What is to come after flash drives?

[Naniyue]

I still have a bunch of 3 1/4 inch floppies, myself, though I don't use them. Anyway, this more massive flash storage stuff has been around long enough now that I'm wondering what's next. Has anyone kept up with the tech? Will there be UPB drives?

[Rachael]

Probably microchips if the more control-freak-ish companies have a say about it.

[Naniyue]

You mean something they could control the content of? Like a skin grafted iphone?

Seriously, though, growing up with ideas that were still only science fiction until the past decade or so leaves me keenly interested.

[Kotti]

Flash drives haven't even reached their limits yet. Compared to SSDs which are also Flash-based they are creepingly slow. So to me it sounds likely that the miniaturization of SSD controllers is the logical next step, which would give those Flash drives a major speed boost. The same happened with replaceble magnetic storage. It only got replaced once every inch of power had been squeezed out.

[wildweasel]

Flash drives haven't even reached their limits yet. Compared to SSDs which are also Flash-based they are creepingly slow. So to me it sounds likely that the miniaturization of SSD controllers is the logical next step, which would give those Flash drives a major speed boost. The same happened with replaceble magnetic storage. It only got replaced once every inch of power had been squeezed out.

That's certainly what's going on from what I'm able to tell - the big push for SSDs is moving away from SATA and into a specific slot on the motherboard. The motherboard I bought for my latest build even has one such M.2 slot on it, specifically for an SSD and nothing else. The form factor's smaller, and while I don't know anything about its performance characteristics, I can only imagine it'll be a good thing to move it off the SATA line. Probably be a good thing for laptops, too, if any manufacturers are going that way.

[Naniyue]

Why are they called solid state drives? Every time I hear "solid state" I think 1960's transistors, not massive blocks of computer storage.

[Rachael]

It's because the parts are literally "non-moving" - existing in a "solid state" - the mechanics of it are purely magnetic, and every bit of data is accessible to the controller at any given moment. This is not the case with the old spinner-type drives, which must wait for the disc platters to circulate towards the head before accessing a required bit of data. The movement, for obvious reasons, adds to the access time of most of the required data at a given moment.

[wildweasel]

Why are they called solid state drives? Every time I hear "solid state" I think 1960's transistors, not massive blocks of computer storage.

It's generally considered to be an opposite of "mechanical" - it's "solid" in that the parts do not move at all, and thus are less subject to wear and tear through regular use, or skipping and shock from movement. Scientifically speaking, "solid state" is considered to be the opposite of "gaseous state" (i.e. vacuum tubes), though the modern usage veers more towards the former than the latter.

[Naniyue]

Thanks! Makes perfect sense now! But how far have these drives come? I remember reading about too many failures years ago. Has this been resolved? What's their expected lifetime without error?

[Rachael]

I think one of the biggest fears of using them is that if you write to a single cell too often it eventually destroys the cell. Compared to the spinner drives, I guess some people regarded this as happening too quickly, though if you write the same sector repeatedly on a spinner drive it will lose magnetic cohesion and fail eventually, too, but it takes a *LOT* of writes for this to happen (probably more than you'll ever typically see in its expected operating period - even with people who tend to be clingy with old hardware).

[wildweasel]

Thanks! Makes perfect sense now! But how far have these drives come? I remember reading about too many failures years ago. Has this been resolved? What's their expected lifetime without error?

This is pretty much just my own use case, but I've had a Samsung 850 EVO SSD serving as my Windows 10 boot drive since late 2016, and have had no problems at all. It has been extremely nice and I find myself constantly lamenting its absence if I have to use any other computer.

[Graf Zahl]

I installed a 500 GB SSD as main drive in my computer 3 years ago and had no problems so far, even with no magnetic HD as secondary drive - I'd never buy one again for anything, once you get used to SSD performance they are just painful to use.

For any normal computer use SSDs are just fine. 4000 writes may sound low but never forget that these drives have wear levelling. So even if you write 100 gigabytes each day, an 128 GB SSD would last 10 years before it would wear out.

For mechanical hard drives the far more important cause of breakdown is mechanical failure rather than the magnetic platters getting worn out.

[SanyaWaffles]

Not to mention SSDs are less vulnerable to magnetic wiping by a random magnet coming near your computer. (Though they're still prone to EMP damage)

[Matt]

I don't know about computer machiney stuff but I do know I've had plenty of magnetic drives break after making awful squeaky sounds for a while and I don't think those have to do with the magnets... given Graf's numbers I don't think I'm ever buying a new magnetic drive ever again (though I still need to use up a spare I've got lying around before I can let myself buy anything new)

[Naniyue]

Is it best for now to stick with flash drives and/or (micro/mini) SDs for regular transport? I always keep a couple in my wallet in case of a fire or whatever, so I'll still have my data. I've read that portable hard drives are still crap, though.