Talk:Solid-state drive

Template:Vital article

Susceptibility to magnetic fields

This section is bad. The cited reference includes some talk on the subject, but lacks any expert statements. At best it includes a few people who claim hard drives were damaged by magnets, but I doubt many of the individuals are experts. The magnetic fields required for writing to a modern hard drive are very intense. My understanding is you could put a rare earth magnet directly onto a modern disk platter and the magnetic field of the magnet would fail to damage any data (instead dust and tiny scratches from the contact might well damage the platter). 207.172.210.101 (talk) 01:40, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Hello! You're right, thank you for pointing it out! The reference was a low-quality one, so I went ahead and made the changes that provided accurate information and much better references. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:42, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Those are decent, but this these mean that portion of the article needs fixing. Ideally I'd link to sections 4 and the epilogues of the first link (Peter Gutmann paper), which effectively say modern disks (>1GB) are essentially immune to external magnetic fields. The kjmagnetics reads like an amateur experiment (not necessarily bad, but be careful of conclusions!) and says the same thing, their report of mechanical scrapping could well have been due to distorting the case of the drive rather than anything having to do with properties of the magnetic field. "Very old hard drives (less than a gigabyte) may have been at some risk from external magnetic fields, but any drive larger than a gigabyte is essentially immune to external magnetic fields"? 207.172.210.101 (talk) 20:09, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Hm, I'm not sure that 1 GB is specified in references as a clear capacity-based division between susceptible and resistant drives... Am I missing something? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 13:52, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, 'tis not. The reference was stating post-1990 hard drives were pretty well immune. Bit more recollection, I think 100MB drives were coming out around then, so that may be a better rough guide. The real issue is larger drives have to be less susceptible otherwise the write process would corrupt nearby bits (therefore storage size is a better guide than manufacture date). I don't have any references other than my memory. 207.172.210.101 (talk) 22:23, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Soppprt versi.9.0 Samsungalaxy (talk) 14:52, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

This article confuses the M.2 form factor (family of form factors) with the NVMe protocol

There are statements regarding, e.g., the speed of M.2 drives, which are only true when the M.2 drive uses the NVMe protocol, while overlooking the fact that other M.2 drives use the SATA protocol. (I believe the term "protocol" is more appropriate than "interface" here, and form factor is something else again.)

I'm having a first pass at correcting the issue, but someone else who's more informed on the subject should improve the article further. — Preceding unsigned comment added by W.F.Galway (talk • contribs) 15:51, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

64GB SATA SSD from 1978; 41 years ago?!?

SATA was created in the year 2000 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA ). And in 1978 the best hard disks were in the megabyte range... So please consider the following image caption in the article as maybe not fully correct:

A Super Talent Technology 2.5" Serial ATA solid-state drive Date invented 1978; 41 years ago Invented by Storage Technology Corporation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.170.243.131 (talk) 12:22, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

It was correct but misleading, better now. Tom94022 (talk) 19:48, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Mtron SSD.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:51, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Lede image

I restored the image of Sandisk's 2.5 and 3.5-inch SSDs to the lede replacing a rather undistiguished image of a minor participant. As noted in the LEDE, SanDisk was the first to promulgate Flash based storage. It was also first to introduce in 2.5 and 3.5-inch form factor SSDs which continue to be the major market segment. If other editors think the current image is inappropriate then it should be replaced by a state-of the art SSD from one of the top three vendors. Tom94022 (talk) 17:49, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

WP:LEADIMAGE and MOS:LEADELEMENTS state that the lead image should be technically well-produced and representative because it provides a visual association for the topic, and allow readers to quickly assess if they have arrived at the right page. The current lead image is neither well-produced nor does it serve the main purpose of a lead image.

While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think most people can see the huge difference in quality between the current image and the image I replaced it with. One is not only technically higher quality but also has better composition, lighting, color balance, and is focused clearly on a single subject, making it easy to recognise what is being depicted even from a 250px thumbnail. As for the subjects depicted, I think it's rather obvious that a picture of a 20-year-old piece of technology that differs quite a bit from the average SSD of today doesn't help most readers recognise what the article is about. Which manufacturer did what and at what time is completely irrelevant.

Brands are also not relevant for the aforementioned reasons, and therefore the notion that the lead image needs to be from a specific brand or one of an arbitrary number of financially succesful brands can be dismissed out of hand. The large majority of modern SSDs come in the same form factor, that being the 2.5-inch HDD size with minor differences in height, and choosing an image that depicts such an SSD will help the reader to recognise the subject.

If there is a problem with the image I added, then this one could be used as a replacement. While it's not quite as a high quality as my first choice, it does clearly show the SATA and power pins, which in that regard is more illustrative than either of the previous images.

Also note that MOS:LEAD explicitly states in the opening paragraph that lead sections of Wikipedia articles are lead paragraphs, not lede paragraphs.

Regarding the other images that were in the lead section and not in the body for no apparent benefit. While I've not seen it explicitly stated that the lead should only have one image, the fact that the Manual of Style and all the help pages I've found talk about a lead image, singular, implies that there should only be a single image in the lead. Unless specifically placed inside an infobox, the lead is supposed to have only one image. I've never seen a Good or Featured article with multiple lead images in the manner of this article. However, I'm going to ask for clarification to this at the MoS/Lead section talk page and leave the other images in the lead intact while I replace the clearly inferior main lead image with a more illustrative one.

