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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Seperating Flash and RAM based SSD Advantages and Disadvantages

Combining them directly like this is confusing at best, which I don't think they should be entirely different sections they could be sub headers such as, however this is just an example. 

Advantages
+Shared
+RAM Specific
+Flash Specific

Disadvantages
+Shared
+RAM Specific
+Flash Specific

--70.230.234.166 (talk) 06:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree, flash storage and DRAM-based hd-emulators have little in common (only the IDE interface basically). As such, they should really be separate articles, as before.
HenkeB (talk) 12:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Seems like they were only proposing rearranging the advantages/disadvantages sections along these lines (rather than splitting the article). Such a re-arrangement of that section might clarify, it is a little hard to tell without seeing it. Part of what complicates it is that many of the parameters vary by capacity (the curves start out one place, but then they cross because of different slopes). Perhaps such parameters might be better covered outside the advantages/disadvantages format. Zodon (talk) 08:17, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Removal of timeline

I removed this because it's a massive spam magnet and gives the false impression that SSD's are a very recent invention. Maybe a few of the announcements are notable enough to be put back but it's hard to tell which ones. Towel401 (talk) 11:58, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, the flash drive (like it's cousins CF,SD etc) is in fact a fairly recent invention. A natural split of this article into a Flash-drive and a RAM-drive article (much like before) would solve this problem as well as others, such as the messy advantages/disadvantages section. RAM-drives and flash-drives does not use the same memory technology, neither do they have the same purpose (basically speed boosts in high perfomance computers versus (semi-) permanent storage in harsh environments such as laptops and embedded systems), the only thing in common would be the IDE/SATA interface, not enough to lump them together as I see it. HenkeB (talk) 18:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I think removing the section seems reasonable. How would splitting flash vs. RAM would help this? (Section would still be a big spam magnet.) Zodon (talk) 06:40, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
When were flash-based and RAM-based SSD separate articles? The history is common to both. The two current implementations of SSD have more in common than just the interface. Architecture seems to be similar (interface - controller - storage), and since they both use semiconductor chips, the packaging issues may be similar. Both are touted for performance improvements (at least in high-end versions). The function could be dealt with similarly to the USB flash drive article - storage devices (link to relevant article with summary) plus controller/interface. Not much point in splitting until one of them grows to the point where the article becomes unmanageably large. Zodon (talk) 06:40, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
  1. Once, there was a separate flash-drive article, but it was merged into this one (see above).
  2. The timeline covered (more or less) the recent history of flash-drives, why remove that? (Being a "spam magnet" is a completely different issue.)
  3. "Architecture seems to be similar (interface - controller - storage), and since they both use semiconductor chips,..."; using that kind of logic you could merge hard-disks, CD-RWs, DVDs, and floppy-drives, into a single article as well.
  4. "packaging issues may be similar"... ??
  5. The only function of a RAM-drive is to boost performance; flash-drives are primarily rugged and low power storage. Yes, the fact that some flash-drives are very fast and/or energi-efficient makes for an overlap in some "high-end" applications (could perhaps replace both hard-disks and RAM-drives in the future). However, they are still fundamentally different (see next point).
  6. Yes, linking between articles at various levels of generality/detail is a great thing, but it wouldn't work well as basic categorization is done wrongly. RAM-drives are inherently volatile, flash-drives are not, a fundamental difference.
HenkeB (talk) 18:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
The history section already mentions stuff used in the 70's while the timeline started in 2005. It's only recently that they gained popularity but even IDE-based flash modules have been around for ages. I don't think RAM based drives should get their own article just yet - the section currently takes up only a few kb of the 25k this article is now and the GC-RAMDISK already has an article for some strange reason. Maybe that article can be merged into the new RAM drive article if someone decides to make one.Towel401 (talk) 22:30, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
