Archive for the 'Solid State Drives' Category

Samsung Electronics announced today that it has developed a 1.8-inch 64GB flash memory-based solid state drive (SSD) at its annual Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei. The new flash-SSD is based on an eight gigabit single-level-cell (SLC) NAND, which provides significantly higher performance over conventional SSDs, according to company.

“The read and write performance of the new SLC flash-SSD have been increased by 20 percent and 60 percent respectively over the 32GB flash-SSD Samsung introduced last year, meaning that the new SSD’s ability to outperform conventional rotating-media hard drives is even greater than had been anticipated,” the press release says.

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Fujitsu Computer Systems today announced that its LifeBook P1610 and LifeBook B6210 ultra-portable pen-enabled notebooks will offer an option for a solid-state drive (SSD), the NAND flash-based replacement for traditional hard disk drives.

“The 2.2-pound LifeBook P1610 convertible touch screen notebook and 3.2-pound LifeBook B6210 touch screen notebook are now offered with two flash-based SSD configurations, 16 GB or 32 GB. SSDs offer lower power consumption, added ruggedness, high reliability, and improved performance,” Fujitsu says.

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SanDisk Corporation today released SSD SATA 5000 2.5-Inch, its new flash memory-based solid state drive with 32GB of data storage capacity, as a drop-in replacement for traditional laptop hard disk drives.

Along with 2.5-inch form factor and a Serial ATA interface, the new SanDisk SSD offers “six times” greater reliability than standard HDDs, as well as faster system boot times, better power efficiency and cool and quiet operation, since this drive has no moving parts found in hard drives.

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Intel Corporation announced today its entry into solid state drive (SSD) market with the Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive, which will be used in a variety of Intel-based computing platforms, such as servers, emerging market notebooks and low-cost, fully featured PCs.

Intel’s Z-U130 Value SSD is based on NAND flash memory with industry standard USB interfaces and comes with 1GB, 2GB, 4GB or 8GB of storage capacity. It provides read speeds of 28MB per second and write speeds of 20 MB per second.

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Laptop Magazine has reviewed Samsung’s Q1P SSD ultra-mobile PC (UMPC), which features flash memory based solid-state drive instead of a standard mechanical hard disc. Although the SSDs are claimed to use less power than HDDs, the Magazine found that one of the main Samsung Q1P SSD’s disadvantages is the battery life of “little more than two hours”. On the other side, the review says the Q1P SSD UMPC enables full Windows XP/Tablet functionality in a light and highly portable package and very fast application loading thanks to flash based drive.

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Samsung announced, Q1P SSD, the newest Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) model, at CES 2007 in Las Vegas. The Q1P SSD is the first UMPC of its kind to use an SSD solid state flash memory-based hard drive in place of a conventional rotational media-based hard drive.

Samsung Q1P SSD provides 32GB of storage capacity with the solid state drive.

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Samsung Electronics announced that a 4GB solid state disk (SSD), now being readied for production, will also serve as a high speed NAND flash cache for laptops and desktop computers in conjunction with the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.

The Samsung’s 4GB SSD is compatible with Windows ReadyBoost, a new Windows Vista feature that uses flash memory to improve system responsiveness.
According to press release, it enables users to avoid the hundreds of annoying multi-second delays they experience every day when moving within and between frequently used applications.

The Windows ReadyBoost feature of the Windows Vista operating system will intelligently populate the SSD with the data a user needs before they ask for it. It readies a user’s favorite applications and data in the background, accelerating everyday actions such as starting applications and switching users. When a user requests that data, rather than being limited to servicing 100-200 requests per second (as with a traditional HDD), Samsung’s SSD can service up to 5000 request per second, virtually eliminating data seek delays. The 4GB SSD can work in tandem with a hybrid hard drive, coming into play as a secondary source of cached data, Samsung published.

Samsung’s “new performance booster” can be located virtually anywhere on the motherboard and is connected through the ATA port. The flash cache compliments DRAM and because Windows Vista automatically compresses all data stored in a ReadyBoost device, the 4 gigabyte drive would, in practice, act as up to 8 gigabytes of user data, says Samsung’s press release.

SAMSUNG’s Digital World – Press Release

Samsung Electronics has developed a 32GB version of its SSD (solid-state disk), a flash-memory-based replacement for hard disks.

PCWorld.com – CeBIT: Samsung Shows Flash-Disk-Based Laptop

The drive packs 32GB of flash memory into a case the same size as a 1.8-inch hard drive. That capacity is double the 16GB of a prototype device announced by Samsung last year and was made possible by the continuing miniaturization of flash-memory chip technology.

At CeBIT, the solid-state disk is being demonstrated inside a Samsung laptop computer. Because the SSD is the same size and shape as the computer’s hard drive it was relatively easy to replace the hard-disk drive with the SSD, said Yun Mini, a spokesperson for Samsung.

Benefits: Speed, Durability

The SSD technology has three major benefits over hard disks, said Yun. The first is that data access is faster. This could be seen when the SSD-based laptop was booted up alongside the same-model machine with a hard disk. The desktop appeared on the screen of the SSD laptop in about 18 seconds while the hard-drive-based computer took about 31 seconds to reach the same point.

The second advantage comes in durability. Because there are no moving parts in the SSD, it is much better at withstanding shock and much more unlikely that data will be lost if the laptop is dropped.