Memory Image

[jessho]

Maybe this idea has been tossed around, but I haven't seen it yet.

As hard drives get faster and smaller, will computer designers design a small, fast hard drive that saves memory information for either use or recovery? I know that mechanical memory storage is tremendously slower than electronic memory storage, but as hard drive technology advances, I can see a use for a drive that either supplements, or replaces electronic memory.

[Toaster]

Hard drive access speeds are infinitely slower then main memory. Main memory accesses in "nanoseconds" and HDD`s access in "milliseconds". To a CPU that executes instructions at say 700mhz is executing 700,000,000 cycles in one second. There is no way for "mechanical" memory to access this fast. However, the HDD we use today may well give way to "solid state" drives in the non to distant future. This is available today but at a substantial cost.

[M. A. Dockter]

Toaster, I bealive I'm coming to the right man when I ask.
"Please tell us the story of solid state drive Uncy Toaster!"

[Toaster]

Just don`t sit on my lap eh fella?


Solid state drives are not at all new to the PC industry.
For years, a form of solid state drive has been available to you and you may not have known about it. It`s called the "RAM drive". Even this poor excuse for a solid state drive bests the performance of ANY mechanical HDD in existance. The fact is, they are getting faster because memory speeds are climbing by leaps and bounds. A "true" battery backed-up solid state drive is actually not new either. The first implemetation was the "SCSI-DART". This was a SCSI device that boasted 16 30pin memory sockets for a total capacity of 64MB. Later, a SCSI-DART-II was built that boasted 8 72pin memory sockets and handled 128MB of memory. These "drives" boasted battery back-up and retained their information for about 3 months during inactivity. The first "dart" only had a transfer rate of 10MB/sec which was bested by HDD`s some time back. However, even at these slower data rates the "dart" had access times of well under 1 msec. The fastest Mechanical drives today are still greater the 6 msecs and most are in the 8-12 msec range.
The "Dart-II" used the SCSI/wide interface and had data rates that exceeded 20MB/sec. Still, the speed offered wasn`t enough to make the expense worthwhile.
For a drive to be useful, it has to be fast at BOTH read and write. Many of todays HDD`s boast high read rates but reduced "write" rates.
Quantum umongst others, are building "solid state" drives with rather eye opening capacities. The last "procuction" solid state drive I seen was a 1GB device.
Its data rate was limited by the PCI bus but still exceeded 240+ MB/sec with an "average" access rate of .05 Msec.
The device has no moving parts and generates little heat.
This puppy is expensive. I dont know the current price but last known is about the 1800 buck mark. (ouch)
There were many "ram drives" of sorts that used a PCB with dedicated memory for ram drives that used a form of "ram disk" software thats similar to Micky$ofts.
The problem with the software "ram drive" is both size and it being "volitile". The latter meaning that once the system were powered down, the data was lost.


Was that helpful?

Associate chancellor? When do I get a "wiz-bang" name?

[Edited by Toaster on 09-24-2000 at 11:01 PM]

[M. A. Dockter]

It would be nice to find a smaller 200MB "RAM DRIVE" on the IDE channel for graphics work...wouldn't it?

As for your name, pick and decent one and I'll hook you up.

[M. A. Dockter]

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI...item=449460480

[jessho]

http://www.itri.org.tw/english/today...e/to-8-01a.htm

Look at the size of the drives in the middle of the page.

[Byte 2.0]

I am not 100 percent sure about this, but It seems like I was watching the Discovery Channel about The Black Boxes on Air Planes. It seems that they have some that use a solid State hard drive for storage, becuause it can handle a crash better.

I wonder if their is anyway to get a small Solid State hard drive like 100 megs or so, and use it in windows as your swap file..... you would get a kick in preformance then.

Also I remember I tested a ram drive program that you could install a program in, and when you shut down you computer it would back itself up to the hard drive. Then next boot it could restore itself...Yes it slows down you system during boot and shut down. You also had the opition of deciding how offen it should back up to the hard drive in case of a computer crash....