Storage wars: flash vs the hard disk drive

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 07 December 2005 17:40

Your IT - Entertainment

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt

An explosion in the need for bigger portable storage has seen a battle emerge between flash memory and the ever shrinking hard disk drive. Alex Zaharov-Reutt explains and compares both types of data storage, shows us the types of devices they’re used in today and where these duelling data devices are headed in the future.

Today’s plethora of digital devices lets us create, store, play and share all kinds of digital media, including mp3s, photos, videos, documents and more. With the growing sophistication of these devices comes a need for ever greater amounts of storage, in a small physical size, using the least amount of battery power possible, giving you longer battery life when you most need it.

Both solid state flash technology and the hard drive with moving parts have matured so much in the last twelve months that they now compete in the gadget space as never before. For consumers it means more storage in handheld devices than ever, while for retailers it means more opportunities to sell ever more useful digital devices.

Let’s look at developments in the world of flash and hard drives and their future, and then we’ll take you through some of the products set to be very popular at retail that use either of these technologies.

Flash Memory – A new hope

Flash memory was invented by SanDisk and is a computer chip that retains its memory even when turned off or unplugged. This was a breakthrough, as previous types of memory chips would instantly lose any information stored on them when the power was switched off. Now that a type of solid state memory with no moving parts had been developed, a possible eventual replacement for the hard drive was born.

Fast forward to the end of 2005, and flash memory has finally matured into a large capacity product that takes up little space and has much lower power requirements than a hard drive – using 30 times less power. It is lightweight, reliable, highly durable being able to withstand being dropped and other rough treatment and is getting ever cheaper, although today still very expensive for traditional hard disk sizes of 30Gb and larger. As with hard drives, flash memory is not indestructible, nor does it last forever, with 10 years being the expected data retention life span for flash and a lifespan of at least 5 years and more for hard drives, although by then you’re likely to be using much more advanced technologies (flash, hard drive based, optical or something else) with far greater capacities.

Flash is commonly seen in postage stamp sized memory cards used in digital cameras, the Sony PSP, some brands of mp3 player, smartphones, PDAs, notebooks and desktops, printers, multifunction devices, portable GPS mapping devices and even some plasma and LCD TVs. These cards come in different branded flavours – Sony’s Memory Stick range, SD, CF, xD, MMC and a range of variants relating to size, such as the Mini and Micro SD cards for smartphones, Memory Stick Duo and others.

Flash memory also comes packaged as USB memory drives and built into many mp3 players. What surprised many observers this year was the emergence of USB memory drives and Apple’s iPod Nano in 4Gb sizes, and soon after that, the release by Lacie of an 8Gb credit card sized flash drive that fits into your wallet for $299, the same price as a 2Gb iPod nano, without any mp3 features or an LCD screen, but quadruple the capacity.

With flash available at these sizes, and with 16Gb due by Christmas 2006, flash memory is starting to replace the 1-inch hard drive in some situations. The iPod Mini, which used a 1-inch hard drive, was the world’s most popular mp3 player, yet Apple stopped production to sell the flash based Nano instead, with a 4Gb flash memory chip that enables longer battery life, less weight and less heat output in a dramatically smaller package.

Samsung, who work with both flash memory and hard disk storage, are the main supplier of memory to Apple for the iPod Nano, and have benefited from the Nano’s success.

“We will have 16GB flash memory here for Christmas 2006 and 32GB soon after”, says Michael Apte, Product Manager, Audio at Samsung. “Larger amounts of flash storage are under development as we speak, and will continue to challenge hard disk drives of all sizes. Although there is a battle underway between flash and the hard drive, Samsung is busily working in both fields. Some of our mp3 players and mobile phones use flash memory, and others use hard drives. We’re even working on a hard drive that blends in 1Gb of flash memory as a buffer. Whatever type of storage your portable devices use, the future of portable storage is multiple gigabytes on the go”.

Flash memory devices continue evolving beyond just larger capacities. USB Flash drives now come with extra software, often for security and sometimes to enable a kind of portable office. Kingston’s Data Traveller II Plus Migo lets you take your email and PC settings with you to use on any other Windows PC, wiping any trace of use on that PC once you unplug the unit. While this has been available before, the experience is improved and the Migo comes in sizes up to 2Gb, with larger sizes to come. The Data Traveller U3 lets you take a growing range of popular software programs which run on any Windows computer but entirely on the USB drive, without needing to install or uninstall anything from the host PC, such as your favourite instant messaging software or Skype for VoIP phone calls.

"It is not uncommon knowledge that Flash based products are booming in most regions around the world, with MP3 players, Digital Cameras and USB drives, hot items on the Christmas wish list” says Derk van Ogtrop, Retail Business Manager for Simms International. “However with developments from organisations such as U3, providing an applications platform for USB drives and partnering with hardware manufacturers such as Kingston and software developers, for example Skype and McAfee, the potential is exponential. We're very excited about the possibilities of these new technologies, providing consumers with even more portability, security and entertainment value."

