On Thursday, September 29, 2011 6:30 PM, "Jim Cathey" <j...@windwireless.net> wrote:
> A company I worked for, for 'reliability', switched from rotating > media to flash media, on a BSD platform. No other changes were made. > The reliability went _way_ down! You need a filesystem, and possibly > operating system, that is designed for flash. Standard OS's assume > that they can blindly write whenever/wherever they want, with no > particular penalty other than the time it takes. To minimize that > they run sort algorithms on the disk driver, map things according > to cylinders, etc. None of that crap helps a SSD, and may hurt it. > More importantly, though, is the fact that flash has a very finite > lifetime, AND it slows down significantly as it is used up. Both > are killers if you ask me. The better (and lately, most?) SSDs have onoboard controllers that "wear level" the writes and counter the "slow down" effect without the OS needing to be aware of this. As a curious side effect, you cannot "secure delete" a file on an SSD by overwriting its contents with random bits before deleting, as the won't be written in the same place as the original! SSDs most definitely do have a finite life, but then so do conventional HDDs. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
