Gigabyte's i-RAM: Affordable Solid State Storage
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 25, 2005 3:50 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
i-RAM's Limitations
Since your data is stored on a volatile medium with the i-RAM, a loss of power could mean that everything stored on the card would be erased with no hopes for recovery. While a lot of users may keep their computers on 24/7, there are always occasional power outages that would spell certain doom for i-RAM owners. In order to combat this possibility, Gigabyte outfitted the i-RAM with its own rechargeable battery pack.
There are only three conditions where the i-RAM runs off of battery power:
1) When the i-RAM is unplugged from the PCI slot;For whatever reason, unplugging the i-RAM from the PCI slot causes its power consumption to go up considerably, and will actually drain its battery a lot quicker than the specified 16 hours. We originally did this to test how long the i-RAM would last on battery power, but then were later told by Gigabyte not to do this because it puts the i-RAM in a state of accelerated battery consumption.
2) When the power cable is unplugged from your power supply (or the power supply is disconnected from your motherboard; and
3) When the power button on your power supply is turned off.
For the most part, the i-RAM will always be powered. Your data is only at risk if you have a long-term power outage or you physically remove the i-RAM card.
If you run out of battery power, you will lose all data and the i-RAM will stop appearing as a drive letter in Windows as soon as you power it back up. You'll have to re-create the partition data and copy/install all of your files and programs over again.
The card features four LEDs that indicate its status: PHY_READY, HD_LED, Full and Charging.
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Icehawk - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Huh, if this was at the $50 price point it would be a bit more interesting.I didn't like the pagefile test - it made no sense at all. Of course going from say 4b RAM to 2gb + 2gb iRam isn't going to improve the system... You needed to test what JUST changing the pagefile from HD to iRAM does.What about a typical 1gb RAM setup that most of us use? I still hit the pagefile on occasion and I do have ~1gb of old DDR I could use. Load times? No, I'd like to know if it smooths out gameplay. I know Doom 3 hiccups on my machine due to disk accesses.
Otherwise this doesn't look like it makes a lot of sense in its current incarnation.
lewis71980 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
No mention of using JBOD instead of Raid 0.That way with 4 pci slots used up you could get 16gb.
Maybe that would be enough space to do some proper server / databases.
Use a pair of normal 80 IDE HDD for os boot in raid 1 with file backup, from the i Ram card.
Braxus - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Know the article says it doesn't support ECC memory but will it still take it and run in in non-ECC mode? Most mobos I believe can at least do this. What about registered memory? Got a couple sticks of 1GB DDR266 RECC memory I'd like to use!RMSistight - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I definitely won't purchase this product until they implement SATA-II at 300Gb/s. Why should I shell out $150 for SATA150 when my DFI LanParty Ultra-D can do 300.I even asked one of the product managers at the AMD tech tour. I don't see why they wouldn't do it since SATA-II is backwards compatible to SATA-I.
Hacp - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
BTW I hate this new layout. i have to click it to read the next comment. Is there anyway to fix this? also the forums didn't get a makeover visual wise.LeftSide - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I wonder If the athlon x2 would have shown a diffrence in the multitaking tests, Instead of useing a fx57?Nanobaud - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
If more benches are to be done, I would put in a suggestion to test some compile times. Then I guess you should compare it to boosting youe system memory and installing a RAM drive, but this could be more convenient if you have those old 256 / 512 MB memory sticks lying around.nBd
Sunbird - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I want to know how long it will take the I-RAM to drain a standard UPS if the PC is off but connected to said UPS?jkostans - Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - link
A while. You would have to find how much power is dissipated by the i-ram, then use the capacity of your UPS to get an exact number. I would go as far as to say maybe up to a month if you have a good ups.Zebo - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
$600 for 4GB (read useless) drive that maybe is not much faster than two 73GB drives in RAID 0 for half price? Uh Huh. If they sell 3000 I'll be shocked.