[Info-vax] Databases versus RMS

[Paul Sture]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:01:18 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> Paul Sture <paul at sture.ch> wrote:
> 
> (snip, someone wrote)
>>> Modern SSD (Solid State Disks) are more or less always Flash-based and
>>> thus retain data at a power loss. Many uses a Flash SSD as their only
>>> disks in theirs laptop replacing the original rotating hard disk.
> 
>> That is certainly what I see a lot of development folks doing at the
>> moment.
> 
> I recently saw a 3.5in disk that has both Flash and rotating magnetic
> storage in the same box. It seems to implement one drive, so I don't
> know how it divides up the two. My first thought was as two different
> drive devices in one box, but it doesn't seem that way.
> 
> I believe that was 3.5in, and not 2.5in.

It's known as a hybrid drive. A colleague got one of these ( a Seagate) 
for his MacBook in late 2010.  When they first came out they offered a 
very decent compromise between price and performance.  Here's a review 
from May 2010:

http://storagemojo.com/2010/05/24/seagate-gets-hybrid-ssdhdd-right/

although ISTR that my colleague got one with substantially more than 4GB 
Flash.  His brief demo consisted of firing up MS Word to get it into the 
Flash part of disk, rebooting the OS, then starting Word again.  The 
second time was just as fast as you would expect to restore a minimised 
application.

I'm not so sure the hybrid drives will remain so popular as Flash only 
drives with larger capacities become more affordable, but can imagine 
there is still a place for them.

-- 
Paul Sture