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All posts tagged "SSD"


Thursday, January 8, 2009

SanDisk Unveils New SSD Drives

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 02:30 PM

http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/Pr...se.aspx?ID=4478

"SanDisk Corporation today unveiled its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory technology, SanDisk's G3 Series establishes new benchmarks in performance and price-performance leadership in the SSD industry. Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5" and 1.8" form factors respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface. Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB*, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively."

The press release goes on to say that the G3 series SSDs are more than five times faster than 7200rpm hard drives, and more than twice as fast as any of the SSDs that were shipping in 2008. What impresses me is the price: 60 GB for $149 USD is quite reasonable. No, you're not going to see these SSDs in any $599 notebooks this year, but SanDisk is offering a lot of performance for not too many dollars. I can't wait for this time next year when we'll likely see 500+ GB SSDs and, more importantly, average-priced computers start to ship with SSDs. I have yet to own a computer with an SSD in it, but I think that's going to happen in 2009...what about you?


Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Sandisk Announces New Netbook SSDs

Posted by Chris Gohlke in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 06:00 PM

http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/Pr...se.aspx?ID=4460

"SanDisk Corporation today unveiled its next-generation of flash memory-based solid-state drives to support the evolving needs of designers, manufacturers and users in the exploding netbook market - SanDisk® pSSD™. The new SanDisk pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2 SSDs have capacity and performance for more full-featured netbooks which require a robust operating system. Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives, SanDisk’s new second generation module has a SATA interface to meet new netbook design requirements. The SATA interface offers a significant boost in performance rendering these SSDs faster than HDDs in critical aspects. Booting and launching applications takes just half the time of an HDD."

Good stuff. Some of the first generation netbook SSDs we geared for less than optimal performance, but it was a good way to ramp up production. As the netbook has become pretty mainstream, it is great to see some of the technology that goes along with it maturing.

Tags: SSD, Sandisk, netbook

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

MSI Wind Hybrid

Posted by Chris Gohlke in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 07:00 PM

http://www.dailytech.com/MSI+Unveil...rticle13807.htm

"The Wind has proven to be popular with many netbook fans and in October of 2008 MSI announced that it had the successor to the Wind U100 netbook in the works. MSI has now made the specifications for the U100's new sibling public. The MSI Wind U115 is the world's first hybrid storage notebook. The machine uses an SSD for the OS to get the benefits of fast booting and data access with an internal HDD to provide more storage space for documents, music, and other data."

Looks like the best of both worlds. However, this assumes that they are using an SSD with an actual speed advantage. I seem to recall reviews showing that the SSD's from some of the netbooks were not geared for performance.

Tags: SSD, MSI

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

SanDisk Blames Windows Vista for SSD Performance Woes

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home News" @ 09:33 AM

http://www.dailytech.com/SanDisk+CE...rticle12458.htm

"Solid state disk (SSD) news has been coming in fast during the past few weeks. Most of the big revelations have been at the low-end of the SSD market with multi-level cell (MLC) based products, but single-level cell (SLC) based products have had their fair share of coverage as well. Despite the hype surrounding the promising technology, SanDisk is placing blame on Windows Vista for not providing enough of a speed boost when using SSDs. SanDisk CEO Eli Harari went so far as to say that Vista is the reason why SanDisk is being left behind by competing solutions."

What do you do when your products don't perform as fast as the competition? You blame Windows Vista of course! Blaming Vista seems to be the thing to do, but apparently even under Windows XP the SanDisk SSD products perform poorly. So what mythical, market-leading OS did SanDisk design their products for?

Tags: SanDisk, SSD

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

To SSD or Not To SSD?

Posted by Chris Gohlke in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 01:00 PM

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback237.html

"The looming arrival of solid-state hard drives (SSD) for notebooks seems like a rather exciting development at first blush. Unlike their mechanical counterparts, which have spindle motors, rotating platters and read/write heads, solid-state drives typically consist of flash memory chips and have no moving parts whatsoever. The benefits that these drivers offer compared to a mechanical drive are numerous, and include lower power consumption, improved performance, increased durability, less chance of data loss (no heads to crash into the platters), no noise and no heat output."

I don't think the cost benefit equation works right now for most uses. If you are using a small drive, it won't break the bank, so it seems to work for something the the Asus Eee. Also, if you are trying to work the performance angle, I guess you could use a small one as your boot/application drive and store all your data elsewhere.

Tags: SSD

Monday, February 18, 2008

Create Your Very Own SSD

Posted by Suhit Gupta in "Digital Home Articles & Resources" @ 08:00 AM

http://www.notebookreview.com/defau...asp?newsID=4255

"Solid state disks (SSDs) are a flash-based memory storage device that carries an insane price premium in the current market. They will usually cost $600 to $1,000 as an upgrade from the manufacturer or computer parts store, making them outside the price range of many consumers. A new cheaper (slightly slower) option is available thanks to low-cost, high-capacity flash cards. This option is using a cheap compact flash to SATA adapter, and purchasing a moderately fast memory card that would fill your storage needs. For this review I aimed to keep the price less than $100 just to show how affordable this option could be."

This article is absolutely fascinating. I went in expecting to simply find out about how to make my own SSD but I found out so much more. I was clearly under the wrong impression that all SSDs would out-perform regular disc based hard drives. Furthermore, in your DIY SSD solution, the speed of your solution is only as fast as the slowest component; so even if you invest in a high speed CF card, the SATA interface adapter needs to be a high performance device as well. Finally, I found out that when buying a notebook with an SSD solution, paying the high premium doesn't necessarily buy you high performance. I still confident I would go for an SSD but I think I will be better prepared now.

Tags: DIY, SSD

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