"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2009-05-17, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2009-05-10, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

[ ... ]

Solid state hard drive prices are dropping rapidly. They are plug in
replacements for mechanical hard drives. Standard power connectors &
EIDE cables.

Hmm ... *that* should have better reliability. Assuming that
they don't have the problem that some CF (Compact Flash) cards have when
used for computer boot drives instead of camera media. They have a
limited number of write cycles, so if you are booting from them and
running a lot of things which write all the time, you will eventually
run out of write cycles and it will get to be unreliable. If the solid
state drives have gotten around that, they sound great. What kind of
speeds do they offer?


http://www.crucial.com/pdf/productFl...tFlyer_ssd.pdf

32GB: up to 100MB/s (read)
60MB/s (write)
64GB: up to 100MB/s (read)
35MB/s (write)

Hmm ... according to that, it is not EIDE but rather SATA.
Which means that I could not use it in my old Tadpole SPARC based
laptop. (That wants SCSI anyway, so I am still SOL with that. :-) But
for other things, it would suffice.


There are PATA to SATA interfaces for $20 to $30 that plug directly
into the solid state drives, and use the standard 4 pin molex & 80
conductor EIDE cables. There also 5.25" bays to slide the SATA drive
into, so a drive could be pulled out of one computer and stuffed into
the backup machine to get right back to work. The solid state drives
are less susceptible to vibration, use less power, and have a five year
warranty.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!