Marcel Birthelmer wrote:

>> Are they capable enough to replace a typical laptop's hdd?
> 
> I think USB speed will be fast enough. The main problems will be flash
> (probably NAND?) speed and rewriteability. If an OS decides to heavily
> use the disk for temporary files etc., those few hundred thousand write
> cycles can be used up very quickly.

If that's the only problem, then just put the temporary files on a RAM
disk. Most current OSes have already versions or extensions that deal with
this and buffer writes in RAM.

Anyway, the moment Flash becomes a viable choice for a typical PC, the
already existing OS extensions that handle Flash become mainstream, too.
There's no reason why this couldn't (and wouldn't) be done. It's just a
matter of Flash price vs. HDD price. And probably not far away.

Gerhard

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