long term, we'd all be using it in our silent PCs in a decade or two.