The timeline is not my major concern here (as you probably have grasped), although I find no reason to exclude recent history (when someone has made an effort to include it). The question of age is very much about how far it's reasonable to stretch a definition; one could argue that the first SSDs were core memory (solid state although not transistors) or, at the other extreme, that is was the first commercial product that was named SSD and also resembling a hard-disk, or whatever. However, it's hard to escape the fact that various form of "RAM-drives" and "RAM-disks" has been around much longer than any flash-device, as flash technology was developed in the eighties and grew large (in both popularity and capacity) during the nineties.
Furthermore, I don't think we should be so concerned with the size of articles, that's really secondary, but instead try to concentrate on achieving the most logical and natural structure among (as well as within) articles. In this case, Solid State Drive would better be a rather small "umbrella" article covering some general history and technology and mentioning that the term SSD has come to denote so quite different products (and why). From there RAM-drive and Flash-drive can be linked, which, of course, cover each respective concept/product in detail. (Yes, it would be a good idea to merge GC-RAMDISK into a RAM-drive article :) Regards. HenkeB (talk) 23:45, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
The timeline had devolved into a list of product announcements. There was no clear indication that the items were historically important. The history section might be better place to gather items that are historically significant. May be slightly less prone to spamming.
If by separate flash drive article, you mean the one that was merged per the proposal above, this article still covered both RAM and flash based SSDs. When that article was merged into this one, this article changed very little; as I recall the see-also section was the main content that came from the other, most of the rest was duplication.
There are already quite a number of articles on flash based storage, with a lot of duplication, creating flash drive would be yet another. Articles tend to gather material (many editors just add to whatever article is in front of them without looking at how articles relate).
The different characteristics of DRAM memory vs. Flash mean there are different considerations when building one, but volatility is not necessarily an end-user concern. A DRAM based SSD appears non-volatile to the user. From a users perspective they aren't fundamentally different - you have an interface, something on the other end remembers the data you write at a location and gives it back to you when you ask for it. Whether that something is a hard disk, DRAM, flash, bubble memory, etc. means they have different characteristics (power usage, access time, startup time, etc.) but it is functionally the same.
SSD can be the small umbrella article, without the separate flash-drive and DRAM based drive articles. Zodon (talk) 02:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
  1. I actually agree on your first point!
  2. "If by separate flash drive article, you mean the one that was merged per the proposal above," frankly, please don't pretend...
  3. The lead (the by far most important part) was primarily about flash-drives, I rewrote large parts of it myself.
  4. Preventing duplication should not be our main concern; duplication is not even necessarily a bad thing, rather a nessesity in many cases, to achive good readability and clarity.
  5. Yes, it's true that some RAM-drives achieve a kind of non-volatility with the help of non-volatile hard-drives. But, that specific kind of "end user perspective" is only one among many different possible perspectives, the buyer, the engineer, and the technically interested reader are, among others, well as important. And again, these RAM-drives are completely useless as permanent storage in laptops and similar, thus a completely different kind of product.
  6. The last part is an overly abstract picture, to say the least. If that is your only possible point of view, I suppose you would like to merge each and every data storage article on WP into a single one? And, if not, why use hypocritical arguments?
  7. "SSD can be the small umbrella article, without the separate flash-drive and DRAM based drive articles." So where do all the specific details go then? Are you against detailed technical information per se?
HenkeB (talk) 06:17, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

