Laptop & Desktop Boot in seconds from Flash Drives

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3468

Laptop & Desktop Boot in seconds from Flash Drives

3468 points posted to Broadband and Mobility, Desktops and Laptops by reg 02/19/07

Have laptops and PCs that boot quickly & quietly from fast internal flash drives,
and run the whole OS and application programs in RAM.
The New Dell PC will boot from internal Fast USB 2.0 flash drives in just a few seconds.
The Hard drive can stay powered down, completely off, unless the user needs to store some extra large files (video, photos).

Laptop Battery life is measured in days, not hours.

Have 2 Recessed USB 2.0 Slots.
Two USB Flash Drives would fit neatly into the laptop.
In this way the whole OS and Apps run in RAM, and stores data files on an 8 GB flash drive.

The 8GB is used transparently as the 'On Line' Storage, with a hard drive acting as secondary storage.
This gives desktops and laptops much greater speed and power savings.

<font> On-Line/Near-Line Storage Model for Laptops</font>
1. OS and App all run from RAM (so the machine should have 2GB+ of RAM)
2. Modified files are worked on in RAM, and stored on the Flash Drive
3. Older (non-system) files, that are 'inactive', get pushed down to the hard drive,

Hard Drive files are stored with on-the-fly hardware compression / decompression (back to RAM), with the flash drive file replaced with a pointer to the hard drive file.
Data is always safely copied down to the hard drive on shut down.

The flash drive is removeable and upgradeable, so later if someone wants to upgrade to a 32GB flash drive, just unplug and plug in the new one.

On-line / Near-Line storage works great on very large data servers, where data is mostly write once, read infrequently.
(Also known as Write Once, Read Mostly - WORM drives.)

It's time such ideas are put into practice for desktops and laptops.

You can run your Dell Laptop TODAY from 100% Flash Drive - Pen Drive using Puppy Linux.

www.puppylinux.org delivers a complete, small, fast Linux Distribution including all major tools in under 90MB. You can add Open Office, GIMP, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc and they all fit right in a USB Flash Drive.
Pupply Linux Applications.
Download Puppy Linux so you Can Try Flash Drive Dell Notebooks Today.

