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

[moosesocks]

I would take that Toms Hardware article with a huge grain of salt.

Their tests simulated a usage pattern that is pretty rare in practice, especially for a portable device. Although certain applications do indeed require long, sustained transfers, most data transfers are spontaneous and sporadic (which is where flash memory shines, thanks to the nearly-zero seek times).

To make a shameful car analogy, a long sustained transfer is like driving on the highway. You get pretty good mileage, even with an "inefficient" petrol engine.

Unfortunately, we don't always drive on the highway, and a typical usage pattern involves lots of stopping and going. Due to the rotational inertia of the platters, HDDs and Optical disks are inherently inefficient in this regard, as the disk either has to be kept 'idling' or spun up from rest whenever access is required. These effects can be reduced via caching or by reducing the rotational velocity to match streaming/continuous data (eg. a video DVD), but flash memory seems to have a pretty clear advantage here.

This snippet from the article destroys virtually all of their credibility;

Could Tomâ(TM)s Hardware be Wrong?

No, our results are definitely correct.

Although I believe their data, any scientist needs to keep an open mind for any inaccuracies or potential flaws in their methodologies that may be present. Computer hardware reviews are no exception to this.

I'm also wary of leaving any media to sit for 10 years. Longevity isn't a terribly strong point these days....