Two quad core QX9775 processors, 800MHz FBDIMM 4GB RAM.. doesn’t sound like anything out of your grasp, right?

But how about if you put in 24 SSDs totaling 6TB in a RAID setup? Yep, that’s a bit extreme.

The crazy thing is that it worked. It could break a speed of 2GB per second. It could open the entire MS Office Suite – all programs – in half a second. It could open everything in the Windows start menu (53 programs) in just over 18 seconds. It can perform a 700MB DVD transfer in 0.8 seconds.

Quite ridiculous.

And the most amazing thing is that the SSDs can be knocked against each other while in use and still work. (See the 3:42 mark below).

Watch the video and see for yourself.

Again, ridiculous. But cool.

This is what makes SSD great, and also what makes our existing hard drives suck.

Chances are very high that other than USB sticks and optical discs, you’re using a fixed disk drive (a.k.a. the hard drive) that stores digitally encoded data on platters with magnetic surfaces.

The fixed disk drive you have is guaranteed to fail someday. I’m not saying this to scare you because it’s common knowledge. You already know you’re supposed to back up your data. What I’m getting at is that with all tech out there, it’s nothing short of amazing we still use these things considering how fragile they are and how easily they can break.

Continued

Solid State Drives (SSD) are inevitably what are going to replace our existing hard disk drives. For those not aware of what the difference is between the two, traditional hard drives have moving parts on the inside while SSDs so not. You can consider them "big flash drives".

SSD is above and beyond superior to HDD in every way except space for the time being. The biggest one you can get within a reasonable price point is 128GB for just a tick over 400 USD.

However the single largest problem is that SSDs don’t exactly "agree" with BIOSes from several manufacturers. One of the more popular drives at present is the OCZ Core Series 128GB Sata II, however the customer feedback is less than stellar on this product. Some are reporting slow access times, spotty write methods and a whole host of other bad stuff. But it also should be noted some have had no issues at all.

OCZ has been on the ball with this product (as you’ll see from the link above) and has been responding as best they can to this evolving technology, urging people to discuss the product in their forums whether you think it’s good, bad or indifferent.

For those thinking about SSD, I do recommend reading up on what people have been saying about it. It’s still an expensive tech and is a good read for those thinking about plunking down a few hundred smacks just to be on the bleeding edge, so to speak.

PCMech readers and PCMech Live viewers have heard me wax on about how SSD is going to be the next big thing with computers. Why? One reason: Speed. And lots of it. Solid State Drives are where computers are going. If you wanted any indicator as to when to upgrade, SSD is it – no question.

And Samsung appears to be the company that’s going to bring it to us – this year.

How fast is fast? How about 160MB per second write-speed fast? It leaves rotating hard disks in the dust to say the least.

Personally speaking I’m pleased as punch this is happening now (as in this year) because it’s bringing us closer to the way computers used to be.

If you examine very old-school computers like the Commodore 64, TRS-80 and the like, their boot-up time is instantaneous. SSD brings us much closer to the simplicity that is: You turn it on and go. No waiting. And that’s just plain frickin’ cool all around.

One can only hope that the same will occur for optical drives as well (as in solid state media replacing rotating media.) We’ve thankfully been able to more or less get rid of the floppy drive, but the ancient optical tech is still around. The only reason we still use them is because flash-based media doesn’t have a low enough price point just yet compared to optical discs.

It is not uncommon to find a 50-pack of blank CD-ROMs for 10 US dollars. That’s 20¢ per each disc that can hold 700MB. Flash-based media isn’t that cheap just yet but it’s getting there.

It would be interesting if the computer industry made floppy-shaped flash-based media. The media would look just like a floppy diskette but would be a flash-based card that could hold a few GB’s of data at bare minimum. Media of this type would keep a familiar feel while providing modern portable storage.

Think it’s a crazy idea? Remember, the CD-ROM optical disc is a rounded version of the 5.25″ floppy diskette concerning it’s size. That’s why it fits perfectly in a 5.25″ sleeve.

[Source: Electronista]