rdk 02/20/07	Puppy Linux, first from CD then on a USB key was the first Linux distribution by which I could get the Wireless network card working on m y Dell 5150 laptop. Highly recommended.
frednerk 02/28/07	groovy idea - revolutionary but unlikely. Having computer OS's running from flash is so do-able now, but probably won't happen for another few years, if at all. MS's continued bloating of their OS's renders it unable to be done unless the price of flash memory comes down and given they have market share... I'd love to see it. Puppy is great, one of the better distributions.
reg 03/02/07	Hi frednerk. Just so ya know I Already use a diskless laptop, running puppy linux, booting off a 1GB SanDisk Micro Cruzer. Whole system - no hard drive, works great. I even added a 1GB swap file CF card in the PC Card slot, and 512 MB RAM. The whole system runs FAST with 260+ RAM free + 1 GB of swap free. No CD, No Hard Drive www.puppylinux.org , look at all the Standard Applications. I added in GIMP, Audacity, and Sun Java for a great little system. MS has gone down the Wrong Road. MS should have made the next release of Windows more like a better Windows CE - So small, fast, and light that you boot up in 3 seconds flat - the whole OS running from a FLASH card on the Motherboard. Vista - Vista is Code Vomit. I was building OSs in Assembly when these coders were still swimming in their mamma's belly...
howardnyc 03/05/07	observation: the fundamental roadblock is reliability... is there such a thing as a 100% never fail storage media...? no.... not conventional harddisks nor flash drives but the harddisks are at this point a "proven" technology... right now, we have come to terms with the limitations of harddisks and can live with ‘em, mostly… what is necessary is widen the data bus, so you can get a torrent of data flowing during that initial load process . . . which is something that would require some degree of redesign . . . suggest: we might as well stop nickel ‘n diming, and sit down to reconfigure the definition of “workstation”
reg 03/05/07	Workstation - A WinTerm Thin Client machine with no hard drive, no CD player, 4 USB ports, Audio in/out, network and VGA port. Boots from the network. Everything runs as a CITRIX client. Improved Security. Users get all their windows applications, can't install the latest virus, and printing, etc is already configured for them. The OS and Applications should be on a read only device - be it www.puppylinux.org or www.microsoft.com software. Data gets saved to the network, or a pen drive. Pen Drives are 8GB now and counting, up to 32GB! How big is that Word document you are working on, anyways? Alternately, add 1 internal USB port, with a 8 GB flash stick, read only - configured with your OS, all your software and apps. Thin Clients pay for themselves because you literally can't mess them up. They always boot up into a fresh new install image, no 'garbage' to carry over from the last boot up. Every day a thin client is a brand new machine, ready for work. Workstation always ready.
reg 03/05/07	...is there such a thing as a 100% never fail storage media...? ROMs come very close to always working...
reg 03/21/07	What I think is the computer can be a fast booting flash device. If you want to add an external USB 2.0 500 GB hard drive, no problem, just plug it in. The newer Flash drives are much more reliable than older chips. Intel, Samsung, and other are coming out with solid state hard drives - completely flash based: Intel® Z-U130 Value Solid State Drive (VSSD): A hardware based flash drive, like the Intel model, probably lasts longer than your $15 2GB stick. But there is a simplicity of design of having a recessed USB 2.0 port - a slot with a cover. Any PNY, SanDisk, Sony, etc - standard sized memory stick slides right in, snap the cover back on, and just start using it. For an easy upgrade - 1. The user removes the factory supplied USB flash drive stick. 2. Inserts the new blank 8 GB stick he just bought on sale at Best Buy. Snaps the lid shut. 3. Plugs the factory stick into one of the external USB ports. 4. Upon Boot up - The OS detects the USB stick was moved. 5. Asks the question, Update your internal blank [ 8 GB ] flash drive with the operating system now? 6. User clicks yes - the system says .copying in progress. . . . Done 7. The new stick is auto formated and the OS, software, and data are copied from the old stick to the new stick. Done! Same for the RAM Memory stick - 1 slot, want to upgrade ? Go buy a 1 GB stick, remove old 256 MB stick, insert 1 GB stick. Done!
reg 03/29/07	( click image for tech specs ) "The SSD market is expected to reach US$200 million in 2007 and increases to US$6.8 billion by 2010 -an impressive compund annual growth rate of over 200 percent. " NOW : Dell can make the battery-less, flash based, UltraLite 12" widescreen laptop with removable TouchMouse III , and any OS you can fit on 64 GB of speed-of-electrons fast Flash! (With 4 GB of traditional RAM, and a powerful Nvidia GPU - Linux and Windows Drivers included!). BUT: This 64 GB SSD costs a LOT, a recessed USB port that can fit a wide PNY mem stick is good enough for most people. And several hundreds of dollars less.
