Liax.net

SanDisk, the company that manufactures storage devices just released a 32GB Flash Drive that some say will replace the common hard drive. The conventional storage method is to use a hard drive to store files and run the operating system, this new method relies solely on its flash drive to boot up, run the operating system and store files.

The Benefits of using a Flash drive

• Reduce overall weight of Notebooks
• No moving parts
• Reduces power consumption by half therefore extends battery life
• Direct data access, reduces seek times
• Faster OS boot

What this means
SanDisk announcement brings good news to the average consumer, so far the only buyers for this kind of technology are large corporations and the government, with the introduction of new flash storage devices (like thumb drives) we have seen a dramatic drop in prices by the increased competition, soon others will follow and the demand for these drives will skyrocket.

Reduces overall weight of notebooks
One of the selling points of any notebook is its weight, new technology allows the development of smaller components, the flash drive is lightweight compared to a 2.5″ hard drive

No moving parts
All hard drives including the one on your computer have rotating disks spinning from 5200 rpm’s all the way to 15,000 rpm’s (varies by model). The new flash drive does not have moving parts which reduces the possibility for damages caused by vibration or shock.

Less power, more battery
The flash drive is a chip and does not have moving parts or an electric motor, the power consumption is less than 0.5 watts which makes it a perfect candidate for laptop computers.

Direct data access
Every time your hard drive seeks data on your rotating discs, it takes quite a few milliseconds to find it and transfer it, with the new flash drives it takes less than one millisecond, you might say -Well milliseconds are not important- but when you are searching and processing billions of bytes of information a day, it really adds up.

Faster OS boot
I really don’t know if these drives are going to be used for Macs too, but so far on regular tests the flash drives were 35% faster when booting on Windows than the average hard drive. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to wait 55 seconds for Windows to load.