Storage Effect

500GB, 7200 rpm - who needs 3.5″?

Seagate announced two new 500GB notebook drives.  So what?

• The 50-year history of the disk drive is all about cramming more and more bytes on less and less real estate.  The real estate shrinks when drive formats drop a size.
• 500GB 2.5″ drives mean we’re close to not needing the capacity advantage of 3.5″ drives. It’s the beginning of the end for the 3.5″ form factor.  Servers have mostly made the switch with 2.5 SAS drives like Seagate’s Savvio.
• 500GB 2.5″ 7200 rpm drives mean notebooks can get desktop performance without sacrificing capacity.  Expect rapid adoption of 7200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm in notebooks now that there is capacity parity and less of a premium in power consumption.

The difference between specifications and reality

Tom’s Hardware compared the power draw of SSDs and 7200 rpm disk drives in notebooks under real-world usage scenarios.  The SSD-based notebooks had shorter battery life! 

How can this be, given that the idle and active power ratings of both devices are comparable?

Disk drives almost always run at or close to idle power consumption rates.  SSDs do not.  Read the Tom’s Hardware post for a detailed explanation.

This throws another bucket of the cold water of Reality on notebook SSD hype. 

The lesson here is to thoroughly evaluate new technologies like SSD in your environment before jumping off the deep end.  SSD is no doubt exciting; it just needs a little time to mature.

Can anyone confirm that their SSD laptop has less battery life than their drived version?

Seagate’s drive is first to Dell’s shelves

In the world of press announcements, Seagate can be a tortoise at times.  And while flashy “first” press releases can garner attention for other disk drive vendors, it’s when the drives are in the hands of customers that really matters.

According to Engadget, Seagate has crossed the finish line first with 320GB 7200 rpm notebook drives from Dell.  The Momentus 7200.3 is a rockin’ drive, too - check it out.

Here’s a slow-motion video of the Momentus 7200 zero-G sensor in action.

Who’s using 7200 rpm in their notebook?  Is it worth the extra $46?

A factual comparison of encryption methods

Here’s a thorough article on disk drive-based encryption, with comparisons to software-based encryption.  Key takeaway: if you encrypt within the disk drive, there are no external access points for an intruder to exploit. 

What’s the real-world risk of someone going to such lengths?  Someone could break down my locked door at my house as well. 

The “no-worries” benefit 

A major commercial value of hacker-proof encryption on a business PC is the “no-worries” benefit.  If a disk-encrypted notebook with customer records on board is lost or stolen, there is no credible risk of the data ever being retrieved.  Whether or not the notebook is found, the business is safe from becoming a media poster child for lax security of their customers’ personal information.

Seagate’s take on this topic is here.

Tenfold notebook failure rates for SSDs vs. disk drives 

Engadget reports a 10X failure rate for SSDs in notebook PCs compared to hard drives.   Can you say “early adopter”? SSDs are an exciting future, but a future still for mainstream markets.

Reliability is relative, especially in terms of the technology being replaced.  The same goes for pricing - see my Flash tags posts.

Any flash early adopters out there?  What’s your experience with returns or failures, either personally or through solutions you’ve sold to someone?

Update: Yet another issue with flash as a near-term disk drive replacement: potential patent infringement issues. 

There are 3 ways to integrate flash in your customers’ solutions today. 

Option 2: The ”Prius” approach 

• Use off-the-shelf hybrid disk drives (flash + disk) to upgrade notebook PCs or create differentiated whitebook PCs
• Value: faster application boot and longer battery life
• Focus on Vista OS notebooks today, since hybrid drives rely on Vista to achieve their performance benefits

Hybrid drives are aptly named.  Just like hybrid cars, these drives straddle the fence between new (flash memory) and mature (spinning disk storage) technologies to provide the advantages of both.  They’re priced more like disk drives, and perform more like flash. 

Hybrid drives will expand beyond notebook PCs 

In the future, hybrid drives will be available for a broader set of applications, and their performance advantage will not depend on the operating system.  Today, without Vista, a hybrid drive performs just like a normal drive.

Seagate offers a hybrid drive today, the Momentus 5400 PSD.

Using flash storage today, part 1

SSD is kinda cool in MacBook Air, but not worth today’s price

Ars Technica’s review of the MacBook Air provides a thorough user-level evaluation of the value of SSD in a notebook. 

The conclusion:

The $1,300 question is whether the SSD is worth the extra cash. The answer seems to be no. I experienced only moderate gains in battery life and not very noticeable speed differences. The one major benefit of the SSD model is that it doesn’t cause the same types of slowdowns as the HDD model during times of high disk activity, and that’s certainly a huge plus. Speedy read times are great, too, but they are balanced out by pokey write times.

Still, even if it’s more usable, it’s hard to justify the huge price difference for the SSD model. If you’ve got an extra $1,300 to blow and, for some reason, haven’t just bought a second computer with it, perhaps the SSD model is for you. For anyone else looking to buy an Air, the HDD model appears to provide the most bang for the buck.

You get what you pay for.  For SSDs, the ‘gets’ aren’t worth $1300 bucks.  The big surprise to me was that in some ways the SSD notebook was actually worse than the disk drive version. 

Don’t worry, the premium will drop and SSD’s will improve.  But it’s going to be years, not months, before most of us choose SSD.