[Outdent]

4 - Preventing duplication is one of the concerns. It makes things harder to to read (i.e. you have to mush through a bunch of re-hash to find what you are looking for, and makes it hard to know that you have read what there is here about a topic) and makes maintenance harder. There needs to be a good reason to incur the overhead of an extra article. When something gets large enough that it is cumbersome to handle as one article, that is a reasonable reason to split. Until then it is better to forgo the overhead of handling an extra article.

5 - As noted various types of SSD have different characteristics, which makes them better suited to different applications. Volatility is probably not the main reason RAM based SSDs would be less suitable in laptops, etc. (lower storage density, greater power demand and cost seem likely to be more significant limiters). Volatility can be engineered around now, the other factors are harder.

6 - If all the articles on drives on Wikipedia were together in one 24 KB article I would work to add content, rather thank advocating splitting it before it had expanded to the point where more articles were needed.

7 - As noted above, and as done in the USB flash drive article. Details about the memory go in the article on the memory, details about the interface go in the article on the interface (USB, ATA, etc.), details about putting it all together go here. When there is enough material that it makes sense to split, then might split to a flash drive article (combining those portions of USB flash drive). However if most of the detail is in the controllers, might create an article on controllers, or maybe something else entirely.

Until it grows we won't know what became the big branch and where it makes sense to make the division. While we can guess at logical structures, we can't be sure what will evolve until it does. I don't see making little articles based on one model of how to divide the information, rather wait until it grows up. Zodon (talk) 08:13, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Need a 'manufacturers' section

Need a 'manufacturers' section, at least for SATA based SSDs. - xpclient Talk 19:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if that's really a good idea. THere is one on the CompactFlash page and obscure manufacturers keep adding their red links to it. Is there an official policy on this? Towel401 (talk) 20:23, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Why is such a section needed? As noted, seems likely to become a spam magnet, much as the timeline was. (Wikipedia is not a directory, etc.) Zodon (talk) 06:53, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Separating Flash and RAM-based SSDs

(Cont'd from Separating Flash and RAM-based SSD Advantages and Disadvantages above)

I agree. It would be more clear and less confusing if we could move out RAM-based SSDs out of the article. That kind of SSDs are much much more expensive and thus specialized. I predict almost all mainstream users will have the flash-based kind in mind when they think of SSDs, use them or go to this page for information. Obviously both kinds deserve a page, it's only that RAM-based ones aren't the kind people will be looking for or expect. CapnZapp (talk) 19:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

this is really a MUST do. they are completely different storage systems.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.39.103.136 (talk) 17:14, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Magnetic Solid State

do you think its possible to have a magnetic soilid state drive, so that they dont have limited write cycles? --Superchad (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

For an example of solid state magnetic memory, see Bubble memory. Of course magnetic disks also have limited write cycles (just higher limits than flash), so whether one could achieve unlimited write cycles with a magnetic storage medium is a different question. Zodon (talk) 02:12, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Advantage

Secure Erases are faster on a flash drive. Rotational drives performs secure erases by redundantly erasing itself or writing zeroes to the entire drive to remove any trace of data on the rotational media. This can take a significant amount of time. SSDs do not have this problem. (see data remnance) Psignosys (talk) 13:41, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Psignosys

Reference? Security and questions of when something is really gone are tricky enough that really need good sources. (Please clarify "(see data remnance)," was that supposed to be Data remanence, although that article doesn't seem to cover flash memory, or how to securely erase them.) Seems like secure erasure might be harder because of wear leveling, etc. - harder to access a specific memory cell? Zodon (talk) 02:04, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Please pardon my misspelling of Data remanence, I think I was trying to say two things at once. But yes that was what I was referring to. As far as data remanence goes, rotational media is much more susceptible to data recovery via data remanence than NAND based flash drive. Detecting and calculating remanent charge levels on a floating gate is much more difficult. On MLC NAND flash, even if remanent charge levels of floating gates are measured and quantified, knowledge regarding charge level thresholds must be known (specific to a particular NAND). (since each cell can represent 2 bits per cell, that means each cell has 4 charge states. This will make it even more difficult with 3 bit per cell FLASH technology). I hate to use my personal experience as a reference but I'll use it as such and the community can simply void it :p
My other statement was simply saying that NAND erase procedure is significantly faster. NAND erases are done by pulling the NAND silion well to a certain voltage, removing charge from the floating gate oxide blocks at a time (at present each block may be typically 256KB to a 1MB). The time this takes is very short. While rotational media still needs to overwrite data one bit at a time. Even if it is done at the block level. (some architectures may support erasing multiple blocks at once, but this contributer has never come accross them). The wear leveling data is typically stored out of bounds of the user accessible data. So the drive can erase all user data while maintaining its internal metadata. SSD drives typically have various tables which distinguishes between user accessible data space and its own metadata. So the controller can refer to this prior to performing a secure erase. reference: personal experience :p
If some one can find documentation supporting this i would be grateful - psignosys —Preceding unsigned comment added by Psignosys (talk • contribs) 17:23, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
As far as the speed thing - sounds like you are saying that need to erase the whole device in order to get secure erasure. (As compared to being able to erase selected portion of a hard disk.) Seems like care would still be needed to avoid pathological cases where you didn't erase everything because you erased the same section multiple times (depends on details of wear leveling algorithm). (And not clear which would be winner in speed - erasing a portion of hard disk multiple times vs. whole SSD) Zodon (talk) 03:29, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Removal of pricing from general discussion

I'm new to this wikipedia editing stuff so I'm a bit reluctant to change things with out discussion before hand. Could we edit this article to remove pricing from general areas and add in a pricing section? I say this because of this line "adding a US$ $600 to $1000 premium to the price of a HDD-equipped laptop" in "availability". dmanley (talk) 11:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)Derry.Manley 11:40 13 Jan 2009 GMT

Actually, a Pricing section would be fine but I would consider removing specific dollar amounts. Technology pricing changes so frequently that it will be difficult to keep up to date. If you want to include prices, make sure you say something like "As of January 2009..." --Laser brain (talk) 13:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Not sure about separate pricing section. As noted prices are highly volatile, and any specific dollar amount should include a date (as well as a source). (Then as it becomes out of date it becomes historical perspective.)
However a pricing section might tend to attract more spam. Since prices seem concentrated in the availability section, might be better to focus on removing what prices don't seem notable, adding dates to the ones that are. (More note significant events in pricing history, etc.) Zodon (talk) 00:32, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Inappropriate use of "Citation Needed"

For a statement such as, "Until recently, solid-state drives were too costly for mobile computing" -such a statement can not be verified by a citation from any particular source. Such statements are based on conclusions that are drawn by people who are knowledgeable about the subject, such as the authors of this article, and is backed up by the content of the article. Any individual can make any statement about why solid state drives haven't been used extensively for mobile computing, but they couldn't be considered the definitive source for that statement.

