If not, what is the relationship between all these interface types? Are they intended to be soldered onto the motherboard?
Manufacturers may decide to solder the SSD directly to the motherboard, like Apple currently does with RAM on their laptop computers. This is beneficial to the manufacturer because it's more compact, less chance of mechanical failure, easier to assemble (pick&place instead of humans), lower price etc. In short: it's very attractive for manufacturers.
For consumers this is worrying though, as with the RAM on Apple laptops:
- You cannot replace a failed SSD, you need to replace the entire motherboard
- You cannot upgrade the SSD, so you have to accept the ridiculous price stepup when ordering the laptop (i.e. the 200 dollar price bump to get 8GB extra RAM on a macbook pro)
- Laptop is less valuable when trying to sell it on after a couple of years, because the storage size will be low compared to new SSD's.
NOPE. The Apple Store just sends you to a data recovery company instead, because they can't read it.
There's no better sign of bad customer service when you use a custom part but even you don't care to learn how to fix it.
This makes manufacturers happy, because more end-users will buy new devices rather than get a used one.
I just discovered this concern last weekend when a less than 3 year old Samsung SSD 840 died. Since this is not mechanical I don't know why they don't include extra pins (e.g. address, data) to read the memory in raw from the SSD chips if the failure is in the controller or firmware.
It's maddening that not only can I not get back whatever data wasn't backed up (thankfully not much) but I have no way of wiping it before returning it under warranty.
The people who handle the returns for Samsung say returned drives will be "formatted". Given it's uunresponsive, this seems unlikely
It puzzles me why drive manufacturers don't offer data recovery for their own products as a value add service. Nobody could get the data off this drive as cheaply as Samsung themselves.
Obviously we have our minds completely synchronized. At this point I don't care about the warranty but about the safety of the information in the disk. I contacted datarecovery.com and they gave me a rough range between $ 300 and 2k to recover the SSD. I don't think the price is crazy but I imagine that is a simple task to achieve if you have the right equipment.
Broken or failed screen, input device, storage controller, yada, -- doesn't matter. FDE means your data is that much more safer than without (and makes it safer provided you use a strong key).
Where there's a will, there is a way, and all that...
In a similar vein, you could double the RAM on the original Xbox by soldering a second memory chip to the unpopulated pads on the underside of the board.
If the controller fails, with existing "discrete" SSDs you can still desolder the flash chips directly, put them in a reader, and recover the data that way (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8133450 ) With this integrated "SSD", it could be nearly impossible to read the raw flash, meaning no more data recovery beyond the logical level. It's basically like an SD card.
less chance of mechanical failure
The widespread problem with RoHS lead-free solder and cracking balls disagrees, as also evidenced by the large amount of reflow/reballing services and the fact that reliability-critical applications like aerospace still use leaded solder and more expensive solder columns instead of balls.
While reading that myself, I also happened upon solder springs, which seem like an even niftier idea: http://www.topline.tv/CCGA_MCS_Micro_Coil_Spring.html
Apparently that company makes the solder springs available also has RoHS safe versions of them, perhaps this could solve the cracking problem?
Another company has a paper out which says that you can use their solder column attach process with existing BGA chips: http://www.solderability.com/newsletter082005/ConvertingBGAC...
Could some manufacturer (while unlikely, curious if it's possible) choose to use solder springs with this SSD's BGA package to make it more mechanically reliable when installed?
Unless you only use the computer for editing text then storage requirements are growing quicker than ever.
I don't mind paying for the higher end 512GB rMBP, but the discreet graphics is a deal-breaker for me. Thus I'm left with configuring the baseline integrated graphics rMBP with 512GB flash.
1. Driver issues on Linux
2. Discrete graphics failing and taking the whole logic board with it. Most of my laptops have died this way.
3. Battery life
4. Heat