Quest re HD's

cubix

Just wondering with pen drives getting bigger in capacity will they ever replace the normal HD. The reason I ask is because someone was saying the pendrives have quicker response times because there solid memory(no moving parts), is this true. What size are pendrives up to now and what restricts their capacity (Cost)?

secret_squirrel

I cant see it happening anytime soon - the amount of memory you can get in a pen drive memory chip is dependent on the size of the manufacturing process used. (130nm 90nm etc). The big boys are currently struggling to get 90nm working properly and from here on in its only going to get harder and harder - unless there's some sort of quantum leap in fabbing technology.

Currently hard drives are around 100 times the storage capacity of a pen drive (albeit in a much bigger form factor).

However there is an interesting war coming between 1" HD's (4-5 gb) and pen drive/sd cards etc. (1-2 Gb max) I reckon the HD's will edge it for the next few years but its going to be close...

Someone once said that the reason that Hard disk technlogy has been so successful is that its a kludge with plenty of room for improvements...

Capt'n Midnight

Flash memory only has 100,000 write cycles or something.

So for an OS that doesnt keep writing to disk it is fine.
Windows would litterly wear it out even if you could install it on a removable drive.

It has quicker access in the sense that you don't to wait until the drive spins around or the head to move across the disk. They seem to be slower once data transfer starts. the 490Mbs quotes is not the continuous speed.

Linux (of course) can be setup to run from CD, USB key , Flash ,
or if you use network - no drives at all.

cubix

Cheers Lads

Cubix