For a statement such as,"Solid-state drive (SSD) technology has been marketed to the military and niche industrial markets since the mid-1990s" -a citation request is appropriate and needed to provide verification that this indeed did occur.Landroo (talk) 16:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

If it can not be verified then it probably doesn't belong in Wikipedia. A citation for such a statement would provide backing for it, and if it is an unsurprising/uncontroversial conclusion that would seem to be adequate. (e.g. although the first statement above could use more specifics, it shouldn't be hard to find citations to back it up.) Conclusions drawn from the content of the article by authors of the article could be WP:OR, and it is reasonable to expect citation of WP:RS for such items that are questioned. Zodon (talk) 20:54, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Some are easy to cite, others not so easy. I gave an example of each. If someone knows how to provide a citation for my second example that is more than a personal opinion, I'd like to see it.Landroo (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Could someone (fully) add this content?

Split page into SSD (Flash) and SSD (DRAM)

As the technology behind Flash-based and DRAM-based SSDs are totally different, and have different issues, it seems to me that this article would be better replaced by a redirect stub to two separate articles, one for each. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.194.50 (talk) 02:20, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

RAM

Does the SSD's use DDR2, DDR3 or DDR5 RAM? And do you still need RAM when you get an SSD? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.108.225.137 (talk) 20:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

SSDs use Flash mem (MLC or SLC) as it does not forget the data when power is loss, with ram (ddr) soon as the power is removed all data is loss in ram Leexgx (talk) 19:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Ok, but is it slower then RAM then? Do you still need RAM, or is the SSD fast enough to replace it? 83.108.225.137 (talk) 09:19, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
i think you need to read up what ram is and what an hard disk is (SSD is an hard disk drive (Solid State Drive = SSD) just it uses flash not an spinning disk, if you have no ram installed inside an pc it will not boot up, system ram is not storage space its working space for running programs) please respond to this so i can remove this section as this should explane it by now ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_drive ) Leexgx (talk) 13:04, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


I know what a harddrive and RAM is, but SSD are not like regular mechanical harddrives, they have no movable parts for example. What I wondered was if the new types of SSD's are fast enough to use as RAM as well as storage units, since their so fast, so far I haven't got any answers of that. But never mind, this not a forum so I'll find my answers elsewhere. :-) 83.108.225.137 (talk) 16:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
SSD or HDD has nothing to do with ram at all in the way you are thinking , ram is system working space (very fast) / HDD & SSD (maybe i-ram) is an Disk drive for storage (Slow), you can't plug an hard disk into an ram slot, (disk drives are far slower then system ram, any way peak speed of good none jmicron SSD is 250MB/s avg, system ram is more like 5000-10000MB/s depending what type of ram, disk drives are to slow, was going to comment about something els but that is pointless as its basicly what your trying to talk about but is never going to happen any time soon or ever realy Leexgx (talk) 17:30, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Architecture and function

some of the info in "Architecture and function" is not correct but this one stands out quite far its JMicron that made the RAID0 but uses 2 slow JMicron chips to make it 2x faster then slow (but still suffers from Large latency and Write delay once the drive has been filled and gets high Write que or even small {stuttering problem} takeing 200ms avg up to max of 2000ms Not 2ms that been posted on main page) Jmicron cant do muti wirtes fast untill thay bring an new chip out just read both page 13 and 14 read poor write speeds and poor Latency some info on the page Discussion SSD is not correct intel Does not Use raid it can access up to 10 cells at one time, the intel chip it self does not use RAID nor does the inedix chip that OCZ vertex and other SSD makers starting to use, i like to change main page to correct it Leexgx (talk) 00:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Solid-state cardlets for a motherboard

That sounds like a logical solution. Slot cards like the common ram cards but acting as SSDs. Has anyone come across any sources supporting it for possible inclusion? --AaThinker (talk) 19:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Price

"SSDs are still about 10 times more expensive per unit of storage when compared to HDDs."

