A flash memory notebook: The sounds of silence

Do you want to know the best thing about a notebook with a flash memory drive, rather than a conventional hard drive?

It's the silence.

The notebook I'm testing--a Dell Latitude D830 with a 64GB flash hard drive from Samsung--hasn't emitted a sound in three days. Flash drives, which store data in NAND flash memory, don't require motors or spinning platters. Thus, there are no whirring mechanical noises.

A Dell Latitude with a flash drive. You can definitely tell a difference in performance, but is it worth the $900 premium?

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

Compare that with my T42 ThinkPad. It sounds like a guinea pig got trapped inside, particularly during the start-up phase. Vzoooot. Cronk, cronk, cronk. Zip, zip. (Pause.) Gurlagurlagurla...zweeee.

The lack of a mechanical hard drive also means lower power consumption and less heat. In turn that means the fan rarely, if ever, needs to kick into action. As I type, for instance, the notebook is running eight video streams-- two from CNN, two from CNET, two from MSN, a video on new bands on Crackle, and a pirated Led Zeppelin video on YouTube--and the fan won't trip over. The computer is running on battery power and the videos, with a few minor gulps, are all running smoothly.

If it did have a conventional hard drive, the fan would have flipped on, sapping battery power, and cranking out some white noise. I know that because I got the fans on my ThinkPad (as well as home notebook from Hewlett-Packard) to start in similar circumstances.

Is the quiet and extra battery life worth nearly a $900 premium? In a word, no, but you've got to look at the future. Although in the price stratosphere now, flash drives will start to compete more directly with drives over the next four years. Flash memory density continues to increase at a rapid pace, doubling almost every year, and large manufacturers like Samsung, Toshiba, SanDisk and Intel have or are opening factories geared at churning out flash. Taken together, this will lead to an easy availability of chips, better capabilities, and recurring price wars.

Flash prices dropped 50 percent in 2006. Prices rose a bit in 2007, but then dropped 50 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, says Jim Handy of Objective Analysis. Hardware manufacturers can now buy 1GB of flash for $3, he added.

When the premium becomes more acceptable, say $100, the category could take off. The lack of noise isn't one of the benefits I expected, but it was tangible. Listening to the drive on my IBM always prompts two thoughts. One, turning on a PC takes more time than it should and, two, this thing could collapse at any moment. To be honest, the ThinkPad has never imploded because of a hard drive problem, but the internal clanking makes it sound like it could. Silence gets rid of a minor aggravation.

Flash drives also boost performance, although less than I expected. The Dell with the flash drive takes anywhere from 1 to 6 seconds to come out of standby mode, depending on what types of applications were left on. Occasionally, the video that was playing when the computer was put into standby mode starts again. The ThinkPad takes at least 12 seconds.

Starting the Dell after a complete shutdown takes 19 seconds. It takes the ThinkPad 45 seconds to get to the part where I can enter a password. After the password is entered, it takes another 55 seconds before the computer is operational. Some of the slower times on the ThinkPad can be attributed to a slower processor and a more ornate start-up cycle. Even if you don't take that into account, the flash advantage only comes to seconds.

"If it takes one and a half minutes versus two minutes to boot up, are you going to care?" asked Handy.

Weirdly, shutting down both computers takes about the same amount of time. (Flash drives can take minutes off the launch of Outlook, but I couldn't test it because of network problems.)

The drive itself. Samsung puts its flash into a bay that would ordinarily accommodate a much larger 2.5-inch drive. As the market takes off, Samsung will chop down the size of this module.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

Battery power is tough to compare. The Dell has a larger battery pack than the ThinkPad. The ThinkPad is also much older. Still, the Dell with the flash drive seems to last longer than notebooks with standard drives. Fully charged, the battery says it will go five and a half hours, and the time remaining on the battery seems to follow the clock, i.e. an hour of battery time nearly comes to 60 minutes when few applications are on. With eight video streams, the five hours drops to two, but then kicks back up as windows are closed. Handy noted that a flash drive might consume a watt of power while a fast drive might consume 12 watts.

The drawback is the price. The same Latitude with an 80GB standard hard drive currently sells for $869 on Dell's site. Swapping the drive for a 64GB flash hard drive adds $899 to the price. The upgrade more than doubles the price of the notebook to $1,768 and slightly eliminates storage. That's down from the $920 price for the flash drive a few months ago, but out of reach of most buyers. (And it's worse at other vendors. Apple, which started offering flash drives after other PC makers, sells its 64GB flash drive upgrade for $999.)

Photos and high-definition video, among other applications, is also boosting the need for storage, which can favor hard drive makers. Samsung, among others, believes that corporate buyers only need around 64GB of storage, which will be economical to provide in flash in a few years. Consumer laptops, however, come with 160GB to 500GB of storage; 500GB of flash may not be reasonably affordable until 2012, and then consumers might need terabytes.

But if you can offload files onto a backup hard drive, flash could work for you.

[sanenazok]

In the long run

As far as reliability is concerned, that "clanking" hard drive has a longer life span than the flash memory, especially given that the hard drive can be erased and re-recorded ad infinitum while the flash memory has a known re-write limit. Nice tech journalism:
noises=short lifespan

Ugh

[The_Decider]

Exactly

Price and storage space is not what is keeping SSD from being a viable alternative. It is the write limitations

[robd11]

hard drives almost always win

for at least another 10 yrs, $/GB is won by HD. I need a TB now, when do think I'll be able to get a TB flash?

