The Hard Drive was created on the 8th day…just you should know. It has been around since well, forever it seems. But it’s days are numbered, at least in the current configuration. True the way computers are designed today, you will not get rid of the hard drive. But the technology is oh so last year. Rotating disks, read/write seek motions, it’s all so mechanical engineering. And we know that the technology of today is gearing up to electrons, nano tech, radio frequency, even photon driven hardware. Well the last not yet. But hard disk drives (HDD) are changing. We are going to take a quick survey of some Solid State Drives (SSD), who builds them, and how they perform.
The Technology
First there is a transition away from a 3.5” disk form factor toward 2.5” drives. All major hard drive companies now offer at least one 2.5” enterprise hard drive product line, and some have even announced discontinuing their high speed 15,000 RPM 3.5” drives. SSDs deliver the best performance.
- The main difference in SSD technology with standard hard drive technology is that you do not have a rotating platter, rather all information is stored in a solid state, like a flash drive.
- I/O performance: Enterprise hard drives can deliver a few hundred I/Os per second, but SSDs can handle thousands.
- High throughput: Hard drives top out at 200 MB/s today, while SSDs exceed this number. Flash drives also sustain much higher average throughput than HDDs.
- Low maintenance: Since data is stored dynamically across all flash channels and cells by the controller, it is not necessary to defragment SSDs.
- Power efficiency: While hard drives require up to 20W, SSDs typically draw very little power, usually only a few watts.
Quick Survey Tests
So while we looked at some of the main features how do the current generation of hard drives measure up? The following tests were conducted using a Fugitsu 3.5 inch hard drive and a Toshiba 2.5 inch SSD drive. The performance tests come from Tom’s Hardware Guide.
Fujitsu SSD
The other manufacturer to look at is Toshiba.
Toshiba HDD
Enterprise Performance:
Enterprise Performance Comparison
Workstation Power Requirement Performance:
Power Requirement Workstation Comparison
IO Database Benchmark
IOmeter Database Benchmark Comparison
IO FileServer Benchmark
IOmeter Fileserver Benchmark Comparison
IO WorkStation Benchmark
IOeter Workstation Meter Comparison
Read Access Time Benchmark
Read Access Time Benchmark
Write Access Time Benchmark
Write Access Time Benchmark
The results show that SDD has a ways to go to truly outperform HDD. But given the physical limitations to rotating platters and the read/write technology is at or quickly approaching it’s physical limits, the future will be in SDD, even if it isn’t there yet.
Manufactureres
[1] Fusion-io
FusionIO-IO SD Drive
Notice that this is not a hard drive! It is a SS card that can be placed on a PCI express slot. Fusion.com
[2] Foremay advertises itself as the manufacturer of the fastest SATA SSD with R/W speeds up to 260/250 MB/sec.
Formay 1.8 inch ssd SATA SLC
[3] STEC-Inc offers SSDs in more form factors than any other company including SATA embedded drives, SDD, and Compact Flash to only mention a few.
[4] Western Digital Solid State Storage The workhorse, Westen Digital, is also in the mix with its own series of SDD.
Western Digital Edge Blue
[5] SandForce SSD Processors enable commodity flash memory to reliably operate in enterprise storage applications. Here SandForce has created a series of chips that act as SSD hardware.
SandForce Chips
This short manufacturing list list some of the most common developers, more can be gleaned from the links below. The SDD market may be ready to break open from the looks of things.
Spec Source: Toms Hardware Guide
Manufacturers Source: The Top 10 SSD OEMs