hoturu 04/08/07	This is a good idea but the only advantage you would see is in battery life. The rated transfer speed for USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps that is bits per second - unless they didn't know there was a difference. (http://www.usb.org/about/usb_nomenclature) That makes the USB 2.0 rate the same as old IDE. You can pick up solid state IDE drives in 8 GB size for a few hundred dollars. Looks like there should be SATA drives right behind that - Super Talent is releasing a 32 GB SATA drive in April. You could install any of the MiniLinux distros (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniLinux) or see Small or lightweight distributions at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions) any of these would load (as) quickly from an ide HD as a USB 2.0. If you think it's a great idea, the time is now (or past) go do it.
reg 04/08/07	Hi-Speed USB 2.0 data transfer rate of 480 Mb/s, When your whole Operating system plus a few dozen Applications is less than 100MB, everything gets loaded very quickly via Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Some other operating systems need 1,500 MB - but that is not what we want to be using anyway. Something slimmer and faster working. The Samsung 64GB Flash Drive Read/Write Speed Read : 64MB/s (4.3) Write : 45MB/s (6.4) That's faster than live uncompressed video recording, so, your machine should be ok with those speeds. Considering something that is barely selling today will make Magnetic Drives a thing of the past by 2010, Dell should do some future planning and try to be first to market with Flash based computers. (Oh, and Yes hoturu, I do already do this with puppy linux running on a 12" notebook, using a Compact Flash for a swap drive. The hard drive stays unmounted and off most of the time. Very fast and big power saver.)
reg 04/25/07	Dell, thank you for picking up this idea and mentioning me on Direct2Dell. I look forward to buying a batteryless, USB slotted 12" translucent laptop. Leaving out the hard drive / CD drive would make it an ultra-lite too! Sweet. DELL - 'Live Long and Profit!'
reg 04/26/07	I cleaned up the original idea to more reflect DELLS intentions, 3 key things though: 1. SSDs are very expensive - USB Flash Drives are Cheap - that is where the recessed USB slots come in handy. 2. OnLine-NearLine Storage - A DELL driver program would move files from RAM->Flash->Storage on the fly, automagically. 3. Linux can run a lot smaller and faster than Windows Vista. Just a fact, that's all. It is nice to see Dell get on board with Samsung and the rest of the big players switching over to SSD.
aussie_guy 04/27/07	The IDEA is rock solid... and time will show this will be the future. Storage drives that rely on moving parts inside our modern PCs is kinda cave-man stuff isn't it? In the future, the only thing that will spin inside a PC will be the cooling fans. To the person who posted this idea, good work!
the_main_man 04/27/07	In 15 years time, people will look back and quietly laugh that we used to use storage drives with spinning platters inside home PCs. This post was a good idea and I hope DELL already have their top minds working on it.
make_it_better 04/27/07	Samsung and SanDisk are already paving the way... I would love to see this idea come to fruition. Of course the manufacturers must ensure the new SSDs have sufficient read/write cycles to last the life time of the PC.
reg 05/01/07	Our future children will wonder this: "Magnetic Coated Spinning Metal Platters for 1TB of storage? Why didn't they just use OptiGel 1cm Light Cubes for 1PB of storage? The Old Ones, they had a concept of lasers right?"
reg 06/25/07	Samsung begins producing 64GB 1.8-inch flash disk. Smaller, Faster, Better!
reg 07/25/07	Great! Just to point out something I noticed: Compaq, Toshiba, Gateway and others are selling very low entry point 'bare bones' laptops for $ 399. They have 512 MB of RAM and 80 GB hard drives, smaller processors, vista basic, and no DVD burner, but they do play DVDs. For Windows Vista - they crawl. For Linux, they absolutely FLY! So for home users who just want internet, email, printing documents, and some multimedia ability, Bare Bones laptops with Linux works fine. Samsung & SanDisk can provide the parts, Dell can put together the package: A BARE BARE BONES Laptop. 512 MB RAM, No hard drive. Flash Drive Instead. $299. Beat the other low entry point players at their own game. I have seen people skiping buying the portable DVD players and getting the lowest compaq notebook instead - JUST TO PLAY DVDs (nice 15.4" screen). A low power machine with a 17" screen would make an Excellent DVD player, with some 'light' computer abilities.
phubert 12/10/07	Toshiba announces solid state laptop drives to 128GB Toshiba, Samsung, and now Micron http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/10/toshiba-128gb-solid-st...
greythanis Jan 30	the next best thing is going to be at 256gb. can you imagine? slightly off topic, but what about a little 2 or 4gb built in flash chip to be used for backup, fast bootup, fast access of critical files? could even be based on SD card technology, i don't know.
phubert Jan 30	I think that has been suggested somewhere on the site...

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