Flash drives in desktops

When SSDs become more affordable, many desktop users will
scoop them up as boot drives. Put the OS & your applications on
the smaller capacity drive w/ the speed & have a larger conventional HDD for data storage. A 64 GB SSD is easily large
enough to get Windows & plenty of applications installed on. I can
even some some hardcore Photoshoppers using a smaller SSD as a
swap drive to improve performance when working or very large
.psd & .psb files.

[timhodgson]

Now you're talking!

Can't wait until this is a reality. I think TomsHardware.com did a review on this scenario, saying that the performance increase was noticable.

[timhodgson]

Thinkpad = Stinkpad

"flash drives can take minutes off the launch of Outlook, but I couldn't test it because of network problems"

If it takes minutes to launch Outlook, then your computer must be 4 or more years old or not enough memory.

What kind of clunker Stinkpad did Lenovo give you to test with?

[bschmidt25]

T42

He said it was a T42, which means it's at least 3 years old - probably closer to 4. The D830 is being sold today and is a desktop replacement model. The T42 he's using probably has a 1.5GHz Pentium M processor and a 40GB IDE drive. Standard memory was 256MB of PC2700 memory on that model. A closer match to the T42 would be a Latitude D605, sold at the same time with similar specs.

In other words, this probably isn't a really good comparison to use to speak to the benefits of SSD. I would be more interested to see SATA vs SSD in an otherwise identically configured system.

[ArtInvent]

Best of both

Got to go hybrid. An 8GB flash drive would only add about $75-100 to the cost of a notebook. It could hold the OS and most frequently used apps,data, and temp files. Then you put in a normal HDD as well. Boot up would be super fast, and for most browsing, emailing, etc you wouldn't need to access the HDD, yet you would have as much space as you could possibly need.

Let's face it, while flash mem will get bigger and cheaper, HDDs are going to be doing the same and will probably maintain their place for mass storage for at least another 5 years. I just can't see a TB of flash being anything like affordable in that time, whereas in a couple years 1TB HDDs will cost less than $100.

I'm pretty much not buying another laptop until either flash-HDD combos are available or hybrid drives become standard.

[biznatch11]

Fan is loud, not HD

My experience has been that the fan generally makes way more noise then the HD.

[ArtInvent]

Fans generally don't cool HDD's

In my experience, the HDD on my notebook doesn't influence the fan at all; the fan is nowhere near the HDD bay anyway. The cpu has a fan and when the cpu cranks up so does the noise. I have a 120GB HDD and it hardly makes a sound, many of the notebook drives and much quieter than the average desktop drive.

These days a properly engineered notebook with one of the new ultra-efficient processors should run cool and quiet with the fan hardly ever coming on.

I actually think that flash storage will get faster, and fast boot and access times will be the biggest selling point.

[biznatch11]

I agree

I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me, but I agree and I know fans don't cool HDs. I meant the CPU fan is usually the loudest component in the comp (laptop or otherwise).

[Maclover1]

I dont agree

or at least for the most part. Sure rail the CPU for whatever reason and the fan will kick on.

That said raise the chassis temps and it come on because the CPU will heat up quicker.

Hard drives are hot. If you cool them down the chassis wont heat up as much.

[Penguinisto]

Agreed (mostly)

Sony Vaios, Dell Inspirons, IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads, and the like all have HDDs that are nowhere near a fan.

OTOH, take apart a notebook sometime. You'll notice that the metal internal framing is designed as a great big heat conductor (including the portions that contact the HDD or its carriage).

So while the HDD doesn't get much (okay zero) direct air cooling in most laptops, it does get cooling by way of metal conduction... and the fans do cool off some of the metal frame in many models. ;)

/P

[hunter_jc]

Want quiet? get a Seagate.

Seagate harddrives are very very quiet. Thats why i immedately bought a 7200 rpm Seagate Harddrive for the macbook when it came out.

[Sigma55]

Not a fair comparison

I don't think comparing a brand-new laptop to one released in 2004 is fair. Most people know flash is silent but within a laptop, there are other components that contribute to noise. The ThinkPad T42 doesn't use the quietest hard drive (even back then) and its CPU fan leaves much to be desired.

A better comparison would be to the hard drive version of the Dell D830. If all other factors are the same, does a flash drive offer a better experience? I would really be interested in that comparison, since the D830 is one of the least expensive laptops to offer flash drive as an optional upgrade.

[GTi Kid]

A $700 option.

I'll pass. Go to dell and check it out.

[hackingbear]

Get lubricant?

Fans are the most likely broken part in notebooks and desktops of any brand -- they broke long before the computer. It is low tech part and it generates huge revenues for the repair shops. I had replaced two in my previous notebooks and my admin just come over to replace the another fan in my desktop.

So before comparing flash drive, get lubricant for your fans.

[waiakead2]

Great article. I made a video response.

Thanks for the insight. Always appreciated. I made a video
response to this article which can be viewed at:

http://ustream.tv/recorded/T9geh7aCrqGyNoh8T4xjSQ

Hope this helps to bring more insight.

[jeffgtr60]

Why do I even bother with Cnet

I come here from time to time and as always, Cnet has become a shell of itself. It only exists to serve it's advertisers and offer zero relevant information. I have been visiting this site from time to time over the last few years, but this is the last. Haven't we read the same thing over and over and over at other sites, except weeks before Cnet finally catches on.

[cloudster]

Flash is cool, but not what I'm needing

I just went Mac, bought a MacBook Pro last July. Though a solid state HD would be cool, I'm in need of space. My Mac came with 160gig HD, but it has become my defacto machine, so I'm looking at popping in a 500gig drive in the not distant future.

I would imagine 500gig solid state drives are a few years down the road, at that point the tech should have come down in price to where it is much more affordable.