Will they ever replace hard disk drives with flash drives for PC's? They are getting larger these days and has capacities of 8GB. I was wondering if manufacturers will implement this in the future.

I think time will tell,
IBM claimed bubble memory was going to take over storage technology and as you can tell...it did not occur.

Wait, what exactly is bubble memory?

Here is a link to a definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory

It has already happened, but for notebooks only right now. Samsung has some cool (http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/PressRelease/PressRelease.asp?seq=20050523_0000123980) stuff (http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/news/harddiskdrive_20050425_0000117556.htm)! :D

I expect these hard drives to take off like a rocket! With hard drives continuing to increase in capacity, the disparity between users with large storage needs and users who "just surf the web" is growing ever wider. Even at that point, how many of us have multiple computers already? Wouldn't it be nice to have a smaller & more portable low-power system with a more-than-adequate 16GB flash-based hard drive? Or at that point, how about an entire classroom of low-power thin clients with LCD monitors? Or a nice quiet computer that boots up in no time for your technophobic parents? :D I can think of so many uses for a solid-state hard drive - for both low-power consumption and pure performance (for the desktop models of these HD's).

Yeah. It'd be cool if CD drives were as fast as virtual drives as well.

Would MRAM have advantages over Flash-EEPROM for a solid state future? Could it, for example, be defragged without wearing out the memory?

MRAM definitely has a future, depending on how far it can go, and how much success the development is having right now. When I first heard about it, I thought "hey that's cool". They originally were going to use it for RAM duties, but I think it's too slow. Besides, now that we all have more than enough hard drive space (well mostly :rolleyes: ) I think these new technologies would be better served in solid-state hard drives.

After all, a nice little 16GB super-speed main drive would be awesome, with some 500GB platter-based hard drives for storage duties. This stuff really has a future for low-power & super-performance users. And I think Samsung will enjoy the same sort of success with their new drives that Western Digital has enjoyed with their Raptor series. It's been proven that low-capacity high-performance HDD's definitely have a market!

HOw much more faster are we talking here? COmpared to a 7200RPM hard drive?

I agree, the non standard drives like the one in the Samsung/MS article or the IRAM (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121105,00.asp) are going to be a new way of approaching core computing With RAM technology as cheap as it is, it makes sense to have a drive that will store a base image and load it into some type of RAM drive. We will probably see several different types of platforms until one wins out. In the server market it would be nice to have a machine that boots faster. But also, think about having 10-20 gigs of high speed RAM available full time with the hard drive used simply for data storage. Better performance for games and all kinds of business apps.

It is one technology trend you will see in the future.