SSD's - Speed vs Cost

The speed of your computer depends a lot on the parts that you put into it. Most focus on the processor, video card and RAM. True, these components do improve performance dramatically should you choose to buy the fastest of the lot. But often the hard drive is taken for granted. A performance boost can definitely be had when upgrading to your hard drive the fastest available in the market. Right now, the fastest are the Solid-State Drives (SSD).

SSD's offer speeds at par with your system memory or RAM. To give you a sense of how fast that is in practical terms, say you installed Windows on an SSD. If you click on an icon to launch your browser, it will launch in 1-2 seconds. Compare that to 3-5 seconds when your Windows is installed on a regular spindle drive. That's one heck of a performance boost, wouldn't you say? It also consumes less power, owing to the fact that it does not have any moving parts. That makes it ideal for stretching battery life in between charges in notebooks.

SSD's are not without cons. Owing to the process of how the data is made persistent in SSD's (remember, RAM looses the data when the computer's turned off, SSD don't), they actually wear out with repeated use. That's why it was necessary to incorporate technology to level out the wear. Data on SSD's aren't written in the same manner as spindle drives. An extra chip on SSD's monitors how many times a certain bit is written to and assigns new data to other parts to spread the wear out to different bits. In traditional spindle drives, data is written in sequence. When data is deleted, that skipped over portion (because it used to have data) is written over with new data. That's why you need to defragment spindle drives to re-arrange related data nearer to each other.

SSD's are also expensive at this time. Take for example the Intel X25-V is priced at US$125, or US$3.12 per GB. The OCZ Onyx, touted as one of the first sub-$100 SSD, is currently priced at US$90 for a 32GB model. That's roughly US$3 per GB. Kingston's SSD Now V Series, touted as an X25-V with a different controller by Anandtech, costs US$90 for a 32GB model and US$115 for a 40GB model. The cheapest still goes for about US$3 per GB, roughly Php126 and change per GB. At that price point, the money you'll shell out for a 40GB SSD will fetch you a 1.5 TB desktop drive in comparison. The prices have been coming down in the last few months as manufacturing costs are brought down by new advancements. However, don't expect them to be as affordable as spindle drives any time soon.

I've been mulling over buying one for the past months. I have an Atom desktop that I chose to build precisely because of it's thrifty use of power. Adding an SSD to my rig would increase the power savings and lower the temperature inside the case. Using an SSD as a boot drive, the Seagate 500GB drive I currently have would make a great secondary drive for data. For these tough times though, value for money is still the priority. Speed will have to wait, at least for now.

JungleDisk 2.0 Launched

Jungle Disk has announced the release of the final version of it's popular backup software. Jungle Disk 2.0 includes many performance enhancement that make backing up important data easier than ever.

Jungle Disk 2.0's new features include :

• An Improved User Interface - with a better and easier setup wizard makes, a new backup preview dialog and a new backup selection dialog for easier to set up automatic backups.
• Support for new Jungle Disk 2.0 buckets - allows users to instantly rename files and directories, encrypt file & directory names, change encryption key (bucket password) instantly and support for unlimited number of buckets.
• Support for European S3 buckets.
  
• Support for connecting to multiple buckets at the same time.
• Support for multiple backup jobs with independent scheduling.
• Expanded bandwidth limiting - flexible choices to control network drive and automatic backup traffic, set limits on both upload and download rates, on the fly changing of limits and setting schedules for limits.
• New command line options that tightly integrate task schedulers and batch jobs.
• Optimized performance improvements for larger directories and larger cache sizes.

Jungle Disk Releases 2.0 Release Candidate

Jungle Disk has announced the availability of Release Candidate (RC) of version 2.0. This is going to be the last build for final testing. This is expected to be the final version unless any major bugs are found. As posted by Jungle Disk on their official site, the RC is considered very stable so users still running version 1.50 and the older betas are encourage to try use this updated build.

The release candidate can be downloaded from Jungle Disk's beta download page. You can find out more information about the improvements to this version by looking up the release notes here.

Jungle Disk Beta 4 Launches

Jungle Disk announced Beta 4 of version 2.0. This round of updates changes the way Jungle Disk supports WebDAV to remedy errors that Mac users get when trying to upload files. Other minor fixes are also included in this update. Dave Wright further wrote, "The software itself is getting very near to release quality, so any users who have been interested in checking it out but concerned about the beta status may want to give this version a try."

You can download the latest beta here: http://www.jungledisk.com/betadownload.shtml

Jungle Disk Beta 3 Announced

Jungle Disk announced (rather quickly) it's 3rd beta release for Jungle Disk 2.0. (version 1.99c). This newest iteration already includes command-line capability that was for pushed back during the release of 1.99b. since it is still in beta, users are advised to still configure settings through Jungle Disk's GUI (Graphic User Interface).

