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Tiras25Flag for United States of America

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Is digital memory replacing hard drives?

Hey guys,

So what do you think about the digital memory vs.  movable hard drive parts.  Looks like the thumb memory getting bigger and bigger.  Will it replace the hard disk at some point when the size will be large enough?  Or is there some more bumps besides the capacity?

You can find USB flash drives as large as 256GB now and weigh as much as 30g.

What's your opinion?
Thanks!
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itnorthservice

For the debate between hard disk and solid state drives isn't so much about speed, but the write life of each drive.  With SSD you have very fast read capability which can be read almost inifinite amount of times, but relatively only a few writes.  HDD is different in that while it is still slower, multiple writes can be performed without degrading the disk as much.

This leads to the judgement of requirement for each drive versus it's lifespan.  In the case of a webserver, most of this information may be static, and reads versus writes will take precedence.  This is why SSDs are very useful in these kinds of fields, whereas HDD has remained dominant in more business-oriented roles.

SSDs are great for reading, but they have a more limited life for writes.  This is why they can not fully replace HDDs.  The true contender to HDDs may well be IBM's new "racetrack" design, as it claims longer life due to having no parts that can wear out.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207200184