SanDisk continues to innovate in many ways, with one of the latest being an SD memory card that contains a USB connector, letting you use the SD card on PCs and Macs without needing an SD card reader. No modern PC is without a USB connection, so this makes your SD storage card doubly useful. A simple usage scenario is being able to take photos and then transfer them to any Mac or PC, whether you remembered to bring the camera cable or not.

Another development sees the new Micro SD card standard for smartphones both officially christened Micro SD from its original SanDisk given name of TransFlash, and upgraded to support Digital Rights Management, or DRM. These will be called ‘gruvi’, meant to sound like ‘groovy’, and will come pre-loaded with content that is locked to the card. It can then be used in a variety of devices to play back that content, be it on different personal computers, mp3 players, TV sets, Hi-Fi systems or other devices. Content will also be able to be securely downloaded onto gruvi cards. A future 25Gb gruvi card will hold as much as a single layer Blu-Ray disc. Perhaps the winner in the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD race for the next generation of high definition DVDs will be eventually won by a DRM enabled ‘gruvi-style’ flash memory card and high-speed broadband downloads instead…

There’s no question that flash memory is taking big leaps, and we will see flash memory continue to encroach on the hard disk’s turf. More smartphones, mp3 and video players, digital cameras, other devices and soon notebook computers will be fitted with ever larger capacity flash drives.

We can even take a sneak peak into the future thanks to the military, where tomorrow’s technologies are often already in use. Adtron www.adtron.com and BitMicro www.bitmicro.com manufacture a range of solid state drives with standard hard drive interfaces rated for military and very high level enterprise uses, at price points far beyond consumer electronics price points. Adtron’s 3.5” 8Gb hard drive is US$1900, and while there’s no price tag for the BitMicro, it weighs in at an enormous, and likely extremely expensive, 155Gb.

The hard drive strikes back

So where does this leave the humble hard drive? Just as flash drives have evolved at a rapid pace, so too has hard drive technology. 30 and 60Gb 1.8-inch hard drives power the iPod Photo and Video lines, while the smaller 4 and 6Gb 1-inch hard drives came to prominence with the iPod mini. With the disk based Mini discontinued in favour of the flash based Nano, 1-inch hard drives have been looking for a new headline hero. Primary among these, besides iPod mini clones, is the Nokia N91, the potential ‘iPod killer’ 3G phone with a built-in 4Gb hard drive due for release in early 2006, while close on its heels is the Samsung SGH-i300 with a built-in 3Gb hard drive. In that time, hard disk manufacturers Hitachi, Seagate and Toshiba have worked on improving 1-inch hard drives, with 8Gb drives already in production. 10Gb, 16Gb, 18Gb and larger drives are due in 2006 and beyond, rivalling the pace flash memory is setting.

Upping the ante even further is Toshiba who have launched an 0.85-inch micro drive, which will enable even slimmer and smaller hard disk based devices, although almost all of the real action is still happening in the 1-inch space. On the flip side, hard drive capacity keeps on growing. The largest size 3.5-inch hard drive on the market is now 500Gb, with Maxtor now offering consumers and businesses a 1 Terabyte (1000 gigabyte) solution using twin 500Gb drives. Maxtor, who focus on desktop and enterprise class hard drives, have just released the MaXLine 500Gb drive. Whereas hard drives once had a mean time between failure (MTBF) of 50,000 hours, this drive is designed to be used 24x7 and has an MTBF of 1,000,000 hours. Maxtor have also released robust new hard drives for desktops and consumer electronics devices.

Commenting on the battle between flash and hard drives, Simon Lee, Distribution, Sales and Marketing Director of Maxtor Asia Pacific says that “The first thing we need to do is to put the time frame into context. In the current time frame, 8Gb is the biggest consumer flash drive available, with 16Gb coming from Samsung next year. A 20Gb hard disk is available today for below US $30, while 16Gb of flash is still very expensive. In terms of cost per gigabyte, the hard disk is the clear leader, and you should use a hard drive. If you talk about robustness, yes flash is more robust, smaller and uses less power. If you need to have a small device that you move and bring everywhere around, you want to use flash. But as technology develops, the need for bigger hard drives will increase, and you’ll use the type of storage that suits your application best. From the perspective of dozens, hundreds and even thousands of gigabytes at a reasonable cost per gigabyte, I don’t see that flash and the hard drive will clash in the near future”.

