Flash Memory Used for Operating Systems

Originally posted by diehard_democrat
Wow, I'm starting to think that this should be on the really above top secret forum, that way companies looking for ideas like this can't get a hold of them easily. It's not really secret, just away from search engine spiders, and other prying eyes that don't have 3500 points to buy the pass.

people that dont have 3500points....like me, lol

Why would you want to keep them away from getting these ideas? how else would they get to the market if the companies didn't see them?
Or...would you rather keep the "secret" to yourself so you can profit off of it (I won't stop you )

diehard_democrat - I dont think you understand MRAM (MagRAM)

It is better then all of what I posted in every way, it will be used extensively in the future, for your computer to be on instanty and will be very power efficient (unlike DRAM), It will increase your batteries life by a great deal, and unlike Flash memory, it can hold its knowledge a long time and more reliably.

The only thing holding it back is price, which will steadily decrease over time.

I'd suggest reading this, to learn more about it.
MRAM

I'm sorry, I just thought MRAM was just another type of ordinary RAM, but I guess it's not. Again, I apologize for not reading up on this first.

Can flash memory actually hold an NTFS partition or is there some translation magic involved which just fools Windows into thinking there is an actual volume there?

Really though, the question is not if it can be done. Obviously a way can/will be figured out. The actual question is, is it to Microsoft's advantage to let you do it with their OS? I wonder what licencing issues might be raised. Also, Windows would be starting the same hardware and have to go through the same internal check and startup processess, no matter where it lives, flash or HDD, so I'm not sure how much faster it would actually be. It could wind up being slower.

My opinion is, if you want faster boot up times, get a faster processor, mobo, memory, and HDDs.

[edit added]: ...or, just don't turn it off. That's what I do, or don't do, rather. [edit end]

[edit on 26-10-2004 by Ambient Sound]

There are 15,000 RPM harddrive speeds out there, and I'm getting one in the computer I'm saving up for ($6000). That one will probably boot in under 10 seconds, because the harddrive can be read so fast and it has two 3.4 GHz processors, 4 gigs of RAM, and a 256 meg graphics card, extra fans for each processor (I wish they had water cooling systems) and a 19" moniter.

It's a custom computer from www.pugetsystems.com... .

[edit: the link didn't work]

[edit on 10/26/04 by diehard_democrat]

Flash would be a great idea for all storage if it was economically feasible.

Their technologies, power consumption, and speeds have improved dramatically.

But in your typical modern mediocre box, it's still cheaper to load it off a cheap hard drive, and run it in cheap ram.

Diehard

Your going to spend $6,000 for a new pc!

I wish I had that mush money to burn.

I'd sugest looking into Alienware, they have a good name of producing excellence. and they also have a killer look, to go with the steller hardware. Thier ALX systems are very good, heres a link to it, in case ya wanna check it out. They are liquid cooled, so you could overclock it quit a bit.
AlienWare ALX

I spent around $2,000 for my pc, its all home built, that way I knew it wouldn't have a bottleneck somewhere. I like to build my own so I know exacly what in it.

Solid State Flash Hard Drives: www.psism.com...
www.bitmicro.com...
www.dpie.com...
www.smartm.com...


[edit on 10-26-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

Originally posted by diehard_democrat
I was thinking about this one night (dark and stormy of course

) that we could create a way to start up computers really fast, without really expensive products. So, here's what I came up with:

We could factory install large 2 GB flash memory modules, and load the operating system into that, but of course still have the ability to overwrite it with new OS's. That way, the computer could start up, and run very fast, because of the free RAM space for other applications.

Isn't that just a million-dollar idea?! It works theoretically, but is there something I'm missing that could go wrong, or is incompatable? Post back with your idea's, thoughts, comment, or burns.

[edit on 10/26/04 by diehard_democrat]

I know of a few people that have already implemented your idea, mianly for automotive computers 'carputers'.

Here is a fairly amusing link showing a 'Vesputer' a computer on a vespa.
www.trustedreviews.com...

Originally posted by UnknownOrigins
I've seen places where they're selling 4 gig cards so I'm assuming that they are also selling 2 gigs aswell.

Well, there should be also 8GB CFs soon.
www.dpreview.com...
Also Sandisk has announced CFs capable to 20MB/s write speeds.
www.dpreview.com...


PS. And Windows can be run from flash drive... which doesn't even have to have hundreds MBs of space.
www.embeddingwindows.com...

Originally posted by Ambient Sound
Can flash memory actually hold an NTFS partition or is there some translation magic involved which just fools Windows into thinking there is an actual volume there?

NTFS is just a file-system like FAT16, VFAT or FAT32.
It's little like "software" and it doesn't have anything to do with "physical" media.

[edit on 27-10-2004 by E_T]

Diehard

Your going to spend $6,000 for a new pc!

I wish I had that mush money to burn.

I'd sugest looking into Alienware, they have a good name of producing excellence. and they also have a killer look, to go with the steller hardware. Thier ALX systems are very good, heres a link to it, in case ya wanna check it out. They are liquid cooled, so you could overclock it quit a bit.
AlienWare ALX

I spent around $2,000 for my pc, its all home built, that way I knew it wouldn't have a bottleneck somewhere. I like to build my own so I know exacly what in it.

Nah, I don't really have that much to burn, I'm saving up, which might take a while. It's really like 4,700 not 6 thousand. I just estimated that at the time, but afterward actually looked at the price quote Btw, each processor (there's two) costs like 1 grand!

I don't want to buy from Alienware, because they charge 3 grand for what you could get custom building only paying 2,000. But I do have to admit, they have awesome cases!

Liquid cooling isn't my top priority right now, and I'm sure that I could add that later.

[edit on 10/27/04 by diehard_democrat]

Diehard_Democrat said,

It's a custom computer from www.pugetsystems.com...

Thanks for the mention Diehard!

Puget Custom Computers

RAM would not be the only thing that would start up a computre very fast Diehard_democrat. And in theory you could have as much menory as you wanted in a computer. It would depend on what type of motherboard you have, how many slots you have on you have on your motherboard, and what type of RAM the motherboard or slots run on(DDR,DDR2,ect)
Having all the memory in the world would not make a computer startup in2 seconds. Or at least that is what I think to the extent of my knowlage. If anyone would like to comment, or correct me, please repile

[edit on 28-10-2004 by The_Governator]

It's how fast the OS can be transfered from the harddrive to the RAM, so 200 GB's of RAM wouldn't make any difference in startup, but for anything else, yes. 200 GB's is more than most harddrives today.

And just to be picky, you spelled Governator wrong, it should be The_Govornator.

[edit on 10/28/04 by diehard_democrat]

the porblem with flashis it has a low lifespan, so you would neet a hard disk drive too, 'cause the finite number of read/writes is small comparitivly, but if the drive was for the OS only, and the paging file and ram in the computer made out of standard products, youed be set! i'd pay fore a IDE Debian drive for shure!!

Alienware PCs are already OCed, the prices are terrible for what you get.
I always like the look of falcon north west systems but I'd have to pay import tax and things I think.
A 15, 000 rpm drive wouldn't boot everything as fast as you claim.
Somebody explained it to me the other day as to why.

Ash

Flash memory is too expensive and all that money isn't worth having OS load so fast, hard drives are catching up in speed anyway.

Howdy folks...

Actually I don't think itis a new idea, if I'm not mistaken aren't the Mars Rovers using a form of Flash memory to boot up ?

A couple of months ago someone showed me a PC on the net which didn't have a Hard Drive, just Flash.

It was expensive, but think of the benefits, very fast, no noise, less power consumption, maybe smaller size.

I will try and find a link...