5mm Thick 1TB Hybrid Hard Drive

You could fit 75 of them in a 2u chassis. That would make for one hell of a storage array.
 
Now we can start seeing some "smart clothing", along with the flexible displays. Could double armor against potato guns. Madness.
 
I don't see any connectors, am I missing something? I think this is just one of those stupid concepts that won't get built, but I'd love to studd a RAID5 in a sincle drive bay... ;)
 
Ack, no edit? Stuff the array, not offer it to stud service... :)
 
From the headline of the article:

A*STAR’s Data Storage Institute Launches Next Generation 5mm Hybrid Hard Disk Drive
Click to expand...

How do you even pronounce their name anyway? Is it A-splat-STAR or A-star-STAR or A-asterisk-STAR? Grr, that's the most annoying thing about the entire idea. Skribbels disapprove until they change that part of their name. :mad:
 
I'm not real sure how practical the hybrid drives are just yet. I have the 750GB XL and there are -couple- things that open quickly. But its literaly the programs that I have in the Startup folder. Otherwise I still run into the normal annoyances that all platter drives exhibit.

I think the major part is that current hybrid harddrives just have 1 single NAND in them. So it may be quick for small files due to latency, but the bandwidth of 1 single NAND is not going to be that much better then a modern platter.

This concept has 32GB and I guess if its 4x8GB it might be able to get some speed out of it.
 
Im seeing this more and more. Its starting to get that the connectors are bigger then the device itself.
Bluetooth and RF adapters for mice are smaller than the USB port!
 
Zarathustra[H];1039304558 said:
I was thinking the same thing.


I wonder how the Hybrid SSD thing would work in RAID :p
Click to expand...

If it's like the Seagate hybrid drives, the drive software works on an algorithm that puts the most used data (not files, but the byte data actually being accessed) into the SSD space, with the less-used data on the platters. Assuming the drive software works independently of the RAID controller (which I'm speculating it does, all it cares about is what data is going across the drive's internal controller, not the external RAID controller), if a bunch of these were in RAID, e.g. 4 drives in a RAID 5, you'd have the drives' software algorithm putting 96GB of data into the SSD space (4x32GB-32GB) and then another 3TB of usable drive space. That 96GB would certainly cover an entire OS and a good number of applications for high-speed access. Multiply that out by 75 of them in a 2U chassis on RAID 6 and you've got slightly more than 2.3TB of ludicrously fast (because it's RAID'ed) SSD space and 73TB of platter space.

These things will probably cost ~$200 initially... But $15k is a tiny drop in the bucket for any decent-sized business.

I'll take 2, thanks.
 
SkribbelKat said:
I suggest a folded piece of paper because you can adjust it to whatever height you need AND its kinda squishy which means you don't hafta need exactly 5mm.
Click to expand...

i was looking to get the planer to get it to exact specification , but i'll think bout your less technical solution to my problem...:eek:
 
maboblivion said:
i was looking to get the planer to get it to exact specification , but i'll think bout your less technical solution to my problem...:eek:
Click to expand...

Aw gee! I feel better now that I know you'll at least think about it. I don't know if a plane is a good idea. Won't you risk getting air sickness?

blitzkommando said:
The trick I want to see is the cabling for 75 of those in a 2U system.
Click to expand...

Thats easy to fix...just go with wireless NAS boxes for each of them and forget about stupid SATA cables.
 
MrAgmoore said:
What is the 32 gig SSD for? The O/S ?
Click to expand...

No, it' sjust a hybrid disk, uses the SSD for cache information. Works basically the same as PC's with a caching msata SSD caching (Z77 chipset boards) but without having to have support for it in the system board.
 
I thought the ssd needed to be 10% of the physical drive space for the best caching? The ratio seems a little off on this.
 
BBA said:
I thought the ssd needed to be 10% of the physical drive space for the best caching? The ratio seems a little off on this.
Click to expand...

Nah.

Cache does not depend on ratios.

It depends more on the size of your working dataset (essentially the combined size of the files you access frequently).

The larger the drive, typically the smaller the ratio of frequently accessed files to long term storage becomes, and as such a smaller percentage of cache is useful.

That being said, everyone's usage model is different, and as such different cache sizes will benefit different people differently.

For what its worth, when Intel introduced their Smart Response Technology (Intel's chipset based SSD caching) they found that with current desktop usage, the incremental gains from SSD caching became very small above 64GB, so they made 64GB the max to avoid people wasting their money.

