SanDisk releases 32GB SSD
airbornflght
Houston, TX Icrontian
On Tuesday, SanDisk Corporation announced their new solid state disk drive that is sure to change the hard drive market as we know it. The new 32GB drive utilizes NAND Flash memory as its storage medium and comes in a standard 2.5” form factor. The advantages to NAND-based storage are lower power usage, faster read rates, and, of course, no high-pitched whine. Most notebooks manufactured today utilize a 2.5” hard drive, and the new SanDisk SSD drive fits in the same internal space as its HDD counterpart, making it easier for notebook manufacturers to switch over to SSDs without completely rethinking their hardware designs.
This 32GB drive is looking very appetizing as a replacement to the traditional hard disk. Clocking in at a monstrous sustained read rate of 67 megabytes per second, SanDisk claims the new drive is able to boot Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise edition in a mere 30 seconds while only using .9 watts of power. The new drives should also give road warriors many more precious minutes of run time while operating on the battery, as these drives use roughly 50 percent less power during active operation compared to the standard issue hard disk.
The new drives are also extremely quiet as a result of having no moving parts. They will be very reliable, delivering two million hours mean time before failure, approximately six times longer than their platter-spinning counterparts. The drives are also touted to be much more “drop proof” than existing hard drives that utilize spinning disks and swinging read/write heads. Roughly 25-45 percent of all notebook failures are hard disk related, so this should significantly help notebook manufactures with product reliability ratings.
There are a few drawbacks to SSDs. For now, the main issues are price and capacity. The platter-spinning drives have the high capacity crown by a long shot (for now), as well as price per GB. Another issue that's a double-edged sword is data recovery. Once a file is deleted it is almost impossible to recover the data, though this could also be marketed as a “security feature”. NAND devices also aren’t terribly tolerant of repeated read/write access.
Products currently using the NAND based technology include just about every Flash based MP3 player as well as USB Flash drives that we have all found indispensable in our everyday lives. There are several other companies, including Intel (<a href="http://www.short-media.com/news/intel_enters_solid_state_drive_market" target="_blank">a recent entrant</a>), A-DATA, Samsung, Super Talent, and Adtron, that are either have an SSD product in the market or under development. It seems that with most companies releasing their products by mid-2007 we could see adoption as early as late 2007/early 2008.
The drive is expected to carry a $350 price tag. With no moving parts, blazing speed, and superb reliability, I see no reason that my and many others’ next laptop will not have one of these drives. As adoption increases, expect prices to plummet and capacities to soar upwards. This isn’t the death of the spinning platter for a long time to come, but it is definitely a move in the right direction. As OEM adoption increases and the market becomes saturated, the standard hard drives may slowly phase out.
This 32GB drive is looking very appetizing as a replacement to the traditional hard disk. Clocking in at a monstrous sustained read rate of 67 megabytes per second, SanDisk claims the new drive is able to boot Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise edition in a mere 30 seconds while only using .9 watts of power. The new drives should also give road warriors many more precious minutes of run time while operating on the battery, as these drives use roughly 50 percent less power during active operation compared to the standard issue hard disk.
The new drives are also extremely quiet as a result of having no moving parts. They will be very reliable, delivering two million hours mean time before failure, approximately six times longer than their platter-spinning counterparts. The drives are also touted to be much more “drop proof” than existing hard drives that utilize spinning disks and swinging read/write heads. Roughly 25-45 percent of all notebook failures are hard disk related, so this should significantly help notebook manufactures with product reliability ratings.
There are a few drawbacks to SSDs. For now, the main issues are price and capacity. The platter-spinning drives have the high capacity crown by a long shot (for now), as well as price per GB. Another issue that's a double-edged sword is data recovery. Once a file is deleted it is almost impossible to recover the data, though this could also be marketed as a “security feature”. NAND devices also aren’t terribly tolerant of repeated read/write access.
Products currently using the NAND based technology include just about every Flash based MP3 player as well as USB Flash drives that we have all found indispensable in our everyday lives. There are several other companies, including Intel (<a href="http://www.short-media.com/news/intel_enters_solid_state_drive_market" target="_blank">a recent entrant</a>), A-DATA, Samsung, Super Talent, and Adtron, that are either have an SSD product in the market or under development. It seems that with most companies releasing their products by mid-2007 we could see adoption as early as late 2007/early 2008.
The drive is expected to carry a $350 price tag. With no moving parts, blazing speed, and superb reliability, I see no reason that my and many others’ next laptop will not have one of these drives. As adoption increases, expect prices to plummet and capacities to soar upwards. This isn’t the death of the spinning platter for a long time to come, but it is definitely a move in the right direction. As OEM adoption increases and the market becomes saturated, the standard hard drives may slowly phase out.
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Comments
Even with Vista 32GB should be enough to run the OS and your most favorite game from the SSD, and have Office, Adobe, whatever reside on the SATA drive. Just a thought...
/looking forward to having a few SSD in a RAID config as soon as the mobile market knocks the prices down.