Samsung Mass Produces 128GB SSD

Lucas123 writes "Samsung Electronics said today it is now mass-producing solid-state drives with a 128GB capacity, and it will begin production of a 256GB product later this year, ahead of its scheduled 2009 release. Samsung's 128GB and 64GB SSDs are available in 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. Currently, solid state disk costs about $3.45 per gigabyte and spinning disk costs about $0.38 per gig."

Comments

Re:Still no deal

[grasshoppa]

SSD does have significant perceived benefits;

1) Faster reads
2) Lower power
3) Quieter
4) Cooler

That samsung is producing these at all indicates that there is a demand for them. I think in 5 years, a majority of HDs sold will be SSD.

Re:Anyone just like the powers of 2?

[Carnildo]

Actually, solid-state disks are marketed using metric gigabytes instead of binary gigabytes. The chips are manufactured using binary gigabytes, and the difference is used for a set of spare sectors that are used for wear-levelling or to replace defective and worn-out sectors.

Re:I just want a cheapie

[Carnildo]

I would have already used a CF to IDE adapter but they seem to be expensive and mostly incompatible.

You're looking in the wrong places, then. The CF interface is pin- and signal-compatible with the IDE interface, so any adapter is simply a CF socket, an IDE header, and a set of wires connecting the two. Cheap adapters are flimsy, but not incompatible.

Re:Still no deal

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Faster reads

Not necessarily. Sustained read speeds are still faster on (most) spinning disks (vs. most SSDs). They do have orders of magnitude better access time resulting in better random read performance, but that wasn't what you said.

2) Lower power

Not necessarily. A 200GB HDD uses about the same power as a 32GB SSD. While these numbers do not scale linearly with size, you can expect SSDs to consume more power as sizes go up (e.g. due to more complex wear leveling algorithms). These performance numbers of course will increase as the technology matures, but for now it is still only a perceived benefit.

I do agree with your expectation about SSDs in the future, but you don't need half-truths to reach that conclusion :)

However, I don't expect the spinning disk do the dodo just yet; seeing as they're still cheaper per unit of storage, I expect that 2-disk setups will become the norm: SSD for the OS, and HDD for data - which is what I've been doing in my own systems for the last 2 years (using CF->IDE converters)

Does anyone know about the retention rate for these SSDs? I can let an HDD gather dust for ten years, and then still hope to retrieve the data succesfully. Can I expect the same from SSDs?

32GB SSD for ~$110

[ZxCv]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211244

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998003

Hah, ok, so its a 32GB CF card and a CF->IDE adapter. But regardless, the combo works remarkably well, today, for tolerable prices.