(You can use larger SSD's but only 64GB of them can be used for caching, the rest you can make into a partition for something else, but sadly not a boot partition (at least not with some tweaking and running in an unsupported manner))
 
SkribbelKat said:
Aw gee! I feel better now that I know you'll at least think about it. I don't know if a plane is a good idea. Won't you risk getting air sickness?



Thats easy to fix...just go with wireless NAS boxes for each of them and forget about stupid SATA cables.
Click to expand...

Wireless is IMHO useless for NAS. Bandwidth is comparatively low, and overhead is huge, so you never actually achieve the advertised bandwidth.

I consider gigabit Ethernet to be a MUST for NAS use, but even 100Mbit ethernet tends to beat even the fastest wireless solutions out there, regardless of what numbers they put on the box.

I can't wait for 10gig ethernet to become commonplace in consumer devices.

I would love to run 10gig in my house, but right now the switches and interfaces available are enterprise only and very expensive :(
 
holy smokes, you could build freaking slim case with this thing, hack you can have 5 of this things back of MB tray and save the space.
 
Benchmarks, NAO! Time to read up on this new motor technology, seems a bit cooler than the fact that they fit 1TB in a 5mm thick chassis.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039306541 said:
Wireless is IMHO useless for NAS. Bandwidth is comparatively low, and overhead is huge, so you never actually achieve the advertised bandwidth.

I consider gigabit Ethernet to be a MUST for NAS use, but even 100Mbit ethernet tends to beat even the fastest wireless solutions out there, regardless of what numbers they put on the box.

I can't wait for 10gig ethernet to become commonplace in consumer devices.

I would love to run 10gig in my house, but right now the switches and interfaces available are enterprise only and very expensive :(
Click to expand...

I can understand that. The wireless stuff I use at home is still 11b but its not like I do anything with it except visit websites and send e-mail. But people here are like upset about wires so I guess as long as you limit your usage of the NAS to things that don't really need to be fast you could still get like twenty of these drives in a very tiny box.
 
I really have to wonder what in the world the hybrid nature of this thing is for? Most of the uses on this board wouldn't use it (a massive array would be running something like zfs and handle caching on its own, I suppose it could replace the flash in a tablet - but most tablet designers wouldn't want to give up such control).

My guess is that the price is high enough for a custom design and the cost of the flash low enough that they just didn't care enough to leave it off. Second big question, how hard is it to prevent the thing from spinning down/make it spin down? Small size implies mobile meaning do everything you can to extend battery life. Large arrays are unlikely to accept the latency penalty for the low power (but some might).
 
SkribbelKat said:
I can understand that. The wireless stuff I use at home is still 11b but its not like I do anything with it except visit websites and send e-mail. But people here are like upset about wires so I guess as long as you limit your usage of the NAS to things that don't really need to be fast you could still get like twenty of these drives in a very tiny box.
Click to expand...

Except for the fact that you would still have to have a power supply or enough splitters to be able to power that many devices.

Plus your controller would need to have an awful high number of ports.

In a 2U box, to use 75 drives, you would need 75 ports, or 75/4 SAS ports with break out sata cables.

And the 2U box would have to have some massive cooling as sandwitching that many drives together would make them overheat.. I don't care how little power they use.
 
cyclone3d said:
Except for the fact that you would still have to have a power supply or enough splitters to be able to power that many devices.

Plus your controller would need to have an awful high number of ports.

In a 2U box, to use 75 drives, you would need 75 ports, or 75/4 SAS ports with break out sata cables.

And the 2U box would have to have some massive cooling as sandwitching that many drives together would make them overheat.. I don't care how little power they use.
Click to expand...

Wow, you're right. I kinda lost track of the 2U part. I was thinking just leave the 2U server alone and get a box with a custom backplane that you plug them all into, the give it a wifi antenna and you can plug it in and leave it on your desk while the server in question uses it as a network storage array. Then you could design it with 120mm fans instead of those hair dryer fans they stick in smaller servers that make working in a server room very annoying.
 
Wumpus said:
Second big question, how hard is it to prevent the thing from spinning down/make it spin down? Small size implies mobile meaning do everything you can to extend battery life. Large arrays are unlikely to accept the latency penalty for the low power (but some might).
Click to expand...
I guess the both of us need to read up on the new motor tech being used for this drive. You'll more than likely find the answer your question.

I think it would be a little odd to not have control over the power saving characteristics of the drive. If it were in an array or full time use device, I'd expect the drive to have the ability to run in a performance mode where it doesn't spin down.
 
if they could get that to work via an SD card slot (think small thin cable) you could build it into current cases for android tablets... I'll take one for my samsung please!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top