SSD drives in the news

**Bamboo** · 09-30-2008, 10:33 AM

News about Super Talent's launch of some relativity cheap ssd's next week is on just about every tech site this morning. Still pretty expensive by our standards, but prices are no longer in the $1000 range. They are a bit faster than most disk hard drives, but not as fast as the awesome ones Intel is about to put on the market.

Super Talent is saying it will have sequential read speeds of up to 100 MB/sec, and sequential write speeds of up to 40 MB/sec. I also linked below a news piece out this morning about a new Toshiba disk announced that they say has maximum read and write speeds of 120MB/s and 70MB/s. But that is nothing compared to the Intel drives that run with claimed read and write speeds of up to 250MB/s and 70MB/, though they are going to be selling at about $600 when released soon.

Links:

Super Talent
Super Talent's new SSDs to come next week

Super Talent Launches 64GB, 128GB SSDs at $179, $299 Respectively

64GB Super Talent SSD launches at only $179

Toshiba:
Toshiba adds 256GB SSD to its range of storage solutions

Intel:
Intel Solid State Drives to hit 240/170MB/s -that article has a bunch of links to reviews on other sites, such as this one at anandtech.com

Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

The final words part of the article is pretty amazing:

Quote:

This thing is fast, and I want one in my system...actually, two. It's the only SSD that I would actually go out, buy and stick in my desktop machine at this point. I think that's the first time I've ever said something like that in a review, but I'm absolutely convinced. I've been using SSDs in my systems for a few months now and I'm hooked.

and

If Intel can get capacities over 100GB at reasonable prices in the near future, I'd say that the X25-M would be the best upgrade you could possibly do to your system. I'm curious to see what pricing and availability will be like for the 160GB drives, but Intel is being pretty tight lipped about them.

and finally

To me this is bigger than Nehalem, but then I look at the price tag and think that Nehalem will probably be a cheaper upgrade. Intel redefined the performance of the MLC SSD, I only wish they also redefined the price...

And finally, just for fun:
Samsung SSD Falls Three Stories, Still Boots Windows

As the anandtech article points out, the Samsung drives arn't super fast, but holy crap it booted to the desktop in about 16sec. by my watch, and that includes logging in.

**Anospa** · 09-30-2008, 10:42 AM

Having a fast hard drive setup is such a nice luxury item. I love my RAID 0 setup, everything is there right when I need it. Can only guess how these SSDs would compare in everyday use. On a side note, I'm pretty sure a SSD would bottleneck my work PC...

**Bamboo** · 09-30-2008, 11:07 AM

Anospa, read the anandtech review. He does tons of test including real world usage. If it can beat a V-raptor drive, I'm sure it wouldn't bottleneck your system. The other reviews for the intel are pretty similar.

**Anospa** · 09-30-2008, 11:29 AM

Heh, no no no, I'm talking about the POS machine I get to use at work. Takes it up to 5 mins to open up at 50 MB CAD file sometimes.

Spulat · 09-30-2008, 02:32 PM

At the moment, the "big thing" about most SSD drives is the near-zero latencies and seek time. So while your data may not move around any faster, your I/O is much more responsive which translates into your system being more responsive.

**Bamboo** · 10-20-2008, 01:49 PM

Just an update, check out what 2 of these new Intel drives will do in RAID, and try not to piss your pants:

http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-SS...-Speed-Take-2/

As fast as prices on SSD are falling, I am crossing my fingers by christmas time next year, these will be cheap enough for all of us to toss in our stockings

**Reaperassault** · 10-20-2008, 02:06 PM

I <3 the intel SSDs they look really nice, note that these are also the MLC flash ones not the performance SLC flash memory. I can only imagine the speed that intel can put out with the SLC ones when its MLC is for the most part faster than most current SLC drives

Spyder · 10-20-2008, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bamboo

As the anandtech article points out, the Samsung drives arn't super fast, but holy crap it booted to the desktop in about 16sec. by my watch, and that includes logging in.

They were still running that camera in FF, as evidenced by the hand movements and jerky camera. You can actually see it cut back to normal time right after he finishes logging in.

Acreo Aeneas · 10-20-2008, 07:30 PM

Still waiting for the day these drives have the price:gigabyte ratio current platter hard disk drives have.

**Bamboo** · 11-24-2008, 11:32 AM

The fastest just got even faster. WOW!

Intel's X25-E Extreme solid-state drive Now with single-level cell flash memory

.

Spulat · 11-24-2008, 12:20 PM

my my my...

**MrMojay** · 11-24-2008, 12:58 PM

Still way too expensive, be a year or 2 before I would even consider spending money on them, but hey thats just me.

Spulat · 11-24-2008, 01:04 PM

My estimation is that they will be affordable by Q3 2009, latest. If they've come this far between Q2-Q4 2008...

**MrMojay** · 11-24-2008, 06:14 PM

Yeah if they get to the same price as Hard drives I might consider it.

Spulat · 11-24-2008, 06:31 PM

If you're looking for these drives to reach the current price-point of rotating hard drives, then you WILL be waiting years. However, to get to the price-point hard drives were at 2 years ago, may be sooner than you think.