SanDisk feels it’s ready to take on the mobile PC market with its first solid-state hard drive. The SSD Ultra ATA 5000 1.8-inch hard drive comes in a 32GB size and can boot Windows Vista Enterprise in under 35 seconds. This drive is being touted for its speed, thanks to solid-state memory instead of moving parts like a conventional hard drive.
The geeky-goo from the press release:
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With no moving parts, SanDisk SSD does not need to spin up into action or to seek files in the way that conventional hard disk drives do – enabling SanDisk SSD to work much faster. SanDisk SSD Ultra ATA 5000 achieves a sustained read rate of 62-megabyte (MB)*/sec and a random read rate of 7300 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer – more than 100 times better than any hard disk drive.
These performance figures boost system performance. For instance, SanDisk SSD UATA 5000 can boot Microsoft Windows® Vista™ Enterprise on a laptop in as little as 35 seconds. SanDisk SSD achieves an average file access rate of 0.12 milliseconds.** On Windows Experience Index for Microsoft® Vista™, SanDisk SSD scores 5.4 out of a total 5.9, whereas a hard disk drive scores 3.7 on the same test inside the same laptop.***
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Oh, and your laptop will get a longer battery life if you slap one of these SSD Ultra drives into it. This drive only uses 0.4W while active as opposed to 1.0W on standard hard disks. Less power consumed means more juice. Everybody wins. No word yet on how much this’ll cost or when bigger sizes will become available.
Official Site [SanDisk]
So awesome. solid state drives have come such a long way since the original flash memory. I’m concerned with is the limitations to flash memory though. With the development of vertical writing on normal hard drives, you can store a lot more memory on each disk nowadays (or you will be able to when they apply the tech). So what about these solid state drives? What are the limitations to flash drives? Size?
The benefits of switching to solid state memory are tremendous. You’re looking at reduced maintainance costs (less HD problems, period), reduced heat output (no moving parts), reduce power consumption, reliability (you can’t really fry solid state mem), etc. The only problem right now is that none exists yet and that no one really knows what the limits are to solid state memory.
Of course I’m excited, and keep us updated!
I’m so excited! I have the 10,000 rpm drive, but this is gonna be sweet. The reality is 32GB is enough for windows, office, and really most corporate machines. Maybe add in a second regular spinning hard drive for archival purposes on a laptop to get a ton of storage. but 90% of your access would be on the solid state disk.
Windows Vista ONLY taking up 32GB of space on a new computer… now who is fooling who? Each time a software shows minimums, double them right off the bat and then depending on the patches and “upgrades” you do… you end up with a monster 10x its original size.
Solid state is a very welcome advancement… HD and laptops aren’t the best of friends even with light travels under their belts… this solves so many problems (watts, broken parts, heat… ).
I figure it will be at least 5 years before they completely replace conventional HD though… but that day will be sweat!
Jon
Notice how they only quote the random read rate? That’s because the random write is terrible. So you can boot faster but these could actually hurt performance in some scenarios. Not saying I don’t want one, just that these still have room left to improve.
Hi Vince
We, PhotoFast, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions,announced that we’re going to release a series of solid state drives (SSDs) named G-Monster.G-Monster-V2 , which is able to support the capacities up to 256GB
and support 1.5/3.0Gbps SATA I/II interface with read speed up to 230mb, write speed up to 160mb.
we would like to provide you more its informaiton, would you mind providing us your email?
many thanks!