Introduction

Several years ago in a thread posted within a storage section of a popular forum, I learned of the fabled RAM Drive. This was several years before the GIGABYTE product of the same name, back when using memory as a storage device was more of a fable, or story of myth. At the time, no one had ever actually seen a RAM Drive, or at least not anyone tooling around in forums. This wasn't because they didn't exist, it is just that they cost more than a Honda Civic.

In the time since then, the memory market has changed significantly. Memory is treated like a commodity product with the costs lower than ever. This has moved RAM Drives from SRAM and DRAM (like what is inside your traditional system memory) to flashed based memory. When the changeover occurred, the term RAM-drive was dropped and SSD, or Solid-State Drive was picked up.

Today we will be looking at the future of hard drives. Mechanical is on its way out, and with it rotational latency. Moving at the speed of electrons is in, near instant access times and faster loading screens are on the way.