ssds

Solid-state drives (or SSDs) are finally getting affordable.

Here's proof: today only, and while supplies last, 1SaleADay has the 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SATA III 2.5-inch SSD for $69.99, plus $4.99 for shipping. That's the lowest price I've seen on an SSD with these specs.

And it can get lower still: there's a $10 mail-in rebate (PDF), which comes in the form of an American Express prepaid card (which is more or less as good as cash).

I know many of you object to rebates, in which case I say forget about this … Read more

I remember the first time I learned about hybrid hard drives--models that combine traditional spinning platters with a sizable chunk of solid-state flash memory.

The goal was to combine the best of both storage worlds into one drive: The low cost and high capacity of a hard disk, plus the speed of flash. It sounded like a great idea to me.

That was way back in 2006, though--and hybrid drives have never quite taken off. But the concept still makes sense, and hard-disk kingpin Seagate is releasing a new hybrid drive designed to deliver on the technology's promise.

The … Read more

Seagate and Samsung, the two major makers of hard drives and system memory, announced Thursday that they have entered into a joint development and licensing agreement.

Under this agreement, the two companies will develop and cross-license related controller technologies for solid state drives.

This is interesting; Samsung has released many consumer-grade SSDs, whereas Seagate has recently taken the route of hybrid drive with the release of the Seagate Momentus XT (500GB). The company's first attempt into the SSD market with the Pulsar drive didn't make much of a splash.

According to Seagate, however, the two companies aim to … Read more

Toshiba has unveiled solid-state drives based on the new mini-Sata interface standard, which lets manufacturers create very small drives for use in Netbooks and other portable or embedded devices.

The Japanese hardware maker introduced on Monday the two 32-nanometer-process SG2 SSD modules, each of which comes in two capacities. In a separate announcement the same day, the Sata-IO consortium said it is developing mini-Sata (mSata).

The new interface specification will provide a "high-performance, cost-effective storage solution for smaller devices like notebooks and Netbooks," said the Sata-IO consortium, which includes Toshiba.

One of Toshiba's SG2 modules uses an … Read more

Back in the day, Netbooks ran Linux and packed solid-state drives. But Windows XP and big hard disk drives have prevailed.

The early Asus Eee PCs--which almost single-handedly created the Netbook market--came with a Linux operating system and small-capacity solid-state "flash" drives ranging from 2GB to 8GB. Early Acer Aspire Netbooks were also offered with Linux and a solid-state drive.

Those devices bore little resemblance to PC laptops. The Eee PC was a tiny, stripped-to-the-bone device that required minimalist hardware to run an efficient Linux OS. (Will a wave of Google Chrome OS-based devices revive the minimalist … Read more

SanDisk is evaluating a production halt over the holidays at its manufacturing facilities in Japan, reflecting an overall slowdown in the flash memory chip industry.

"The joint venture is evaluating plans for operations over the holiday season, including a possible stoppage of some production lines," a SanDisk spokesman said Friday. "We constantly consider manufacturing schedules in light of market requirements and this is particularly true during the holiday season," he added.

Milpitas, Calif.-based SanDisk and Toshiba have joint production lines for NAND flash chip manufacturing in Japan.

This follows a Bloomberg report that said Toshiba … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Technology introduced at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference by SanDisk could boost solid-state drive performance in Windows Vista by 100 times.

The largest supplier of flash memory cards unveiled an advanced flash file system for solid-state drives that "has the potential" to accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems.

Despite being generally faster than hard-disk drives (particularly at reading data), solid-state drives fall short of hard disks when they randomly write data. Random writes are generally considered to be the Achilles heel of solid-state drives.

To maximize random write performance, SanDisk developed … Read more

Updated at 3:40 p.m.with additional comments and clarifications about solid state drives and ATA commands.

Will solid-state drives thrive on Windows 7? Microsoft is set to address that question at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week.

Microsoft will speak to both overall support for solid-state drives and Windows 7 support for Netbooks in Los Angeles at WinHEC 2008, which kicks off Wednesday.

In a conference abstract titled "Windows 7 Enhancements for Solid-State Drives," Microsoft states that "PC systems that have solid-state drives are shipping in increasing volumes" and that it is planning &… Read more

Super Talent Technology, a vendor that just announced high-speed and low-budget solid-state drives, introduced on Tuesday its new line of SSDs designed explicitly for Asus' Eee PCs.

The new line is available in three sizes--16GB, 20GB, and 64GB. The drives use a mini PCI-Express interface and offer rather modest throughput speeds of 40 megabytes per second in writing and 15MBps in reading.

Standard Eee PCs will generally use the 20GB version of the new SSD. Users then can choose to upgrade to 64GB or downgrade to 15GB versions. These drives can also be used in any devices that share the … Read more