Jungle Disk 2.0 will feature the following improvements over its predecessor:

• Native support for Windows, Mac, and Linux
• Extensive caching system for files and directories
• Background upload, delete, copy, and move support
• Desktop application for upload and download progress
• Complete encryption for all data
• Automatic restart of background operations in case of shutdown or crash
• Support for automatic backup on a timed or manual basis
• Automatic archival of old versions and deleted files
• Support for multiple types of Amazon S3 buckets

You can download Jungle Disk Beta 3 here. The announcement can be read here.

Jungle Disk Release 2.0 Beta to Public

Jungle Disk just announced the beta release of its version 2.0 . Right now it's version number is unofficially 1.99b, so it's almost there :-)

Jungle Disk is backup software that lets you create backups of your files using Amazon.com's S3 Storage Service to store your data securely. All your data is encrypted before it travels up to the clouds and it's multi-platform so you can use it on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The backups can be scheduled or automatic. You can install the software in as many machines as you want, but you have to pay a one-time $20 fee. The basic idea is you pay for the software one time and you get a lifetime of updates to it. The storage fees are billed from Amazon.com S3 and depend on the actual storage you consume. The storage fees are calculated at $0.15 per gigabyte-month of storage used. That's cheap storage and comes from a reliable service. What more can you ask for, eh?

Read about the full announcement from: Jungle Disk 2.0 Beta 2 (1.99b) Released

Thumb Drive Woes

I recently purchased a 2GB USB thumb drive to use for work-related stuff. And as foolish as it may seem, I've already hit the limit on it several days in a row. With the size of files nowadays, I should've known that it wouldn't take me that much time to fill it up. Now I've resorted to classifying things into essential and not-so-essential and deleting the latter to makeit all fit in there. Darn...

Xfce Did The Trick

I download Xfce and I now have a working desktop again. No more disappearing title bars in the apps I open. I downloaded Conky, its working well now. The .conkyrc file from Ubuntugeek.com worked just fine. Seems like all that was wrong was updating everything after a clean install prevented the Gnome WM from running 100%. I didn't muck around the configuration anymore, as I just wanted to get a working desktop that I could use Ubuntu in, and as fast as possible. The Xubuntu-related files downloaded and installed in less than half an hour.


I downloaded my usual stuff -- Firestarter, Xmms, VLC, Aria2, Firefox themes and extensions. I tested each before I started doing what I was supposed to be doing a week ago -- backing up our precious pictures over on MediaMax.com. I used to use Xdrive, but free accounts were limited to 5GB and the uploads were faster at MediaMax. Plus Xdrive didn't want to play nice with Ubuntu :-( I'm sticking with MediaMax.

I've a few more gigs to upload ;-) Bye for now.

D-I-Y Media Center

I'm itching for another device. The Mediagate MG-35. Three reviews after I see an ad and I'm convinced this would make a great media device for my home. I've been wrestling with storage lately, as three years worth of burned media is starting to pile up. I already have three large CD wallets stealing closet space from my wardrobe. I just bought a fourth one from CDR-King. I'm having second thoughts about storing my music and movies on my PC, since I usually reformat my hard drive regularly. My first thought was to get a NAS, and that idea I've given up on. It would be extra handy if I could carry my storage device around.

Then I see an ad in PC Buyer's Guide for the Mediagate MG-35 and the idea grows on me. I can solve several problems with one device. It's small enough to lug around. It connects to PCs for managing media. It doesn't require MS-Windows to manage that content :-)) It can connect to your LAN, you can use it as network storage (NAS). It can play movies or music on it's own and supports the main plethora of codecs you'll need, including Ogg Vorbis, Divx and Xvid. Its outputs can connect to your TV or stereo. It supports (at max) a 500GB hard drive. This is one flexible device. I want it! There is the question of money, though. Haha... It's a bit too expensive for my means. So I'll have to be content with writing about it and why I want it.

BTW, here are the reviews that I read:

• http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?cid=5&id=5823
  


• http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=&CIID=36918


• http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/index.php/taxid;2136212605;pid;199;pt;1

Put More G's in Your Pocket

Seagate unveiled yet another use for tiny hard drives. They seem to be churning out smaller and smaller hard drives every six months or so - LOL. In yet another twist to the mobile storage arena, they are marketing a portable 20GB hard drive with WiFi and Bluetooth. Oddly enough, they're calling it D.A.V.E. and its being marketed as a wireless storage appendage to mobile phones. What's even stranger is that they used to call the thing "cricket". It ain't as cool as that Scion xB they had at CES, but yeah I reckon I'd buy me a D.A.V.E. of me own.