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StorageSearch.com

enterprise buyers guides since 1991

this is the home page and site logo  of storagesearch.com - leading the way to the new storage frontier since 1998
"leading the way to the new storage frontier"
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10 top SSD oems backup (to SSD) chips endurance myths FireWire hybrids NAS people reliability SATA SSDs USB SSDs
user installable notebook SSDs  from RunCore - click for more info
user installable notebook SSDs
from RunCore
. click to learn how Megabyte the Mouse was born
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Since 1978, Texas Memory Systems has designed, manufactured,
and marketed the fastest storage subsystems available. TMS provides
solutions that offer the best value and highest performance available
in the solid state disk and digital signal processing markets.

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Texas Memory Systems
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Storage Visions 2011 conference banner - click for info
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why the notebook SSD crystal ball is still murky
Editor:- September 2, 2010 - this week a reader (Andrew Hancox) sent me a list of 10 key questions about the future of the SSD market.

As I'd already answered most of them to some degree in articles my reply was mostly a list of links.

His 1st question was - "How long do you think it will be before the pricing of SSDs comes down to a level where they are a viable option to be used as primary drives in portable devices for mainstream consumers?"

I've been answering that question in articles for 5 years - starting with my SSD market penetration model, numerous comments on the notebook SSD page, quotes from other SSD analysts and comments in past news pages - but I've never been able to give a deterministic number because there are parameters involved which depend on vendors in the market changing their behavior.

Here's what I actually said in my email reply - "A big obstacle is not media pricing - but how well the SSD design is integrated in the notebook motherboard design. Nearly all current notebook designs are adapted from HDD designs. Adding SSDs into them wastes most of the potential benefits of the SSD. That's why this is taking years longer than it should have done... "

Thinking back on my replies to readers I'm never really sure how well they have been understood. That's because SSD education is a big issue.

Now when I talk about "motherboard design" that's the electronics and computer architect in me talking in a code language which translates as - the design of most notebooks is a mismatch for getting the best out of SSDs. Most notebook vendors are too lazy to design new SSD notebook products - so instead they integrate me-too SSDs into me-too HDD-centric notebook designs - to get results which fail to inspire anyone. Then they complain that the market projections for SSD adoption in notebooks didn't come true.

This morning I thought of a good analogy for what's been happening in the notebook SSD market.

Imagine that Henry Ford - had looked at the horse drawn carriage market and the internal combustion engine - and had decided to design mechanical horses (powered by the new engines) which were then coupled to a coach in the traditional way.

There you have today's notebook SSD market...

From the viewpoint of the horseless carriage customer it's an expensive novelty. The engine is whirring as fast as it can - but those clippety cloppety legs in the mechanical horse can't run any faster. The coach rolls along and it's an impressive sight but also a waste of internal combustion engine horsepower. This will never become a mass market.
click to see Notebook SSDs article and directory Most notebooks today completely waste the potential horsepower of SSDs. How can you predict when notebook marketers and designers will stop being stupid? That's where my crystal ball fails.
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StreamStor optical option sustains 3GB/s
Editor:- August 30, 2010 - Conduant announced new optical options for its StreamStor mezzanine data recorders enabling upto 800MB/s per port and 3GB/s for a 4 port confguration and cable lengths upto 16 miles.

Conduant's founder and CEO Ken Owens said - "Our Optical High Speed Serial Mezzanine Board can be upgraded and customized in the field as requirements demand and allows for recording from multiple devices simultaneously in any environment.
Test Equipment "With our StreamStor technology, all packet formation and management is performed by the hardware so there is no latency or other delays to affect data transmission performance."
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Imprinting the brain of the SSD - MarketingViews case study
Editor:- August 30, 2010 - StorageSearch.com recently published a new article - Imprinting the brain of the SSD - which describes how the SSD market went from:- Who cares? to You care! about the identity of SSD controllers.
click to read the case study - about the SandForce Driven program The new article compares SandForce's SSD processor branding program with previous examples in chip history and analyzes key business success factors. ...read the article
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click to learn more about the Non Volatile Memory Conference
2010 Non Volatile Memory Conference

Developing successful strategies for the
NVM Revolution: 2010-2020


by Web-Feet Research and Westwood Marketing

September 22, 2010 at the Biltmore Hotel, Santa Clara, CA
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Can you believe the word "reliability" in a 2.5" SSD ad?
Editor:- August 12, 2010 - One of the most popular recently published articles is - the cultivation and nurturing of "reliability" in a 2.5" SSD brand - which I wrote as a marketing case study.

