Samsung launches 256GB solid-state drive

Samsung on Wednesday night said it has begun mass-producing 256GB solid-state drives. This size tops the largest-capacity SSDs found in laptops today.

Samsung currently offers 64GB and 128GB SSDs for laptops.

The new 256GB drives are faster too, the company claims, more than doubling the performance rate of Samsung 64GB and 128GB SSDs.

The drives combine sequential read rates of 220 megabytes per second, with sequential write rates of 200MBps. "This sharply narrows the performance gap between read and write operations to only 10 percent, compared to a read-write speed difference of between 20 (percent) and 70 percent for other SSDs," the company said.

Samsung did not mention random write performance, however. 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.

Getting this 256GB SSD in a notebook "is analogous to having a 15,000-(revolutions-per-minute) drive, without all of its size, noise, power, and heating drawbacks," Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung Semiconductor, said in a statement.

The 256GB SSD boosts data transfer when large multimedia files are simultaneously read and stored. "It can store 25 high-definition movies in just 21 minutes, a significant advancement over a 7,200rpm hard disk drive (HDD), which takes about 70 minutes," the company said in a statement.

The drive's performance is derived from a new single-platform design consisting of a chip controller, NAND flash, and special drive firmware developed by Samsung. "This single platform is designed to easily adapt to Samsung's 40-(nanometer) class NAND flash memory," according to the company.

It consumes 1.1 watts of power, versus 2 or more watts for a comparable HDD. Similar in weight to a 128GB SSD, at 81 grams, the 2.5-inch multilevel cell 256GB SSD has the same 9.5-millimeter drive thickness.

Samsung's 256GB SSD is also available with optional proprietary encryption programming that provides full-disk encryption, a key feature for some corporate users.

Pricing was not immediately available.

[pase121]

SRP 2 million dollars!

[CHRlSCO]

Why do you guys talk about sequential writes. What matters more is non-sequential writes.

[texaslabrat]

agree. And it looks like Sandisk, for one, has been working on that issue: http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_SanDisk_Deploys_ExtremeFFS_For_Accelerated_SSD_Random_Write_Speeds_28385.html

"In 2009, SanDisk will begin deploying flash management systems capable of accelerating SSD random write speeds by up to 100 times compared to the technology we have today, the company revealed this week during the WinHEC conference held in Los Angeles."

[gerrrg]

Eventually, SSDs will replace hard drives in servers...but first, the workstations.

[The_Decider]

Not until the limited write problem is fixed. A busy server could destroy a SSD in a matter of weeks.

[texaslabrat]

@The_Decider:

The limited write issue has been basically solved with improved manufacturing and smarter wear-leveling algorithms. There are server-certified SSD's available today. They tend to be quite a bit more expensive as they use SLC rather than the cheaper MLC tech..but they generally carry a 5-yr warranty explicitly for server use. Even the MLC drives have pretty reasonable write cycles these days...more than enough for the average consumer, anyway...and approaching what a "light-duty" server would need.

[Mr. Dee]

Hmm, thats bigger than my 160 GB mechanical hard disk in my laptop. Still, its the issue of the mechanical hard disk being 1 step ahead of the SSD for a few years to come. Yes, I can get this SSD for huge sum of money, but I can get a cheaper 320 GB HD.

[alan_06]

Awesome innovation! I'm looking forward to lightweight smaller laptop form factor

[knowles2]

So let get down to the thing that matter, the price, how much is this thing gonna cost us.

[Henry Michael Karshis]

I'm waiting for this puppy to support USB 3.0 as portable drive!

HMK

[humanssssss]

How much?

[JoshMiller79]

Don't these things fail reasonably quickly due to limited read/write cycles?

solid State is great for my thumb drive with it's handful of "currently working on but still backed up" documents but I wouldn't want to store my music/movie collection on one.

[tipoo_]

no, thats become a non-issue now that the MTFB is near or better than hard drives.

[Renegade Knight]

Yes. The solution seems to be "wear-leveling" which has me wondering if that's a fancy way to say "forced fragmentation".

[Renegade Knight]

Yes. The solution seems to be "wear-leveling" which has me wondering if that's a fancy way to say "forced fragmentation".

That may or may not mean anything with one of these drives.

[thelemurking]

I'm willing to beta test one of these drives in my laptop if Samsung is willing to send me one... and I promise not to download any porn! ;)

[renGek]

Its going to be verrrry expensive. Not only that but HD makers want you to buy ssd because they can make more money off of it than the traditional drives now. Drive makers are going to start ignoring traditional drives fairly soon especially in this economy. Of course in this economy, who the heck is going to spend $600+ on an SSD drive (only guessing on the price so don't jump on me about it).

[dirty55409]

Try dropping your 1tb barracuda HDD from 4 ft off the ground.... now try it with a SSD. That's what you're getting from shelling out for a SSD. Faster Reads(but with slower writes) is also a benefit for SSD

[make_or_break]

Then DON'T DROP that HDD! Seems like a simple enough concept.

[Mikeybabes]

Getting this 256GB SSD in a notebook "is analogous to having a 15,000-(revolutions-per-minute) drive, without all of its size, noise, power, and heating drawbacks," Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung Semiconductor, said in a statement.

I thought Tomshardware busted the myth that SSDs consume less power overall, in that they draw power continuously.

[dirty55409]

where/when was that statement made? I would just look at his title "Memory Marketing" so ummm when was the last time you were pitched a sale that was false? He gets paid to move product not to tell the truth. So yeah.

[iff2mastamatt]

I think the SSD's need a little bit more time to perfect before they can replace HD's. At least Samsung and Sandisk are diligent with their progress.

[SystemsJunky]

If you want a fast Laptop HDD, get a 360gb VelociRaptor.

[Rants&Raves]

Agreed, the VelociRaptor is amazing. But it'll also eat your batteries like nothing else.

[billwklein]

What is funny is that this is two drives configured into a RAID 0 configuration crammed into one enclosure... Its creative, but hardly good technology.