No substantiation is given for this claim and as of January, 2013, it is false. This can easily be confirmed by visiting commercial shopping sites that sell SSDs. The price can be expected to continue to drop to the point at which there won't be any significant price difference. ---Dagme (talk) 06:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Use of "Hard Disk Drives" vs "HDDs"

While "Hard Disk Drives" and "HDDs" are equivalent (as introduced in the first paragraph), it doesn't make sense that the article uses both interchangeably throughout the article. It would be a lot cleaner to unify this formatting and pick one or the other in order to promote greater consistency. Which phrase would you prefer to be used in this article?

I personally prefer "HDDs", for the sake of brevity, but there should be consensus for a formatting edit like this to take place. Hellachaz (talk) 01:10, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Couple of comments

I read the article and I have a couple of comments.

1. "The typical CF card interface is generally 3-4 times slower than an SSD." It would be nice to say what "CF" means.

2. The FreeBSD section mentions Linux. I wonder if the FreeBSD section should fall under Linux just like Vista falls under Windows.

ICE77 (talk) 04:20, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

One - next time, just click the "edit" button and change "CF" to "CompactFlash". Be bold!
Two - No. FreeBSD is not a version, branch, fork, etc., of Linux, nor vice-versa. See the FreeBSD and Linux articles for details. Jeh (talk) 20:53, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

References

Had added quite some information on references without disrupting anything. Suit yourselves.

―Lgfcd (talk) 11:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
As has been said many times on your talk page, you should get consensus before making sweeping changes to existing reference format, per WP:CITEVAR. "Suit yourselves" applies to every page on Wikipedia. Before you go making wholesale changes to reference formats on any page, you need to propose your change on that article's talk page and get consensus for your new format. Otherwise, if you have actual information to add to the references, please work within whatever format you find. Jeh (talk) 11:53, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Updates needed

The speed where the graphic, titled "SSD benchmark, showing about 230 MB/s reading speed, 210 MB/s ", needs to be updated, SSDs are much faster these days - 2 -2.5 times faster

In fact a lot of the "facts" are old and outdated; as technology changes the articles should too. 41.177.19.130 (talk) 20:37, 24 October 2012 (UTC) Tony Hall 24 October 2012

You are correct. If you (or anyone else) can supply replacement materials, feel free to update the article accordingly. 212.226.74.192 (talk) 05:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately, wikipedia is overrun with users (editors) who have agendas, and it really is a shame when the agenda is anything but Truth or being able to state the Truth with clarity. Hopefully in the near future there will be a plan devised which can adequately prevent edits that do not represent the Truth because it seems the world will never be free of those who feel justified and in the right to suppress the Truth, no matter how wrong the suppression in reality may be Dirtclustit (talk) 06:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Gross inaccuracies regarding filesystem fragmentation

This article's treatment of the issue of filesystem fragmentation is terrible. Please consider the following statements from the article:

"SSD technology can deliver rather consistent read/write speed, but when lots of individual smaller blocks are accessed, performance is reduced." This statement is true.

"There is limited benefit to reading data sequentially (beyond typical FS block sizes, say 4KB), making fragmentation negligible for SSDs." The article cited for this statement does not discuss filesystem fragmentation at all, making it entirely inappropriate as a source for this statement. As stated earlier in the article, performance is reduced when lots of individual smaller blocks are accessed. To make the claim that the effects of filesystem fragmentation are negligible, with no source or data to back it up, is irresponsible and misleading. The truth is that the effects of filesystem fragmentation vary depending on the situation and absolutely can cause a non-negligible performance impact. I have personally measured up to a 35% difference in a real-world scenario, which does not seem very negligible to me.

"Defragmentation negatively affects the life of the SSD and has no benefit." The first statement here is true, while the second statement is false. This kind of lie has no place on Wikipedia. 24.148.137.64 (talk) 15:09, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

How can fragmentation make a difference on a SSD that is made up of DRAM or NAND etc ? what makes it to take longer to access block sequence 0, 8, 2, 15, 9 than say 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc.. ? unless ofcourse the filesystem screws it up with ineffective handling of block mapping. Electron9 (talk) 08:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

First flash based SSD

The article says it started in 1994, but according this this article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3 flash memory was sold in 1993. And this article says they sold them in 1989. http://retrocosm.net/2012/03/29/psion-mc-400-mobile-computer/ What gives? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.73.88.73 (talk) 21:37, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done Awesome note, thank you! Went ahead and edited the article, so this is included. — Dsimic (talk) 22:09, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
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