Comments on: Will Flash Drives be the Laptop Music Storage of the Future?

By: nonstatic

nonstatic — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:49:04 +0000

only a matter of time. i can’t wait.

By: bliss

bliss — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:00:50 +0000

Anyone wanting to know more about ZFS should read this article at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

Seems it is serious challenge to get implemented for everyday use in Mac OS X Leopard: “As of Mac OS X 10.5 (Developer Seed 9A321), support for ZFS has been included, but lacks the ability to act as a root partition, noted above. Also, attempts to format local drives using ZFS are unsuccessful; this is a known bug.” Interesting stuff!

By: bliss

bliss — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:31:28 +0000

Wow! I hadn’t heard of the ZFS formatting of Leopard — I want to know more about that.

By: scott l.

scott l. — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 10:22:50 +0000

well, my only totally reliable experience with flash memory is SD cards from cameras and my H4. i can even swap out cards and read pictures from my H4’s reader and vice versa on my camera. they show up on the desktop and go away when you hit the eject button. there are times occasionally when the mac refuses to dismount USB media or devices. it can’t be that uncommon. i’ve done it on a bunch of macs and all of them occasionally have the same dismounting issue. most of the time it’s a user error - like i still have an application going, but sometimes the mac hangs in housekeeping mode and i’ve quit all the applications and it still refuses to dismount USB devices. this has happened to me on at least 4 different machines, not just my own.

regarding the yanking the drive issue at inopportune moments - hey, it happens to all of us at some point. i try to remember but i still forget occasionally. but this is where i think the technology should be forgiving and made to be more robust regarding data integrity and preservation in spite of user error. supposedly the new mac os (leopard) has ZFS which is supposed to be a more recoverable file system than HFS+ is, but i bet it’ll probably break 10 other things that were working fine under Tiger.

By: dead_red_eyes

dead_red_eyes — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:02:22 +0000

DJ McManus, I’ve actually heard of some people having flash drives that get hot … but I honestly couldn’t see these newer flash drives having heat issues.

Who knows tho, untill we start to see some specs on these bad boys all we can do is speculate really.

By: bliss

bliss — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:21:37 +0000

The main issue for me is noise. I’d like to make music, surf, and play games without the extra noise made by hard drives and fans. I can imagine using heat sinks with flash drives in desktop systems that will totally eliminate heat and noise. I don’t mind having to backup data, I’d do it even if it weren’t required, because you never know. Just get rid of the noise and I’d be the happiest cat.

By: loops

loops — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:29:15 +0000

Early flash memory had problems with write endurance (number of times you could write to it). The finite number of erase-write cycles quickly spread some FUD and kept people from adapting to it.
But new techniques like wear levelling and BBM (bad block management) have improved the lifespan and stability of flash memory.
Check here to read about the technical “worst case scenario” lifespan of 51 years for flash memory using these techniques.
But that doesn’t mean these things won’t break earlier. You’ll still need to make backups just like with your hard drives.

By: DJ McManus

DJ McManus — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:20:36 +0000

thermal dissipation …

I hear what dead red eyes is saying about no moving parts meaning no heat production in these.

I have a kingmax 1 gig thumbdrive which is smaller than a stick of trident gum. It was replaced under warranty after failing once already and it gets quite hot when data is transfered to it.

On the other hand my 2 gig smartdisk card is going strong but because its inside my camera I’ve never checked its temperature.

Has anyone actually got one of these as their main HD yet?

By: _object.session

_object.session — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:58:37 +0000

hi. sorry if this is too long of a quote, but i thought this might explain some of the questions about the expresscard sizes, from expresscard.org:

There is no direct performance difference between an ExpressCard/34 and an ExpressCard/54 module. In fact, both modules use the same 26 contact connector, so your computer is not even aware of which size of module has been inserted. …However, the ExpressCard/54 form-factor does allow for greater thermal dissipation due to its larger surface area. … there are some applications that require the larger ExpressCard/54 module’s extra width. Some examples of this are: SmartCard readers, CompactFlash readers, and hard drives with 1.8″ platters. …

—

also, expresscard/54 slots support expresscard/34 cards. so, i figure that laptop companies put in the larger slot when their design can spare the extra space.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 23:12:19 +0000

Yeah, but if you can swap out via ExpressCard some day …

I could be wrong, but I just don’t think Apple will cut into their margins or complicate device configs via internal drives. That said, the current Santa Rosa is missing the new 45nm chip coming I would think around early 2008.

And after that there’s something better again.

Probably only you know when the right time is to upgrade for your own needs, in other words. :)

Watch for a current-gen MBP test soon, anyway. And maybe I can get SanDisk to loan me a flash drive for a coupla weeks. ;)