Seagate have announced perpendicular recording technology that stores data on a hard drive vertically, instead of horizontally, letting drives store even more data on the spinning platters within today’s hard drives. Other hard drive companies are also looking at this technology. Whereas the limit for 2.5-inch notebook hard drives was 100Gb, hard drives with perpendicular technology stretch this to 160Gb. Seagate have also developed hard drives for consumer electronics, with every hard disk in the Xbox from Seagate, while automotive class hard drives have also appeared, able to withstand the rigours of pot-hole filled roads or the outback while the kids happily watch movies or experience other digital media in the back. 

Proponents of flash memory argue that small hard drives are more susceptible to damage from drops and other rough handling than flash memory, but the newest hard drives use technology that senses a drop and parks the heads to dramatically minimise the possibility of damage from impact with any hard surface.

Until the new 4Gb and 8Gb flash capacities were unveiled at realistic prices, 1-inch hard drives looked to win the race between capacity and affordability. Now the playing field is much more even, with flash and hard drives set to closely compete on size, price and capacity for some time to come. Both technologies are in very successful use today in a range of technologies as we’ll shortly see, with either technology being perfectly suited to today’s portable uses.

Both Samsung and Seagate are working on combining the two technologies, with flash memory and hard disk technology working together to create even better, larger and more reliable storage solutions. In the meantime, retailers can expect a large range of devices to appear in 2006 with very large storage capabilities, and strong interest from the gadget-loving public!

The latest devices with large capacity flash or hard drives

Lacie Carte Orange
8Gb - $299
www.lacie.com/au
Lacie’s Carte Orange offers the most flash storage for consumers at the most affordable price ever. Far cheaper than competing portable hard disks of a similar size and even most other flash devices, the Carte Orange can even be stored in your wallet as it’s only 6mm thin. For consumers that want the most storage in the smallest portable size, this is the flash memory solution they’ll be looking for.

Samsung D1Q
512mb - $379
1Gb - $439
2Gb - $499
www.samsung.com.au

Samsung are offering both the T8 and the D1 in sizes of 512mb, 1Gb and 2Gb. The T8 is a flash based mp3 and video player with a 1.8” colour screen, a motion sensing dart game, an FM radio with FM record, photo viewer and voice recorder in a slim package that’s not as small as the Nano but not much larger. It also offers many more features than the Nano, and thanks to better compression technology can store 1000 songs in 2Gb of memory. The D1 is almost identical to the T8. It adds a inbuilt speaker and a 2 megapixel digital camera that can take still photos and moving video. 4Gb and larger capacities are due in 2006, Samsung is doing all it can to knock Apple off its perch, even while supplying them the flash memory for the Nano – although Apple has now made moves to source flash memory from an Intel/Micron flash building alliance. It’s compatible with existing Windows based music stores as per Creative’s Zen Vision.
 
Kingston Data Traveller II Plus Migo
1Gb - $189
2Gb - $339
www.simms.com.au

This USB Flash drive comes pre-loaded with Migo software that gives you the freedom to work on multiple PCs in different locations, using your own desktop's Microsoft Outlook email contents, Internet Explorer settings, favourites, cookies and history, plus your files, folders and icons, turning your USB drive into your portable office. It lets you work at your field office, home office, client's computer, friend's or co-worker's computer, the library, cyber café, school computer or lab, or anywhere you have access to a PC, with the applications you use. When you plug the drive back into your main computer, Migo synchronises all of the changes to files, folders and email that you’ve done when away. As you work, the on-board Migo meter keeps track of available capacity and tells you how much space you need for selected files and settings.

Apple iPod Nano
2Gb - $299
4Gb - $359
www.apple.com.au

With the release of the Nano, Apple chose to discontinue sales of the world’s most popular mp3 player, the hard drive based iPod Mini. Using flash to create an ultra stylish iPod thinner than a 2B pencil, offering a colour LCD screen and photo viewer capabilities, the Nano not only stunned the public despite concerns the screen is easy to scratch, it stunned competitors who were not expecting 4Gb of flash to appear until 2006. This forced many competitors to drop prices for their mp3 players, but so far, the allure of the slimmest iPod ever proves as alluring as ever to the digital music loving public, especially since the Autralian version of the iTunes Music Store was finally opened last month. Yes, there’s no FM radio or FM recording, no voice recording, no video playback or even a built-in digital camera, but for the time being consumers don’t seem to care, and the iPod’s very healthy third party accessories market ensures iPod users can still expand its capabilities in many different ways relatively inexpensively. iPod means design cool, ultra-simple ease of use and the integration of a legal music store. Until competitors catch up, Apple basically owns the market.

