Audio Equipment and Home Theater Audio : mp3/mp4 question

mp3/mp4 question

I'm not sure if I should post this here but I have a question about mp4 players.
I'm not really good with technical stuff and I have been checking mp4 players (I think I'll buy one) but some say the memory they have is harddisc and others say their memory is Flash . I don't really know what the difference is and how this would influence the way the players work.
An easy explanation would be nice.

What did the barmaid say? "Oh,yes. Oh,yes.Oh gods,yes." About Mort Kemnon,dumbass?.

Re: mp3/mp4 question

Hard drives are faster, more reliable under usual circumstances and cost less per GB. Flash takes less electricity to run and handles being dropped better.

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Re: mp3/mp4 question

Thanks Ace.

What did the barmaid say? "Oh,yes. Oh,yes.Oh gods,yes." About Mort Kemnon,dumbass?.

Re: mp3/mp4 question

"Hard drives are faster, more reliable under usual circumstances"

That is exactly backward, a harddrive is magnetic platter, it's slower as an arm has to move to read an area and because it has moving parts it's slower. Flash memory is just a chip, no moving parts to bust, no parts must move to seek the address of a given song.

HD Bigger and cheaper usually.

FD More reliable and faster

Re: mp3/mp4 question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Comparison_of_SSD_with_hard_disk_drives

I should say Flash is only slower for writing. Basically, the writing process is more physically involved, so they wear out faster than hard drives and it takes longer.

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Re: mp3/mp4 question

"I should say Flash is only slower for writing. Basically, the writing process is more physically involved, so they wear out faster than hard drives and it takes longer."

I agree, that is fair but their are no moving parts unlike a HD where the arm makes physical contact with the disk, it's a chip, there is nothing to really wear out (as far as the flash chip goes).

Re: mp3/mp4 question

Light bulbs don't have moving parts, either, but they still wear out. The state of the chemical that make up the data storage can only be stably changed so many times.

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Re: mp3/mp4 question

A light bulb filament is creates light through intense heat, they burn up, flash memory does not need to glow red hot, in fact there is very little heat. It's a known fact that the industry is moving away from mechanical Hard Drives to flash memory and mechanical hard drives will someday be a thing of the past due to their much higher failure rate.

Ever wonder why USB sticks replaced floppy drives, it was not due to capacity at the time.

Re: mp3/mp4 question

USB sticks actually did replace floppies due to capacity issues. Floppies were so small as to be useless and no new standard had appeared to replace them. Zip and such never really caught on. USB didn't require any standard as basically all computers had a USB port and a USB stick was cheaper than a whole external magnetic drive. Also, USB was a lot more reliable than floppies, but floppies aren't based on the same tech as hard drives. (Namely the read-head makes contact with the media.) The computer industry isn't really moving to solid state. It's fine for MP3 players, but not so much running an operating system as those get re-written more often. Early netbooks often used solid-state drives due to space issues, but this is no longer the case.

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Re: mp3/mp4 question

http://asia.cnet.com/buyingguides/mp3/0,39063886,61967035-6,00.htm



If you ever had a flash memory player drop on you, you'll likely not bat an eyelid. Without moving parts, flash-based MP3 players are more likely to survive with all your songs intact plus a few scratches. This also makes flash-based MP3 players ideal companions for a trip to the gym.

Here's an added virtue. Hard drives come with actuator arms to move the read/write head over a hard drive platter. That's a lot of movement and will wear out in the long term. Flash-based MP3 players do not suffer from such wear-and-tear.

Re: mp3/mp4 question

I said in my original post that flash-based drives handle being dropped better. Flash drives wear out for a different reason than hard drives, btu they still wear out. Read the Wiki link from a few posts ago. Basically, the matierals that make up the drive can only change states so many times. Hard drives don't have that problem, but they do have mechanical wear.

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Re: mp3/mp4 question

Flash drives wear out for a different reason than hard drives, btu they still wear out. Read the Wiki link from a few posts ago. Basically, the matierals that make up the drive can only change states so many times. Hard drives don't have that problem, but they do have mechanical wear.

True, But a Flash drive will not wear out near as fast. Average read writes now are over a million, if you overwrite the entire flash drive (not just a sector), from the day you are born and every day hence, that is about 30 times a day if you live to be 100 and the chip will still work on average. Try re-writing your entire hard drive 30 times a day for 100 years and let me know how that works out.

Re: mp3/mp4 question

That's not average. That's the cutting edge.

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Re: mp3/mp4 question

In 2008 perhaps, where read write cycles were an average of 100,000. So lets go with 2008. Totally erase and rewrite your hard drive 3 times a day every day for 100 years, then get back to me on the issue.

Honestly, You seem like a nice guy but you are simply wrong, to be in this forum you have a above average interest, restore my faith, you are not a Bose guy are you?

Re: mp3/mp4 question

Total doesn't matter. What matters is the most written sector. If you are running an OS, it will be a lot more than 3 times a day. It will likely be more than 30.

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Re: mp3/mp4 question

Those sectors vary, shees, ever hear of Wear-Leveling Algorithm's, you are wrong and you know it. Solid state will almost always last longer than moving parts.

2007, Before FD's made a ten fold extension in durability.

Longer life span. While drive crashes are not a risk, the memory itself does have a life span. It is said that a typical flash drive will have about a 10-year life span. Technically, the technology in use in todayÂ’s hard drives has a long life span (the actual data), however, because of the mechanical nature of the drives, actual life span is much less.

http://www.pcmech.com/article/the-future-of-hard-drives/
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