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SanDisk Adds To SSD Trend |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Thursday, 15 March 2007 |
SanDisk has added to its Solid State Disk (SSD) product line with the
introduction of a 32GB, 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) interface drive that
is compatible with most mainstream notebook designs.
Unlike the 1.8-inch SSD SanDisk announced two months ago, the vast
majority of notebook computers manufactured today use the 2.5-inch
disk drive format, so the new drive will simply fits in the same
internal slot as the traditional 2.5-inch magnetic hard disk would.
This means hardware manufacturers could start using the SanDisk SSD
without altering their hardware designs.
The 1.8 inch drive form factor is most often found in PDAs, smartphones and MP3 players.
"The SanDisk 2.5-inch SSD brings the extreme durability, outstanding
performance and low power consumption of solid-state flash memory to the
entire notebook computer market," said Amos Marom, vice president and
general manager of the Computing Systems division at SanDisk.
"As SanDisk continues to drive innovation in flash memory, the
per-gigabyte price of SSD storage will come down and SSD capacity will
go up. PC manufacturers and consumers will find it easier and easier to
move away from rotating hard disks to the superior experience of SSDs."
Both users and notebook manufacturers are eager to see the industry
adopt solid state drives as they offer a range of advantages. Not least
of all is a significantly longer Mean TimeBetween Failure (MTBF) which
would reduce support and repair costs to laptop makers.
As the drives
are made from solid state memory there are no moving
parts and SanDisk, for example, rates this 2.5 inch drive with a 2
million MTBF (six times higherthan traditional notebook hard disks). As the storage is much less likely to fail if the device
is dropped or exposed to extreme temperatures.
According to Joseph Unsworth, Principal Research Analyst for flash
memory at the Gartner research firm, "hard disk failure is tied for
first place with motherboard failure as the leading cause of overall
hardware failure in notebooks, with each accounting for 25 to 45
percent of the total.
"The higher reliability of SSDs lowers total cost
of ownership, and could be a driver for adoption of SSDs," he said. "This is part
of the explanation of why Gartner projects global consumption of SSDs
in consumer and business notebooks to leap from about 4 million units
in 2007 to 32 million units in 2010."
There are other advantages though, performance is significant;y
increased as datatransfers are sped up by a factor of 100wiuth this
drive for example delivering a sustained read rate of 67MB per second
and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a
512-byte transfer.
With this sort of speed a Windows VIstra notebook can boot in as little
as 30 seconds alsmot half as long as the average 48 seconds a notebook
with a traditional drive would take.
The devices also draw much less power, using half as much as a
traditional spinning disk, thereby allowing manufacturers to extend
battery life for mobile devices. And with cooler and quieter operation,
the storage not only makes less noise it doesn't generate as much heat
- again saving on power consumption.
Cost remains an inhibiting factor, however. The drive announced by SanDisk is priced at US$350, according to reports. This means you are paying about US$10 per MB compared to a traditional notebook drive costing about US$1 per MB.
www.sandisk.com/ssd.
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