SSD

Pretec announced on Tuesday its latest CompactFlash cards, which are substantially faster and higher capacity than other available CF cards.

The new cards come in two speeds: 233x (35MB per second) and 333x (50MBps), which is for now, as far as we know, the fastest for CF cards. The 233x model comes in 64GB and 100GB capacities while the 333x model comes in 32GB and 50GB capacities.

These cards can be used with digital cameras or mobile devices or reconfigured to work as solid-state hard drives. As I blogged recently, this is also good news for those who want to … Read more

Toshiba to the rescue? The Japanese electronics giant may try to stave off a Samsung takeover of SanDisk.

In the aftermath of Samsung's $5.8 billion bid for flash memory supplier SanDisk and SanDisk's unceremonious rejection, Toshiba looms as a large and potentially obstructive factor to a deal.

Toshiba and SanDisk have a partnership dating back to 1999 and operate two joint ventures called Flash Partners and Flash Alliance, as EE Times spelled out this week in an analysis of the dynamics of a possible deal.

SanDisk has a 49.9 percent interest in each of the two … Read more

Tuesday, Super Talent Technology introduced two "dangerously fast" solid-state hard drives, the MasterDrive OX and the MasterDrive PX.

The budget MasterDrive OX uses multilevel cell NAND flash and has data speeds of up to 150MB per second in sequential read and 100B per second in sequential write, according to the company. The MasterDrive OX comes in capacities up to 128GB and has a 1-year warranty.

The higher-end MasterDrive PX, on other hand, uses single-level cell NAND flash and focuses on the reliability and endurance, rather than capacity. It, too, is supposed to have lightning-fast sequential read and write … Read more

Regular or ultra? Consumers will now have at least a couple of performance options when they order solid-state drives on the newest ultraportable notebooks from Dell.

Hard disk drives are getting scarcer by the week in the ultraportable notebook market. Dell has officially started selling its new 2.2-pound Latitude E4200 this week with solid-state drives as the only storage option, accelerating a trend in ultraportables away from hard disk drives.

The popular ThinkPad X301 also comes with solid-state drive options only.

The SSD options on the E4200 come in two flavors, standard or "Ultra".

Dell pre-announced the … Read more

The cutting-edge MacBook Air is not so cutting-edge these days. The high-profile, ultraslim notebook still comes with the same hardware that was offered initially by Apple nine months ago.

The sleek silver 3-pound notebook was announced with great fanfare back on January 15 with configurations that sported older Merom-class Intel low-voltage processors and a 64GB Samsung solid-state drive.

"I think everyone had widely anticipated that there would be some other product announcements in Steve Jobs' address (on Monday) on the notebook or computing side," said Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC, a … Read more

Hewlett-Packard says it has achieved a mobile-computing milestone by getting the HP EliteBook 6930p to operate continuously for 24 hours on a single battery charge. The laptop used in the test is, however, rather different from those consumers would pick up at the store, at least for now.

The machine's equipped with high-end components including Intel solid-state hard drives (SSDs), a mercury-free LED display, and an optional ultra-capacity battery.

The cream-of-the-crop components played a crucial role in making the 24-hour battery life possible. HP says the Illumi-Lite LED display, by itself, boosts battery run time by up to four … Read more

Less than a month ago, Intel announced its line of solid-state hard drives. We didn't have much information at the time, other than a model number and a few benchmarks provided by Intel, but we're pleased to officially announce the X25-M, or the Intel Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive.

The drive uses NAND flash technology specifically built for computing with 10 parallel channels and optimized firmware. As stated previously, the drive will come in both 2.5 inch (X25-M) and 1.8 inch (X18-M) sizes that will fit in both desktops and laptops with the same performance specifications.

The … Read more

Updated at 5:00 p.m. with closing share price.

SanDisk for Sale? The stock price says so.

The world's largest maker of flash memory cards for digital cameras jumped 31 percent, or 4.18 points, Friday on rumors that Samsung would buy the company.

This follows a recent spate of rumors including one that said Seagate was interested in SanDisk. While Samsung already makes flash memory and is a leader in the emerging solid state drive market, Seagate does not sell SSDs and is looking to get into the market.

Samsung doesn't need SanDisk to grow; the … Read more

First it was Intel. Now, Big Blue is keen on solid-state drives.

IBM said Thursday it is testing a 4-terabyte, high-speed solid-state drive array targeted at the enterprise, as the technology giant gives its imprimatur to flash-memory-based storage.

For years, flash memory cards--the first mass-market SSDs--have been limited to digital cameras and music players like the iPod. But SSDs are now poised to hit technological critical mass in terms of storage capacity, speed, and availability as they find their way into everything ranging from tiny netbooks to massive enterprise storage arrays.

High-performance enterprise storage is where IBM comes in. Engineers … Read more