Now you have gone over the edge, dude.  Popular Science is practically a fiction magazine.  The post I just made above will happen.  It isn’t Dr. Seuss, my friend.

For crying out loud, 4GB microdrives are in the high $300’s right now!

Yes it is!

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your network code abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

(you set yourself up for that one )

I was actually hoping you would post something like that.  That was brilliant. You really are a witty character, Drachen. 

Let’s be honest, though.  If 2.2GB microdrives are almost $100, how can you deny that 8-16GB microdrives will not be the same in just a few years?

Wish I could take credit for it. I saw that on the Net years ago, and it’s become a favorite.

[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]Let’s be honest, though.  If 2.2GB microdrives are almost $100, how can you deny that 8-16GB microdrives will not be the same in just a few years?

Miicrodrives are miniature hard drives!  :mrgreen:

[quote author=“Drachen”]

Miicrodrives are miniature hard drives!  :mrgreen:

...with a flash based interface!  Microdrives are almost a hybrid / marriage of Flash and Hard Drives…are they not?

[quote author=“TruthSeeker”][quote author=“Drachen”]

Miicrodrives are miniature hard drives!  :mrgreen:

...with a flash based interface!  Microdrives are almost a hybrid / marriage of Flash and Hard Drives…are they not?

Actually, no they’re not. They don’t have a flash based interface but an standard ATA based interface. They do have flash-like form factor though. Microdrives, like Drachen mentioned, are still hard disks and only Hitachi/IBM really makes them. Other than the form factor they have nothing in common with flash.

Toshiba is in the market with their new 0.85in stuff but there’s no real competition in the market.

MagicStor’s 2.2GB is plagued with problems and is an extremely poor performer. Cornice has some stuff out but they are a pretty small player.

Nope. They are in fact just teeny-weeny hard drives stuffed in a CompactFlash-compatible card.

Do they wear yellow polka dot bikini’s?

Erik

It’s… uh… metric. It’s 1/1000th of a pico. 1000 teeny-weenymeters is a picometer.  :wink:

... and I think you’re thinking of gr00vy’s Sony AP anway. 

[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]Now you have gone over the edge, dude.  Popular Science is practically a fiction magazine.  The post I just made above will happen.  It isn’t Dr. Seuss, my friend.

For crying out loud, 4GB microdrives are in the high $300’s right now!

I think you should apply to write a column for them. Perhaps “Flash’s Corner” or some such.

They don’t do a bad job of reporting pop-science. When I wuz 14 I thought the stuff was cool.

Flash seems to be right behind Microdrives as far as volumes and price are concerned, so I’m not worried so much about that.  Boy, I really am on an island here, though.  Where the heck is my boy OnMyWayUp?  Has he deserted me too?

No worries, its all good.  If I am the only person with a bootable flash drive for my OS and all my main apps, then so be it.  I agree this is not economically sensitive right now, but it will be in the near future.  Go ahead and laugh!  I’m not crazy….muhuhahahahah! :twisted:  :drool:

Hey linc, hows the popcorn?

  gotta fight for what you believe in..even if the odds are against you..

K Lots of things to say and way to much homework limiting my time:

1.  The new 100 Terabyte holographic thing isn’t even related in how we have been arguing… At least not me.  I am saying mechanical hard drives are crap.  Flash is what they should be replaced. True they arent yet priced right.  Sure they may never become mainstream. We are saying they should not that they will. 

2.  Personally, I feel that it is completely pointless to connect these new flash hard drives to your system using a standard ATA, etc cable.  That is like getting a kickass Bugatti Veyron W16 engine and using a 4 speed automatic transmission from my Scion xB.  They need to be directly connected to the motherboard like RAM to get the actual performance… tifosiv.

3.  Hell if there is a more reliable, cheap, and better performer than flash… then maybe it is time to drop the flash.  But compared to the mechanical drives, again what i have been arguing, that are EXTREMELY unreliable, and offer less performance.  (Not to say that I am dropping my support for flash but right now… practically, flash is the medium that I would choose.

4.  I am very impressed with the new 3D memory technologies that are coming out and if I could… without extra hassle… i would go for some stock in a company that is researching this new technology.  But alas, I don’t exactly have the money to put into stock so… o well.

And sorry TruthSeeker… don’t worry i wont leave you again. lol

[quote author=“OnMyWayUp”]
2.  Personally, I feel that it is completely pointless to connect these new flash hard drives to your system using a standard ATA, etc cable.  That is like getting a kickass Bugatti Veyron W16 engine and using a 4 speed automatic transmission from my Scion xB.  They need to be directly connected to the motherboard like RAM to get the actual performance… tifosiv.

Exactly….and the lack of a real next generation interface is one of the reasons why we don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. Granted, they could use PCI-Express as the new interface for these devices but there would have to be a new standard introduced and none has even been mentioned.

Of course, in many of the current cases, it’s not the interface that’s holding the flash memory back. You also have to remember that current consumer available flash memory isn’t as fast regular computer memory (like DDR or DDR2). It’s not like having a RAMDISK. The best flash memory products are around 80x nowadays (CF Cards). 80x equates to about 12MB/s. Yes…that’s all…12MB/s. That’s hardly taxing the firewire, USB2 or ATA interfaces. Current hard disks push more than that sustained and way more during bursts. Real RAMDISKs can theoretically push in the GB/s range..of course, the real world performance is much less. On my TR and Type S systems with a RAMDISK created, the throughput is benchmarked at a nice 400MB/s+.

When I say flash for a memory solution I am talking RAM compatible performance…  :shock: