Can people buy SSD drives?

[MetalMusicAddict]

I've been wanting to buy a small 4-8GB SSD drive to use in my laptop. Thing is I cant fine a place to buy them. :-k Only thing I see are things for OEMs. :(

[dfreer]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=2503&

But those are IDE 2.5" drives, FYI

[MetalMusicAddict]

Killer. Thanx. I might have to wait on the 8GB ones. :( Im about to drop $400 on a 1TB drive. I cant pay almost that for a 8GB one. :)

Maybe $300. :)

Anymore links?

[dfreer]

I know newegg has some, but I can't seem to find them ATM. I don't like newegg's search features and I didn't spend much time messing with it, but about 1 week ago they had some.

EDIT: on a side thought, I know solid state drives are the **** because there is no moving parts, but what kind of transfer speeds can you expect from one? from what I've seen it doesn't look much faster, but it's not limited by the physics of spinning platters/read heads right?

[Belathor]

From what I have heard, they are much faster than regular hard drives. Wikipedia Entry for Solid State Disks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_disk)

[900donuts]

you could also buy a compact flash to ide adapter you can get them online for $3 to $20 then its only like another $20 to $60 for a 2GB to 8GB flash card

P.S. sry for resurrecting this old thread but i'm interested in acquiring a ssd for my old sub-notebook so i can run it off AA's some day

[castrojo]

I just bought one from newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Solid-State-Disks

The laptop I'm putting it in isn't here yet, so it's sitting on my desk teasing me. I'll let you know how it works out.

[900donuts]

yikes those are expensive!
to bad theres no usb to ide adapters usb sticks are much cheaper than compact flash cards and CFs can be attached to ide with an adapter

(i like $30 purchases:))

[Frak]

I'd avoid them for awhile, at least until they last longer, cost less, and have higher transfer rates. (they can read fast, but they transfer around ~40MB/s slower than most HDDs today)

[tgalati4]

Read speeds are fast but write speeds are slow because of the extensive striping that is done to prevent bit burn. I have used Emphase IDE 4GB drives for an embedded application, but they were kind of fiddly and I had a few bad drives out of a lot of ten.

They won't last long with a normal Linux install. You really need a RAM-only OS, like DSL so that writes to the disk only occur during shutdown. Otherwise your file system will get corrupted with bad sectors pretty quickly.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Read speeds are fast but write speeds are slow because of the extensive striping that is done to prevent bit burn. I have used Emphase IDE 4GB drives for an embedded application, but they were kind of fiddly and I had a few bad drives out of a lot of ten.

They won't last long with a normal Linux install. You really need a RAM-only OS, like DSL so that writes to the disk only occur during shutdown. Otherwise your file system will get corrupted with bad sectors pretty quickly.

Hmm.... Something to think about. I was hoping to pick up a 8-16GB one.

[Frak]

Hmm.... Something to think about. I was hoping to pick up a 8-16GB one.
I picked up a 4GB and it went out on me in no time. Outrageously expensive, and not much use out of it in the long run IMHO.

[MetalMusicAddict]

I picked up a 4GB and it went out on me in no time. Outrageously expensive, and not much use out of it in the long run IMHO.

Wow. How disappointing. :( ***MMA puts his dreams of a silent HTPC back on the shelf.

[n3tfury]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609245

lol, whoever pays that kind of money is ridiculous.