I didn't think a marketing views article of this typet would appeal to many readers - but then I didn't think that SSDs would become a mainstream subject once upon a time either - which just shows how wrong you can be.

Reliability is an important factor in many applications which use SSDs.

But can you trust an SSD brand just because it claims to be reliable?

As we've seen in recent years - in the rush for the SSD market bubble - many design teams which previously had little or no experience of SSDs were tasked with designing such products - and the result has been successive waves of flaky SSDs and SSDs whose specifications couldn't be relied on to remain stable and in many products quickly degraded in customer sites.
storage reliability branding article As part of an education series for SSD product marketers - this case study describes how one company - which didn't have the conventional background to start off with - managed to equate their brand of SSD with reliability in the minds of designers in the embedded systems market. ...read the article
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advertising about the publisher / contact info
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SSDs - the big picture
Editor:- StorageSearch.com was the world's 1st publication to provide continuous editorial coverage and analysis of SSDs (in 1998) and in the years which have followed we've led the market through many interesting and confusing times.
click to read the story about why SSDs are taking up so much time on so many web pages If you often find yourself explaining to your VC, lawyer or non technical BBQ guests why you spend so much time immersed in SSD web pages - and need a single, simple, not very technical reference to suggest - this may be the link they need.
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ioSafe logo - click to see company profile click to see more SSD  Bookmarks
SSD Bookmarks series

suggestions by - Robb Moore, CEO, ioSafe..................................
Here's an article written about a topic central to ioSafe's thinking.

Integrating SSD and Maintaining Disaster Recovery - by George Crump founder of Storage Switzerland

Robb Moore recommends this article because it provides an informative overview of the key points that organizations need to consider when integrating SSDs into their data centers.

Robb also recommends:...

SSD Poised to Move into the Data Center - published on NetworkComputing.com

which he says - provides an overview of the drivers for SSDs becoming mainstream in data centers.

Editor:- thanks Robb for sharing your SSD links.

see also:- ioSafe - editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com
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SSD Pricing - where does all the money go?
SSDs are among the most expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.

Understanding the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating process...
Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go? - click to read the article ...not made any easier when market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1! Why is that? ...read the article
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What's the best way to design a flash SSD?

and other questions which divide SSD opinion
More than 10 key areas of fundamental disagreement within the SSD industry are discussed in an article here on StorageSearch.com called the the SSD Heresies.
click to read the article - the SSD Heresies ... Why can't SSD's true believers agree upon a single coherent vision for the future of solid state storage? ...read the article
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Who makes the fastest SSDs?

Speed isn't everything, and it comes at a price.........
But if you do need the speediest SSD (chip, card, module or rackmount) then wading through the web sites of hundreds of SSD oems to shortlist products slows you down.

And the SSD search problem will get even worse as we head towards a market with over 1,000 SSD oems.
the fastest SSDs  sorted by interface and form factor - click to read article ... Relax - I've done the research. And this whizzy wish list is updated daily from storage news and direct contacts from oems. ...read the article,
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click to see more info about Energy Data Storage 2010
Energy Data Storage 2010

by SMi Group

November 3 - 4, Kensington, London
This new event will form a platform for the
energy sector to discuss and compare their
unique digital data storage needs.
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Fast Purge flash SSDs when "Rugged SSDs" won't do
The need for fast and secure data erase - in which vital parts of a flash SSD or its data are destroyed in seconds - has always been a requirement in military projects.
Fast Purge flash SSDs directory & articles Although many industrial SSD vendors offer products with extended "rugged" operating environment capabilities - and even notebooks SSDs come with encryption - it's the availability of fast data purge which differentiates "truly secure" SSDs which can be deployed in sensitive applications.
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Significant news stories in past 12 months
Each link below takes you to a week of news.

