Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster - Gizmodo Comments

Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster

Worf — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:54:09 EDT

Wonder how much it'll cost - looking at the size, it shouldn't be too much considering 4GB CF cards and 4GB iPod Nanos...

Though, it beats the CF card adapter since most (all?) CF cards don't support DMA operation...

Worf

Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster

nweaver — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:11:03 EDT

You can get a very good feel on the number of writes needed from Apple's work on the subject, which I believe includes apps as well as the OS core.

nweaver

Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster

Guy Esquire — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:02:44 EDT

That's how I understood it, scorpicon. Samsung's SSD is suppose to be used in tandem with the hybrid hard drive, which is the SSD used to accelerate boot-up. Samsung's SSD is suppose to be used to predict the users actions, e.g., app loads, windows resizing, etc. Consequently, the data involved must be rather extensive and the OS probably has to read/write to the SSD all the time.

Guy Esquire

Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster

scorpicon — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:51:24 EDT

I think you guys are missing the point here. It doesn't make Windows boot faster, it makes applications boot faster. Though it would be nice if Vista started up faster as well.

scorpicon

Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster

nweaver — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:43:09 EDT

guy: This actually is the perfect app: the cache structure doesn't change often, and there is no limit on READS to flash, just writes.

Its just not that big a win, because on the hard disk, this is all linear access (one big strip of data). Thus the typical 7.2k RPM disk can read it out at ~70+ MB/s. Since you are populating, at most, 1 GB of ram with preloaded information, this takes only ~15 seconds. Since you prioritize things (the first 256MB to get the system running, the rest later), having dedicated flash doesn't help that much.

nweaver

Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster

nweaver — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:40:00 EDT

You don't need to see it on Macs: Apple already does this. They trace the boot process, precache the results, and put a copy all on the hard drive in a nice linear strip which can be quickly read off as the system starts up. Why do you think Macs boot so much faster than Windows?

nweaver

Samsung 4GB Flash Disk: Windows Vista Performance Booster

Guy Esquire — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:38:25 EDT

What of the 100,000 read/write cycle limitation of flash drives? Will I be opening up the computer case to replace this unit every year? This sounds like a perfect candidate for Freescale's MRAM.

Guy Esquire