I'm not quite sure what you were referring to with the words "minor participant", so I'll just ignore it and assume good faith from you. --Veikk0.ma 21:08, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

"Only five companies actually manufacture the NAND Flash devices." SanDisk now a WD brand is one of the five so I suggest a representative image would be from one of the five current vendors of SSDs who also make Flash. The other vendors proposed are not representative.

Your admission that "While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think ..." is just another way of saying WP:IDONTLIKEIT:I don't like it which is not a valid reason for the change or for the subsequent re-revert. Same thing for one image having multiple objects in the lede; it's one image which BTW might be more representative since it shows the two predominant form factors rather than just the one you propose

The subsequent re-revert is a violation of WP:BRD which clearly states, "Don't restore your changes or engage in back-and-forth reverting." For this reason I am reverting and we shall see what other editors have to say. If you again revert I suggest that is approaching edit warring - why don't you wait and see what others have to say. Tom94022 (talk) 21:57, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, Guy Macon, for restoring the page. The infobox looked a bit weird to me in more ways than one but I was unaware there had previously been a sane version of the infobox.

Now, for the discussion on improvements to the infobox. Tom94022, you keep bringing up brands and manufacturers as if that somehow makes a huge difference to the quality of the lead image, quality of the lead image being defined in WP:LEADIMAGE and MOS:LEADELEMENTS. How will a logo or a specifically stylised string of characters affect a reader's ability to quickly recognise whether an image is of an SSD or not? We could take one of the better SSD images to the photography workshop and ask someone with image editing skills to remove the branding or replace it with GENERIC SSD and it wouldn't make a difference. It doesn't matter whose name is printed on the thing, what matters is that it's an enclosure of a certain proportions, some connectors, and perhaps some relevant technical information like "SATA III 2.5" SOLID STATE DRIVE".

I won't put much effort into contesting your claim about form factor representation since it frankly isn't worth my – or in fact anyone's – time. 3.5" isn't an SSD form factor that most readers will be familiar with. 2.5" is the overwhelmingly predominant form factor, and is therefore what a reader expects to see as the lead image.

I will quote WP:LEADIMAGE, possibly in vain since you seemed to ignore my previous references to it, but here goes: "...but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see." Are you going to argue that a reader of an encyclopedia or an expensive, printed hardcover book on computer components is expecting to see a blurry, low-quality picture of two 20-year-old components with outdated interfaces on an orange background? No, the expectation is a technically highly produced image of more modern component with interfaces that are still widely used, preferably on a white background.

Lastly, I'd like to remind you that you have no ownership over this article. Your previous comment about "a minor participant" and your subsequent reverts of clearly helpful edits to the article would seem to imply that you've assumed some amount of ownership over the content and that simply removing the improvements of "lesser contributors" without discussing things first is therefore justified. This, combined with your gaps of knowledge on how Wikipedia articles are structured, is what lead to the need for a third party to step in, not anyone else's lack of knowledge or basic courtesy.

Please think about what I said in this and my previous comment, and have a look at the relevant sections of the Manual of Style. --Veikk0.ma 01:07, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• Per WP:STATUSQUO, I have restored the last stable infobox (It has been there since at least January 1) from before the current edit war. Please discuss on talk page instead of engaging in further edit warring. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:22, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Weasel Words?

After an IP tagged the article for Weasel Words I scanned the article for same and did not find any such enumerated words that were not appropriate so I removed the tag. Tom94022 (talk) 17:45, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Psion MC 400?

https://aliennerd.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/20120327-_1020719.jpg

https://jbmorley.co.uk/posts/2017-07-04-psion-mc-400/ says "The MC 400 even sported Psion’s own ‘SSD’ external media, which could be found in both a write-once flash version, and the a expensive read-write battery-backed form."

"write-once" and "battery-backed" appear to contradict our Flash memory article. I can find plenty of sources where Psion called it a SSD, but it might be that "flash" is a claim added later by non-technical people describing the Psion. Does anyone have a source where Psion called it flash? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:16, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Regardless of what it was called, it doesn't meet the definition of an SSD in terms of form factor and interface. Maybe it is appropriate for the Early SSD Section but not as added. I'm going to revert the addition until this discussion is resolved. Tom94022 (talk) 22:44, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Computer Magazine, December 1990 p. 93-4, states "The MC uses solid-state disks (SSDs), which are really just memory but which emulate disks. The MC accepts up to four SSDs at once, available in several styles and sizes: Flash EPROM and RAM (each up to 512K) and ROM (2MB). Psion offers an SSD drive for a PC." This sounds like a RAM/WORM/ROM disk and not an HDD interface so it probably doesn't belong in the article such devices are already mentioned and were much earlier. The fact that the Psion used the term SSD is IMO not worth a footnote. Tom94022 (talk) 06:31, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Tom94022. Good call. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:18, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Linux systemd versus weekly.cron

In the "Linux" section, mention of systemd fstrim.timer should be added -- in most Linux distributions it has replaced invocation by weekly.cron . Also, the recommendation (per 'man fstrim') to run 'fstrim' once a week should be added. (I leave this to an fstrim guru.) BMJ-pdx (talk) 00:29, 18 June 2020 (UTC)