Posted on Tuesday, March 13 2007 @ 18:07 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
SanDisk shows off a new 2.5-inch 32GB solid state disk for notebooks.
“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.”
The benefits of this drive according to SanDisk:
Reliability. SanDisk SSDs deliver 2 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF), approximately six times more than notebook hard disks. With no moving parts, SanDisk SSDs are also much less likely to fail when a notebook computer is dropped or exposed to extreme temperatures.
Performance. In notebook computers, data moves to and from an SSD more than 100 times faster than data moving to and from a hard disk. SanDisk SSDs offer a sustained read rate of 67 megabytes (MB) per second3 and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer4. As a result, notebooks equipped with a 2.5-inch SanDisk SSD can boot Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise in as little as 30 seconds and access files at an average speed of 0.11 milliseconds. A notebook using a hard disk requires an average 48 seconds to boot and an average 17 milliseconds to access files.
Power efficiency. SanDisk SSDs have minimal power requirements, with savings rated at over 50 percent compared with a hard disk drive -- 0.9 watts during active operation versus 1.9 watts. This is particularly important in extending battery life for road warriors, enabling them to remain productive while in transit.
Cool and quiet. Because SanDisk SSDs don’t need a motor, bearings or a moving head mechanism, they generate much less heat than hard disk drives. SanDisk SSDs are also completely silent, while hard disk drives always make at least some noise during read and write operations.
The major disadvantage is the price. For this small 32GB drive you have to pay $350 in "large volume orders".
