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Date: Sun,  2 Aug 2009 15:23:30 -0400
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From: Anthony Sorace <anothy@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] just an idea (Splashtop like)
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On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 14:17, erik quanstrom<quanstro@coraid.com> wrote:

> assuming honest mtbf numbers, one would expect similar
> ures for the same io workload on the same size data set
> as mechanical disks. =C2=A0since flash drives are much smaller,
> there would obviously be fewer ures per drive. =C2=A0but needing
> 10x more drives, the mtbf would be worse per byte of storage
> than enterprise sata drives. =C2=A0so you'd see more overall failures.

this depends on usage, obviously. i think it misses the point that
there's plenty of applications where the smaller storage (assuming a
single unit) is perfectly adequate. i swapped out the HD in my laptop
for a SD drive: the reduction in size is entirely workable, and the
other benefits make the trade a big win. there're plenty of
applications where i need relatively little raw storage: laptops, boot
media for network terminals, embedded things.

for large-scale storage, your analysis is much more appropriate. my
file server remains based on spinning magnetic disks, and i expect
that's likely to be the case for a long time.