Samsung Announces Fast 256GB Solid State Drive (SSD)

[OllyW]

Wait, what's the difference between SATA and SATA II?

They really shouldn't call it SATA II.

It's proper name is SATA 3.0 Gbit/s. It explains the differences in the article.

 

[winterspan]

Simpletech announced a 512GB SSD, but is 3.5 inch.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/18/simpletech-announces-512gb-and-256gb-3-5-inch-ssd-drives/

Thats nothing for a 3.5" form factor. Check this out! BitMicro has SSDs up to 1.6TB!
http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?newsid=10660

I think that's something different, though I never heard of that. IBM calles its own "Racetrack memory" http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3728060.ece
Anyway, the future will bring nice technology!

Well there are all kinds of potential flash replacements, from "racetrack memory" to "phase change memory" to stuff based on holography to 3 dimensional stacked memory to MEMs-based. That's all great, but until they find their way out of the lab, it's worthless to speculate about anything replacing NAND flash. I think we'll definitely see 256GB - 512GB SSDs that are ~$500 before we'll see anything replace flash.

I doubt that SSD drives will overtake hard drives any time soon. Not enough capacity and still too expensive. I wonder if/when we'll see holographic storage & memristors in the consumer market.

Something I'd really like to see is a SSD RAID. Just curious how performance would compare, especially against 15,000 RPM SAS drives. I know SSD would not have any where near the storage, but speed would be the interesting part. I also checked, and Secure Digital cards would fit into a 1U enclosure.

It's not capacity that's holding back SSDs, especially for laptops, its the price. They just came out with 2.5" 7200RPM drives that hold 320GB. You can already buy 2.5" 256GB and even 512GB SSDs, if cost is not a concern. And likewise, I believe 15,000RPM SAS drives max out at 300GB. If size is not a concern, you can get 800GB and 1.6 Terabyte 3.5" SSDs from BitMicro. If you bought a fast SATAII SSD, it should be able to keep up with the sequential read rate of a 15K SAS drive, although the 15K SAS would probably be a bit faster for large sequential writes. On the other hand, the SSD would wipe the floor with the SAS drive when it comes to smaller, random access reads and writes. It really all depends on your use profile. I'm sure if you google around, you'll find some good reviews of SSDs for different applications.

 

[Consultant]

But what's the real world performance? A 500GB 2.5 inch drive would have very tightly packed sectors. And at 1TB we're talking super density.

Certain high end SSD drives can be faster in many operations than desktop server drives, definitely faster than any mobile HD. Except these are pricy and currently NOT available smaller than 2.5" at a reasonable price.

http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/mtron16/

Currently, 64GB Mtron (both PATA and SATA, however 2.5" and larger only) fast SSD costs slightly over $1000. Price will drop.

when are we going to see good solid state options for that slot? i would love a fast 128gb boot drive there any photos and mag stuff along with music on the harddisk

They do make them for over a year now. Except they seem to only make the slow USB speed version. A ton of pros would buy high speed SSD ExpressCard, but currently no companies make them.

 

[Duderon]

Super Talent just released 128GB SATA I SSD for practically half the price of most 64 GB SSDs with comparable performance.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609304