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(Credit: Transcend)

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 when portability is not required, people can use the eSATA interface, which requires a separate power adapter, to take advantage of the high throughput speeds of up to 90Mbps in reading and 50Mbps writing.

The SSD18M sports a stylish gloss diamond pattern fascia and measures only 3.1 inches by 1.2 inches by .5 inch and weighs merely 1.8 ounces. It comes in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities.

Transcend backs the new drive with a two-year warranty and a comprehensive global service network. The SSD18M is available for purchase later this week and costs $285 for the 128GB version. The 64GB and 32GB versions cost $169 and $99, respectively.

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 laptop lines. Apple announced a 256GB SSD option on its MacBook Pro on January 6.

Dell added a 256GB solid-state drive option to its XPS M1330 and XPS M1730 laptops

(Credit: Dell)

Upgrading from the base XPS configuration with the 256GB SSD will add $400, Dell said Friday. And Dell said the SSD will "be available on additional laptops in the coming weeks."

Dell has also added a 500GB hard disk drive option that will add $150 to the base configuration price.

Solid-state drives are generally faster at getting data than hard-disk drives (and in some cases, much faster), but pricing is a hurdle for consumers. SSDs still command a premium, but that premium is shrinking. SanDisk said last week that it will begin offering a 240GB SSD for $499. SSDs with this kind of capacity had been priced well over $1,000.

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's G3 Series of SSDs offer capacities up to 240GB

(Credit: SanDisk)

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.

MSI has launched a Netbook that uses both solid-state and hard-disk drives.

The U115 Hybrid, unveiled Monday, comes with a solid-state disk for most of the PC's operations, together with a hard-disk drive that can optionally be used for storage. An "ECO on mode" temporarily disengages the hard drive; MSI claimed this mode extends battery life, as solid-state drives are generally more power-efficient than their spinning-disc counterparts.

MSI's U115 Hybrid.

(Credit: MSI)

Apart from its use of both SSD and HDD technologies, the U115 Hybrid closely follows the standard Netbook template.

The 10-inch screen has a resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels. The device uses a 1.6GHz Z530 Intel Atom processor, Windows XP Home, and a gigabyte of DDR2 533MHz RAM. Bluetooth is included, as are three USB 2.0 ports.

Buyers can choose between a 1.3-megapixel or 2.0-megapixel webcam; a three- or six-cell battery; and 802.11b/g/n or 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. The machine comes with two possible combinations of drives: a 120GB hard drive with an 8GB solid-state drive, or a 160GB hard drive with a 16GB solid-state drive.

The U115 Hybrid weighs around 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) with the three-cell battery.

Although MSI claimed in its release Monday that the U115 Hybrid's battery life is "super-long", it did not specify the estimated battery life. Release details and pricing were also not mentioned in the release.

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

(Credit: Transcend)

I'm not sure this will help stop the downturn in the NAND flash memory market, but Transcend on Tuesday joined the league of solid-state-drive makers and introduced its new 128GB high-speed 2.5-inch drive.

The new drive features the SATA-II interface and Transcend's Multi-level cell flash memory chip. This combination allows it to offer sustained read/write speeds of up to 145MB/92MB per second, about 40 percent faster than high-speed regular 2.5-inch SATA hard drives.

Like other SSDs, the new SSD from Transcend has very low 0.2ms latency that would potentially increase the performance of software applications, as well as the overall system.

The new Transcend SSD is available in capacities ranging from 8GB to 128GB, with the 128GB version costing only $379, a very good deal. You can also find Transcend's SSDs that support the older IDE interface with capacities ranging from 8GB to 64GB.

All Transcend's SSDs are covered with a two-year warranty along with the company's worldwide support.

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 80GB drive will ship this week for $595. The price is certainly higher than what we've found on NewEgg.com where price range from $226 for a 60GB drive and a fairly inexpensive $435 for 120GB. The price tag for the Intel SSD factors out to about $7.43 per gigabyte compared with most of the other drives that cost about $3.50 per gigabyte. The price jump isn't exactly deal breaking if you consider the decrease in the overall cost of SSDs over the past year. Take the Apple MacBook Air, for instance. When it was released in January, a 64GB SSD upgrade would have set you back a staggering $1,000. In either case, the price of Intel's drive might be attributed to system level benchmarks and increased transfer speeds over generic brands. Our own CNET Labs is running tests on the 80GB 2.5 inch drive and we'll report our findings in a hands-on review coming later today.

SanDisk sees flash memory maxing out during the next decade and believes 3D technology is the answer.

A model of stacked Toshiba transistors

(Credit: Michael Kanellos)

Flash memory disk supplier SanDisk said this week that it is looking beyond flash memory because of anticipated limitations. SanDisk intends to tap into 3D read-write memory technology it acquired with the purchase of Matrix Semiconductor back in 2005.

3D memory chips can store more data vertically, allowing greater densities. While conventional integrated circuits put all active circuitry on the silicon substrate, SanDisk's 3D architecture deposits multiple layers of active memory elements so that circuitry extends vertically as well.

