On 14 September 2016 at 20:06, J. R. Haigh james.r.haigh@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, . Does anyone know whether any OSH solid-state drive project has come to fruition?
Not that I know of.
I'd like to get a 512GiB or 1TiB, 2.5in SSD, but I like to support OSH projects where possible and I don't like that modern drives have processors more powerful than my X60 Tablet, with nonlibre firmware, and perform tasks that should be the responsibility of the filesystem, such as deduplication, compression, encryption, and wear-levelling.
Agreed, the power they have combined with the lack of transparency is a concern.
An open source hardware PCB assembly with proprietary silicon and open firmware would seem plausible. However, a fully open source SoC complete with all the necessary controllers, would be a different matter and we're probably some way off having all the building blocks.
. If there isn't, then at least I'm expressing the interest such that someone thinking of making OSH SSDs knows that there's a market for them. I currently have an old SSD of about 117GiB (iirc.), so the minimum capacity that I'd upgrade to is 256GiB, but I'd much prefer 512GiB or more. I'd hope for a price, including shipping within/to Britain and tax, that is not more than 1.5× more than nonOSH of equivalent storage capacity.
It's a nice idea in an age where it feels like we have increasingly less trust for such components. I shouldn't be surprised if we don't see a crowdfunding campaign for something along those lines soon :o)
Cheers,
Andrew