Legal Research

Hard Drives: Present and Future

Whether you store all your data locally (on your desktop computer or laptop) or keep it on the Cloud, it’s gonna live on a hard disk somewhere.  Two articles I stumbled upon today summarize the present and future of hard disk technology.  First, Gizmodo demystifies the current technology.  Here are some key points:

• Sizes: 3.5″ (desktop), 2.3″ (laptop), 1.8″ (portable devices such as iPods)

• RPM: 5,400 vs. 7,200 (the faster the drive, the lower the seek time)

• Interface standards: SATA (current - faster and uses smaller cables) vs. PATA (older - also known as ATA or IDE, uses wider cable)

What about solid-state drives which use flash technology?

“Some say that the end of the trusty hard drive is near, killed by SSD.  But let’s not be so quick to give up on a technology that stores a whole terabyte for $100.  It’ll be years before solid-state flash-memory disks (in this case usually referred to as SSDs) let us cheaply bank the same amounts of data as trusty old hard disk drives for a reasonable price.”

John Markoff, writing in the NY Times, disagrees:

“For example, it is now possible to buy a 128-gigabyte, 2.5-inch internal drive from the consumer electronics reseller OCZ for as little as $299.  Although that price might be twice as much as a comparable hard drive with rotating storage, the combination of faster speed, lower power consumption and heat generation — as well as potentially better reliability — is enticing.”

Mr. Markoff goes on to discuss how, as a test, he replaced his MacBook’s 300GB hard disk ($99) with an 80GB SSD ($540) from Intel:

“… the results were impressive.  Using a standard Macintosh performance measurement utility called Xbench, the Intel solid-state drive increased the computer’s overall performance by almost half.  Disk performance increased fivefold.  The computer started more quickly and applications seemed to open nearly instantaneously.  Most laptops do have small fans, but the computer was definitely quieter; gone was the telltale whirring of the drive motor.”

I’m also particularly interested in weight.  Neither article discussed it, so I poked around on the Web for a bit.  I think it’s safe to say that an SSD would probably save me at least half a pound.  That may not seem like much until you have to hump a laptop around all day in a bag.  (This is one of the reasons why people are gaga over netbooks.)

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).