A question of memory

[nicknack]

A sort of "Why don't they do it like this?" question.

There are now lots of small 4 or 5 Gb devices around (mp3 players, memory sticks, etc.) but all the big ones still use hard drives. So what's the problem with sticking lots of these little ones in one package to make one big one? Just not designed for it or what?

[FatBloke]

Cost.

1000GB hard drive =£50
4GB flash drive = £10

As them yanks say, do the Math!! 

[nicknack]

Y'know I hadn't considered that.

Spose I was thinking mostly of the difference between a 4 GB mp3 player (say £10) and a 120 GB one (say £300).

[Woofage]

The battery accounts for some of the cost, the rest may be down to branding.

[TimO]

Like FatBlock said, it's a lot down to the cost of the memory, although it's also partly dictated by marketing.

The iPod Touch is £165 for the 8GB model, but £283 for the 32GB one.  The only significant difference between them will be the memory modules, they are quite possibly identical except for how much of the PCB is populated.

There will also be a demand factor, since a 32GB one is clearly more desirable than an 8 or 16GB one, they can ask a price premium, and probably get people to pay for it.

The extra 24GB of memory between those two units costs you just under £120, a USB flash drive for 32GB (you can't generally get 24G, only powers of two) is £50 to £80, so you pay a little over the odds for the iPod.

[Jaded]

The iPod Touch is £165 for the 8GB model, but £283 for the 32GB one.  The only significant difference between them will be the memory modules, they are quite possibly identical except for how much of the PCB is populated.

AS I understand it one of the reasons for there not being a 32GB iPhone is that it is very difficult to fit the higher capacity chips into it. I think I also read that a new motherboard would be necessary. That might account for some of the price difference with the Touch.

[TimO]

The Touch will obviously have more room for memory than the phone, since it doesn't need all the RF circuitry, and an antenna.

Often with memory devices, the pin out for devices with different internal sizes are very similar, possibly as simple as additional address lines being found from ones which are just NCs on the smaller devices.  It could be that the larger Touch's use different, larger, and consequently premium priced devices, this pricing being passed onto the consumers.

[Jaded]

A quick Google trawl finds this:


Replacement motherboards -
8GB $129
16GB - $179
32GB - $269

[ScumOfTheRoad]

A lot of storage vendors for high performance and corporate type data stores are touting solid state drives - ie. big flash drives. They perform very very well.
The idea is to have 'tiered storage' - you keep your most accessed stuff on solid state, and push the less used data down to SATA.

I already run a system like that - but not with solid state drives.
Data when it has not been used for such-and-such a time, and there is pressure for space on my clustered filesystem is pushed automatically to tape. When the users need it back it is copied back onto the disk.