NVELO auto tunes notebook storage pool - Aug 2010
Foremay ships 2TB 3.5" SSDs - July 2010
ioSafe launches disaster proof SSD - Jan 2010
Micron samples SATA 3.0 SSDs - Dec 2009
Google promises SSD based OS - Nov 2009
Active Media launches USB 3 SSDs - Oct 2009
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What's the best / cheapest - PC SSD?
Editor:- I often get emails from readers which ask the above question.

An article on StorageSearch.com - called What's the best / cheapest PC SSD? - is my attempt to create a simple FAQs page - which answers the question...
click to read this article ...of why I can't answer your question - and follows on to pose some probing questions which you can ask yourself. ...read the article
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the Problem with Write IOPS

the "play it again Sam" syndrome
Editor:- Flash SSD "random write IOPS" are now similar to "read IOPS" in many of the fastest SSDs.

So why are they such a poor predictor of application performance?

And why are users still buying RAM SSDs which cost 9x more than SLC? - even when the IOPS specs look similar.
the problem with flash SSD  write IOPS This article tells you why the specs got faster - but the applications didn't. And why competing SSDs with apparently identical benchmark results can perform completely differently. ...read the article
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looking a long way ahead?

this way to the petabyte SSD
looking some way ahead?

storage market outlook to 2015
where are we now?

2010 - year of the SSD market bubble
how did we get here?

charting the rise of the SSD market
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Top Storage Articles & Subjects - Aug 2010
  1. the SSD Buyers Guide
  2. War of the Disks: HDDs vs. Flash SSDs
  3. the Top 10 SSD OEMs
  4. SSD Myths & Legends - "write endurance"
  5. PCIe SSDs - directory
  6. Hard Disk news & comment
  7. 2.5" SSDs - directory
  8. the Fastest SSDs
  9. SSD oems list (all types)
  10. Disk to disk backup / VTL
  11. NAS, DAS or SAN?
  12. What's the best PC SSD?
  13. 1.8" SSDs - directory
  14. 3.5" SSDs - directory
  15. Flash vs. Hard Disks - Which Will Win?
  16. A Storage Architecture Guide
  17. SSD Pricing
  18. RAM SSDs vs Flash SSDs - which is Best?
  19. Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps?
  20. RAM SSDs - directory
  21. the 10 biggest storage companies in 2012?
  22. SSD market history
  23. SSD jargon
  24. NAS - directory
  25. the Problem with Write IOPS - in SSDs
  26. SATA SSDs - directory
  27. SSD Controllers / IP
  28. data recovery
  29. Storage Market Outlook 2010 to 2015
  30. Overview of the Notebook SSD Market
  31. what's the big picture message re SSDs?
  32. SAS SSDs
  33. the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap
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SSD videos
Editor:- whenever I'm asked -"What do you do for a living?" - the answer I come up with is - "I waste my time so my readers don't have to waste theirs."

Few things are so time-wasting on the web - in my opinion - as videos which talk about the SSD market. In 99.9% of cases the same points have already been made - earlier, better, and 30x quicker - on static webpages.

It's years since a reader asked me - "Why isn't there a directory of SSD videos on StorageSearch.com?"

Well - there is now. I created s short list from the tens of thousands of hours I've spent reading and writing about SSDs. It really is short.
SSD videos on StorageSearch.com - I waste my time so you don't have to waste yours Less is better - when it comes to wasting your time. ...see the SSD movies
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Could TB HDDs be given away free?
They may be expensive now...

... but I think giving terabyte hard drives away free could one day be a really good business strategy to prolong the life of the HDD market and to deal with what will be unbeatable price / performance challenges posed by SSDs.
click to read this article about free terabyte HDDs Wonder why the HDD give-away will be such a great idea?... ...read the article
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STORAGEsearch tracks the top 1,000 storage companies from birth to death and related storage technologies and markets. It's published by ACSL. © 1992 to 2010 all rights reserved. Other IT publications by ACSL include:- the SPARC Product Directory and Marketing Views.

goblinsearch is a collection of fantasy stories written by ACSL's editor.

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