Apple iPod Video
30Gb - $449
60Gb - $599
www.apple.com.au

Finally, the music and photo capable ‘regular’ iPod has been upgraded to display videos, too, on an enlarged and very nice 2.5” LCD screen. At the screen size, videos look very sharp and clear. Available in 30 and 60Gb models, at even slimmer sizes than previous iPods, the new video capacity means you can convert movies, TV shows and home videos onto your iPod for anywhere entertainment. The phenomenon of ‘video blogging’ or ‘video podcasts’ is also likely to become as popular as their text and audio cousins. Plug it into your TV and you can watch the photos and videos there too, although the videos won’t be as sharp as a DVD. The new iPod can play MPEG4 and H.264 encoded videos very nicely, as well as displaying JPEG photos. You won’t want to watch the Lord of the Rings on this device, and there are other portable video players out there with much larger screens (cue the PSP and the rest), but now that the iPod can play video as well as display photos, the portable video revolution is likely to finally kick off in a big way! Total iPod sales to date exceed 30 million units, and now that the Australian iTunes store is online, allowing downloads of music, music videos, free podcasts and videocasts, this practically seals the deal and guarantees millions more sales for Apple.

Creative Zen Vision
30Gb - $799
au.creative.com 

If the 2.5” screen size of the latest iPod Video doesn’t impress, how about Creative’s Zen Vision? It’s designed with an impressive feature set, being an mp3 player, video player, FM radio, voice recorder, hard disk storage and more. It packs 30Gb of storage space, and has a 3.7-inch SharpPix™ high-resolution colour screen displaying in 640x480 at 262,144 colours for photo viewing and video playback. The screen is transflective, providing good image and video viewing even in bright sunlit conditions, and carries up to 15,000 songs, tens of thousands of photos, or up to 120 hours of video, offering playback support of most popular formats. You can watch slide shows on the screen or on your TV, set to favourite music played through headphones, the built-in speaker on the face of the player, or by connecting to external speakers. It also has Compact Flash slot that supports both CF Type I and Type II media.  An optional CF Adapter plugs directly into the CF slot to accept the most popular memory card types including SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digital, Memory Stick and many more. Creative also have a music store and have had for some time, now that an Australian iTunes has finally been released, the awareness of legal downloads should boost awareness of Creative’s store and dramatically increase paid downloads there too. NineMSN, BigPond Music also sell songs which work on virtually any existing Windows-based mp3 player save for the iPod, and these stores will register greatly increased downloads too, potentially boosting the popularity of all non-Apple devices.

Samsung YH-J70
20Gb - $499
30Gb - $579
www.samsung.com.au

Released a couple of months before the iPod Video, this is Samsung’s flagship hard drive based video and mp3 player. Like the Creative Zen Vision, it is packed with features to outshine the iPod, in a more iPod like size compared with the slightly larger Zen Vision. Watch videos, photos and read text on the 1.8-inch colour screen, transfer photos from digital cameras by plugging in the USB cable, play games including the classic and addictive Tetris, listen to and record FM radio, record your voice or use a microphone with direct line-in recording and more, the Samsung YH-J70 is a strong features based competitor at attractive price points and should be a very successful model for Samsung despite the new iPod Video. The introduction of Samsung’s own music store should boost its attractiveness even further when it arrives in the Australian marketplace, although it can download music from existing Windows based music stores as described with Creative’s Zen Vision.

Nokia N91
$TBA – arrives early 2006
www.nokia.com.au

Nokia have finally decided to get serious about mp3 playback on mobile phones. Due to the volume of phones Nokia sell globally, they claim to the largest seller of mobile phones, digital cameras and mp3 players in the world. Now with the introduction of a decent 2 megapixel camera and 4Gb of hard disk storage that Nokia claims can store 3000 songs in a 3G phone that allows wireless broadband, paid video and music downloads over the air, a digital still and video camera, organiser features and more, coupled with Nokia’s legendary ease of use, this is likely to be one of Nokia’s most popular phones ever.

Although the purchase price is likely to be more than $1000, most phones are available to purchase on a plan. The low upfront cost means that many might decide a phone with a real mp3 player inside in the one device is better than two separate devices, two sets of headphones and two devices to charge every night. Delayed from release in 2005 to make it compatible with Microsoft’s DRM for music, it will be compatible with music stores as described for the Creative Zen Vision. With larger hard drives and greater flash capacities coming in 2006, Nokia will undoubtedly update this phone with more storage in the future, but for now it will be the best combination of mobile phone and mp3 player on the market when it finally arrives, despite the excellent Sony Ericsson 2G W800 Walkman phone and it’s upcoming 3G successor, the W900. Motorola’s ROKR with iTunes phone, which ‘works as advertised but could be better’ is a contender, as is the new upgraded 2G RAZR Vxi with iTunes support and a 1.3 megapixel camera, but until Motorola releases a 3G phone with no limit to the number of songs it can play (as the existing models are limited to 50 songs in Australia and 100 songs overseas), Nokia and Sony Ericsson are doing the most to own this space. Watch out for a real iPod phone from Apple too – perhaps we’ll see it in 2006.