Speaking at this week's second-quarter earnings conference call, Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk president and chief operating officer, said his company is "developing the 3D read/write memory that we believe will replace NAND flash sometime in the next decade when it can no longer be economically scaled."

SanDisk 3D technology uses multi-layered three dimensional integrated circuits

(Credit: SanDisk)

This follows a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure earlier in the quarter covering an agreement that SanDisk signed with Toshiba to collaborate on the development of rewriteable 3D memory. SanDisk and Toshiba "will jointly perform research and development" on 3D memory, the companies said in the disclosure.

SanDisk has made progress with the technology since it acquired Matrix, according to Chairman and CEO Eli Harari, speaking earlier this week duing the earnings conference call. "SanDisk has been making good, steady progress since our acquisition three years ago of Matrix Semiconductor...We currently have more than 200 issued patents that cover key elements of 3D rewritable memory technology," Harari said.

Based on these statements and its collaboration with Toshiba, SanDisk believes 3D memory, though challenging, is a viable successor to flash. Commercialization presents "significant challenges" but the "effort is worth the prize as 3D memory is a potential game changer," Harari said. The technology would "achieve the cost structure to disrupt hard disk drive in the coming decade," he said.

Dell will sell you a 128GB solid state drive for an unprecedented $649. But wait. An IDC report claims the performance gap between solid state drives and lower-cost high-performance hard disk drives is not that significant at the system level.

Solid state drive offered by Dell

(Credit: Dell Computer)

Solid state drives are attracting more scrutiny as they increase in capacity and decrease in price. (Dell's $649 drive is a radical price drop since many drives with half the capacity still sell for more than $700.)

Solid state drives (SSDs) are considered to be generally more power efficient, faster, and in some respects more reliable than hard disk drives.

IDC tested 2.5-inch 7200 rpm desktop drives against SSDs and found that previous tests comparing SSDs and hard disk drives may be misleading, according to SearchStorage.com, which cited the IDC report.

"Many tests have been done comparing 4200 rpm hard drives to SSDs," said IDC analyst David Reinsel. "But 5400 rpm is now mainstream and even 7200 rpm disks are available." The IDC report says the performance gap between computers with 7200 rpm 2.5-inch drives and those with SSDs was smaller than expected because the performance of the entire system must be taken into account.

(It should be noted that 4200 rpm hard disk drives are sometimes used in comparative testing because 4200 rpm drives are offered along with SSDs in laptops such as the MacBook Air and Hewlett-Packard 2510p.)

IDC's Reinsel also said that system redesigns will be necessary in both PCs and enterprise storage systems to reap the full benefits of SSDs. One of the challenges is that SSDs generally write data more slowly than they read data.

In related news, The Tech Report also did benchmarking of SSDs and 2.5-inch hard disk drives rated at 5400 and 7200 rpm. Generally, the SSDs were faster (in some cases much faster) but not in every benchmark and not by that much in some benchmarks.

SSDs have received a lot more attention since companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba have adopted them as alternatives to hard disk drives in laptops. Lesser known is that SSDs are also being deployed by large corporations in server-related applications. Companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS or input/output operations per second where SSDs beat hard disk drives handily.

The IDC report follows other reviews that claim solid state drives (SSDs) are not as power efficient as manufacturers claim--though the power-efficiency testing methodology used by some review sites has been disputed by manufacturers.

IDC abstract here.

Samsung has begun production of 128GB solid-state drives as it tries to overcome technical hurdles with larger-capacity drives.

(Credit: Samsung)

The Seoul-based company announced Wednesday that it has begun mass producing 1.8- and 2.5-inch 128GB solid-state drives (SSDs). The new drives are based on a technology called multi-level cell (MLC). Samsung also plans to begin producing a 256GB solid-state drive at the end of this year using MLC.

MLC allows drive makers to build larger capacity drives, though the technology also presents performance and data reliability challenges--not only for Samsung but for all solid-state drive makers.

While multi-level cell technology allows higher data densities, it is not as fast as SLC (single-level cell), the technology used in current laptops such as the Apple MacBook Air and Hewlett-Packard 2510p. "MLC is a cost-efficient model of SLC" since multi-level cell squeezes more bits in a single cell, said Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung.

"What you're doing is that you're slowing down the chip" to maintain reliability, he said. "Performance wise, MLC is slower than SLC."

Yang also responded to reports claiming that solid-state drives are less power efficient than typical 2.5-inch hard disk drives. "From all our experiences with testing from both sides--from our flash memory division and hard drive division--we found SSDs are definitely more power efficient," said Yang. Power savings are 20 percent to 30 percent at the system level compared to hard disk drives, he said.

Yang added that the supporting silicon for newer Serial-ATA II solid-state drives is also more power efficient than the previous generation of SATA drives.

Power consumption for the Samsung SSD is approximately 0.2 watts, and in active mode 0.5 watts.

The Samsung MLC-based SSDs have a write speed of 70MB/s and a read speed of 90MB/s--performance levels that approach those of SLC-based solid-state drives now in mass production, the company said.

Mass production of the Samsung MLC-based 64GB SSDs also began this month, the company said.