solid-state drives

Intel doesn't enter markets gently. Its new high-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs) are expected to jolt a market currently dominated by Samsung, Toshiba, and SanDisk.

At the moment, Intel offers small-capacity chip-level (what are called Thin Small Outline Packages or TSOPs) technology that provides end-product sizes ranging up to 16GB. But this modest line of products will get a big boost in the second quarter when Intel offers 1.8- and 2.5-inch SSDs ranging from 80GB to 160GB in capacity, said Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel. Intel's new SSDs will compete with … Read more

Samsung is touting the reliability of solid-state drives, while citing an explosive market for the devices in server computers.

SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. Hard-disk drives (HDDs), in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of HDDs. Therefore, SSDs are generally faster and more reliable. The catch is the cost: SSDs are currently much more expensive than HDDs.

There are also concerns about wear. That is, flash has the … Read more

After using the solid-state-drive version of the MacBook Air for about 10 days, the notebook's potential is what sticks with me the most. The seminal construction and the influence this will have on future designs is what sets the Air apart.

Note: This is not a CNET review. The Apple MacBook Air CNET review is here. What follows is a brief personal observation, not a review.

In day-to-day use, I am impressed by the Air's boot times (under 30 seconds), resume times (instantly from sleep mode), and lack of hard-drive "thrashing" that occurs invariably on my … Read more

Samsung Electronics has begun mass producing 64GB solid state drives (SSDs) with a new high-performance interface and will begin shipping the drive to major notebook PC suppliers, the company announced Friday. This follows last month's announcement of plans to bring out a 128GB SSD.

The new Serial ATA (SATA)-II SSD is able to read data at 100 megabytes per second (MB/sec) and write it at 80MB/sec, 60 percent faster than SATA I drives, Samsung said.

Dell will be one of the first takers. "Today, I wanted to let our customers know that in the coming … Read more

In the wake of a series of technical announcements from flash memory supplier SanDisk, larger-capacity solid-state drives are on the way.

Flash memory is gaining as a replacement for hard drives in ultra-thin, ultra-small notebooks such as the MacBook Air and Asus Eee PC. Why? Flash uses less power, generates less heat, and has faster access times than hard drives. The Air, for example, offers a 64GB flash-based SSD as an option while the Eee PC is sold standard with flash storage.

There is a big catch, though. High-capacity SSDs are expensive. Prohibitively so. The flash drive in the pricier $… Read more

The hard drive will not die. Let's get this on the record now, at the beginning of 2008, because readers may see a fair number of stories proclaiming its demise. Though Friday's Intel-Micron high-speed flash memory announcement points to increasing use of solid state drives (SSDs) in digital products, flash is chasing prey that has eluded imminent death for years. SSDs are gaining acceptance selectively not broadly. SSDs in standard notebooks? No. And even if you're, for instance, a PC vendor trying to compete in the ultra-thin notebook market, chances are you will still opt in most … Read more

Intel is making a "small" change to its lineup of solid-state drives.

The chipmaker announced late Friday that it is making a solid-state drive for handheld devices that is smaller than a penny and weighs less than a drop of water. The Z-P140 drives will be available in 2GB and 4GB sizes, and are intended for low-power, rugged devices, presumably gadgets like Internet tablets, smartphones, portable video players, and handheld computers. Intel says it is 400 times smaller than a 1.8-inch hard drive.

The drives use flash memory to store data, and have a PATA (parallel ATA) … Read more

Solid-state drives are still going to be somewhat hard to find and expensive in 2008, but mass production, cheaper flash, and tech advances will start to change that in 2009 and 2010.

Micron Technology, the Boise, Idaho-based maker of DRAM and flash memory, this week unveiled plans to come out with solid-state drives. The drives function like regular hard drives. But instead of storing data on spinning disks, solid-state drives store it on NAND memory chips--the kind found in cameras and MP3 players.

Micron will start mass-producing solid-state drives in the first quarter of 2008. The first drives will hold … Read more

In the old days, you'd buy a RAID adapter card to let your computer attach to multiple hard drives that provided data capacity and protection. Nowadays, with flash memory, the storage fits right on the card.

Addonics Technologies announced a $50 PCI card Tuesday that's got four CompactFlash card slots. The cards can be configured as four individual drives, a single large volume, or set up with RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) 0, 1 or 10 to stripe data across multiple cards or mirror data from one onto another.

Note that there's no support for RAID … Read more