SanDisk Vaulter to speed up hard disks
Wednesday, November 14, 2007, 2:50:54 PM | highlandcynic
SanDisk has unveiled the Sandisk Vaulter Disk, a new device that promises to give a performance boost to hard disks.
The Vaulter Disk is a flash memory based disk accelerator that operates in parallel with a PC’s hard disk, speeding up disc operations. Vaulter will arrive in capacities ranging from 8GB to 16GB and the PCI Express device will have versions for both laptops and desktops. Sandisk says that the new Vaulter Disk will be available to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) early in 2008.
Image of the SanDisk Vaulter Disk
http://www.geek.com/sandisk-vaulter-...up-hard-disks/
In operation the Vaulter is transparent to users, here is how it works:
The problem is that when reading multiple files, a hard disk has to wait between each access as it seeks to the next file. Waiting as the disc platter spins and read heads move into position. Having to access a lot of smaller files in random order is one of the hardest tasks a HDD handles. When a HDD is benchmarked, one of the tests is a random seek test that accesses a number of files on the disk randomly to determine how quickly the drive can seek each new file. The seek time is measured in milliseconds, and even the best drives have seek times of several milliseconds in real world use. Windows and its applications use and create a tremendous number of smaller files when in operation making the seek time of the HDD a vitally important statistic.
Sandisk’s Vaulter addresses this specific problem by moving some operating system, application and user data files to the Vaulter Disk. The Vaulter has a seek time that is effectively zero resulting in access to files on the Vaulter Disk that is much faster than the HDD is capable of. Operating in parallel, the HDD can be accessing a larger file, while smaller ones are being read from the Vaulter, increasing performance further still.
Some may think that caching the HDD would offer similar performance. However, caching only works for frequently used files or for large files where read ahead strategies can be used. When randomly accessing a number of small files, the Vaulter will offer far better performance than a traditional HDD.
Vaulter Disk was named the “Best of Innovations 2008″ in the Enabling Technologies category of the Consumer Electronics Association 2008 Innovations, Design and Engineering awards. SanDisk’s 64GB SATA Solid State Disk and 8GB microSDHC products were also honored in the awards. SanDisk was formed in 1988 and is the world’s leading supplier of flash memory products.
Watch for Vaulter Disk in early 2008, in the meantime you can read more at SanDisk.