solid-state drives

Intel solid-state drive price cuts enough?

Intel has slashed solid-state drive prices, but probably not enough to sway many consumers.

Intel's mainstream, and currently most widely available, 80GB X18-M was cut to $390 from $595--about a 34 percent drop in price. But paying almost $400 for an 80GB drive may still be too much to ask of consumers when, for example, a 160GB, 7,200-rpm laptop hard-disk drive from Toshiba can be had for less than $100 on Amazon.

Solid-state drives, particularly the newest generation of SSDs, typically offer much better performance than hard-disk drives.

Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest users of Intel solid-state drives … Read more

Transcend boasts new high-speed solid-state drive

Transcend, the company that introduced a solid-state-drive-based external drive the other day, on Thursday unveiled its 192GB Solid State Drive.

Despite the mundane name, the new drive is equipped with NAND flash memory and offers up to 192GB of storage, a fast sustained read performance of up to 150MBps, and up to a 90MBps write performance, according to Transcend. Its latency is rated at 0.2 milliseconds, which is practically instant.

It's a 2.5-inch SATAII drive--currently the most popular interface--and is compatible with most notebook computers or any other devices that use this storage standard.

Transcend's new … Read more

Woz joins Fusion-io

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has joined Fusion-io, a start-up specializing in high-speed solid-state drives, the company said Thursday.

Wozniak will be Fusion-io's chief scientist and will also advise the company on technical strategy for product development.

"With the revolutionary technological advances being made by Fusion-io, the company is in the right place at the right time with the right technology and ready to direct the history of technology into the 21st century and beyond," Wozniak said in a statement. "The technology marketplace has not seen such capacity for innovation and radical transformation since the mainframe computer … Read more

SanDisk suffers $1.86 billion loss amid slump

SanDisk reported a net loss of $1.86 billion, as it takes steps to reduce output and conserve cash amid a collapsing flash memory chip market and weak consumer demand.

The flash memory chip supplier's fourth-quarter net loss was $1.86 billion, or a loss of $8.25 per share, compared to GAAP net income of $106 million, or 45 cents per share, in the same period last year. (GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.)

Charges, including a combined pre-tax goodwill and intangible asset impairment charge of $1.02 billion, due to a sustained decline in SanDisk's … Read more

Transcend makes portable solid-state drive

If you like your thumb drive for the durability, you'll like what Transcend introduced on Monday. It's a new breed of compact external storage device that's based on 1.8-inch solid state drives (SSDs), the SSD18M.

Unlike traditional external storage devices that are based on hard-disk drives, the SSD18M is made of reliable NAND flash memory that contains no moving parts. This eliminates the possibility of mechanical failure due to shock or vibration and also provides substantial weight savings and reduced power consumption.

The new drive features both both eSATA and USB2.0 interface options. This means … Read more

Analyst: iPod, Zune, servers to drive SSD growth

Solid-state drives may see heady growth despite a sliding world economy, according to a report released Tuesday by a market research company. Devices like the Apple iPod and iPhone are expected to drive growth.

Flash memory revenue in the solid-state drive segment will see compound annual growth rates of over 100 percent through 2012, according to market research firm In-Stat. The type of flash used in solid-state drives is referred to as NAND flash.

"You're starting from quite a small base. Back in 2006, you're in the tens of millions (of dollars) kind of a number. By … Read more

Netbook solid-state drives expand to 64GB and beyond

Toshiba hasn't exactly been on the cutting edge of the Netbook phenomenon but the Japanese company is taking the lead in moving solid-state drive storage in these tiny laptops to the next level.

Toshiba is adding a 64GB solid-state drive to its NB100 Netbook offering, in addition to the current 160GB hard disk drive option.

While Sony's Vaio P series will be available with SSD options up to 128GB SSD, it's problematic whether Sony's tiny laptop qualifies as a Netbook, which are defined by price as well as size. The Vaio P with a 64GB SSD … Read more

Dell first: 256GB solid-state drive on laptops

Updated at 11 p.m. PST with information about Apple.

Dell is doing its part to usher in the age of the super-sized solid-state drive. For the first time, Dell laptops can be configured with the newest large-capacity SSDs from Samsung.

Back in the day (last January), laptop buyers were stuck with a Henry Fordesque choice: order any solid-state drive you want with your laptop as long as it's 64GB.

What a difference a year makes. On Friday, Dell quadrupled this to 256GB. The Samsung SSD is now available as an option on Dell's XPS M1330 and M1730 … Read more

Buyer beware: Solid-state drive prices vary--a lot

Updated at 9:40 a.m. PST with additional information about SLC-based solid-state drives.

Some solid-state drives are more equal than others--or, to put it another way, command higher prices than rival drives, despite being seemingly quite similar.

SanDisk and Toshiba offer a good lesson. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, SanDisk said it would start shipping 240GB SSDs in "mid 2009," priced at only $499. (Next to a comparable hard-disk drive, that may be a lot of money, but for a solid-state drive, it's dirt cheap.)

At the Toshiba booth, however, the story was very different. A Toshiba representative said his company's comparable 256GB SSDs are priced at $800. And this discrepancy is coming from two companies that get their flash chips from the same source: a joint-manufacturing operation in Japan.

Below are the prices Toshiba representatives were stating on the show floor versus prices that SanDisk announced.

Toshiba/SanDisk solid-state drive pricing:

Toshiba 512GB: $1,600, SanDisk N/A Toshiba 256GB: $800, SanDisk 240GB: $499 Toshiba 128GB: $400, SanDisk 120GB: $249 Toshiba 64GB: $175, SanDisk 60GB: $149

Throw Intel into the mix, and it gets more confusing. "Introductory" pricing for Intel 160GB versions of its X25-M and X18-M Serial ATA (SATA) solid-state drive is $945 for less than 1,000 units. … Read more

SanDisk, Samsung tout new Netbook, server SSDs

Both SanDisk and Samsung announced solid-state drives on Tuesday--though that's where the similarity ends. SanDisk's SSDs are aimed at Netbooks, while Samsung's new SSDs are for the high-performance server market.

SanDisk is debuting its new 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB pSSD-P2 and pSSD-S2 solid-state drives at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Samsung's 100GB SS805 drive, on the other hand, is being introduced on Tuesday at the Storage Visions 2009 Conference, also in Las Vegas.

The second-generation SanDisk drives, designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives, use the Serial-ATA or SATA interface. First-generation … Read more