The boffins over at SuperTalent have cranked out a 12.5 mm thick 2.5 inch form factor SSD with a capacity of 256 GB. With its SATA-I interface this little sucker will neatly slip into laptops sporting a HD chamber 12.5 mm wide - for those of us with a 9.5 mm wide slot, tough cookies. The drive intriguingly called FSD56GC25H sports the following bits and pieces

* 8 GB to 256 GB capacity options
* Sequential Read Rate of 65 MBps
* Sequential Write Rate of 50 MBps
* Handles shocks up to 1500G and vibrations at 16G
* Plays nicely with all OS

In another twist to this announcement the read and write speeds are nothing to write (forgive the pun) home about being outclassed by the InnoDisk SSD drive we mentioned recently which handles zeros and ones at 110 MBps and 90 MBps respectively. But of course the InnoDisk won’t slot into your laptop without the use of a large hammer.

Overall though we do take our hats off to SuperTalent, but with reservations - we’ll get really excited when they spit out a 2.5 inch drive that will fit all laptops, has super fast read/write speeds and oh yes won’t cost an arm and leg. This little sucker will set you back around US$6K - ouch! Just as well it’s only available to OEM manufacturers so the average Joe won’t be tempted.

Source: PRNewsWire

Featured tags: laptop hard drives SSD supertalent

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Apparently this is the largest capacity SLC NAND Flash drive at 128 GB, however the InnoDisk FiD SATA 10000 certainly looks like one of the most rugged surrounded by a tough metal case. Here are a few more specs on the tough little sucker

* Sustained read rate of 110 Mbps
* Sustained write rate of 90 Mbps
* SATA 2.0 connectivity at 3.0 Gbps
* Capacities ranging from 32 to 128 GB

2008 certainly seems like the year of the SSD and although the average user may not be interested in this specific drive, there is obviously a big market out there. Unfortunately we have no price tag on this sucker at the moment, we don’t expect it to be small, but this year we should start to see those prices tumble.

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It seems that never a day goes by without a storage manufacturer claiming a new larger storage unit. Today’s manufacturer is Buffalo with the 100 GB SHD-UHR100GS SSD, along with two lesser siblings, 32 and 64 GB models.

The claims, as usual for SSD manufacturers, is a physical space saving, a power sucking reduction and size. Although we couldn’t get our hands on any specific dimensions, it’s alleged that this little puppy is the size of a business card and unless USB ports have leapt in size over night, that estimation is about right given the photo above. Buffalo are also claiming a 70% power saving over their HD-PHGU2 HDD series, a bonus for all of us laptop users aching for a portable drive. As for weight this baby weighs in at a mere 60g, a mere nothing even in world of portable hardware.

The downside? Ah well, to become the proud owner of a super-slim SHD-UHR100GS, your wallet needs to be weighed down with US$952. The 32 GB version rocks in at $312, whilst the 64 GB has a price tag of $665. So these suckers aren’t cheap, but 100 GB the size of business card, what price can you put on that!

Source: engadget

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Toshiba announced their entry into the NAND flash-based SSD market with a selection of units, the most notable of which is 1.8 inch form factor SATA 128 GB unit which unfortunately won’t be in mass production until May next year. The units have a max read speed of 100 MB/s and max write of 40 MB/s with a SATA-2 interface (3 Gbps).

Now that SSDs are becoming a bit more mainstream hopefully the price tags will follow that trend too, but we’ll have to wait and see until May what these suckers from Toshiba will set you back.

And if you want an early sneak preview of these units then get yourself on down to the CES in Las Vegas on Jan 7th as apparently Tosh will be showing them off at the show.

Source: Toshiba

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So much for 64 GB SSDs from the likes of Micron and Samsung, Super Talent has just launched a couple of 256 GB SATA SSDs, the FSD56GC35M and SS56GA6C35I.

The latter unit boasts a superior operating temperature range, -40C to 85C, over the former, 0C to 70C which is the only difference Super Talent are talking about at the moment.

However the it’s the SATA interface that has won me over with these suckers, the ability to swap out those old 3.5 inch HDDs for these super-fast, super-quiet and super-cool units makes me reach for the cheque book - well almost :)

For the moment these suckers will only be available to OEM customers and of course there’s no news on the price tag, but I believe we are starting to see a revolution in the format on which we store our data.

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There’s a new kid on the SSD block, Micron have just announced a range of 1.8 inch and 2.8 inch SSD units varying in capacity all the way from 1 GB to 64 GB, the RealSSD. Micron, more well known for their memory manufacturing, enter the drive market with these new units

“SSDs are becoming the new storage medium, fundamentally altering the way data is stored,” said Dean Klein, Micron vice president of memory system development. “The storage market is ripe for innovation, and it’s an opportunity Micron is embracing given our expertise in NAND. We know how to manage NAND flash to work best with controllers, allowing us to develop an optimized SSD solution for every application.”

The new 32 GB and 64 GB offerings sport a native SATA inteface removing the need for a SATA bridge chip, suck less than two watts of power whilst transferring zeroes and ones and apparently suck ‘dramatically’ less power in idle and standby mode.

Strangely there’s no specs on actual read/write speeds which drive manufacturers tend to live and die by, so may be the RealSSD units don’t quite live up to the hype. There’s no price indicator either, but I’m guessing the term ‘expensive’ could be applied to these suckers despite being a relative term. Despite all this, competition is always good and kudos must go to Micron entering the SSD fray which is sure to hot up in the very near future.

Source: BusinessWire

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And speedy little blighters they are too. But before we get talk about their speed just a note that the top capacity is still 64 GB so the drives are still only useful for notebooks and high-end desktops. Their price will be prohibitive too, but less of the negativity and back to their speed!

Well this latest gen of SSDs from Samsung has a sequential write speed of 100 MBps and sequential read of 120 MBps. This blows the old gen speeds of 45 and 65 right out of the water. The boffins over at Samsung have managed this by using a super-fast SATA interface

Samsung’s SATA II SSD combines a 50 nm-class, single-level-cell (SLC) 8Gb flash chip with a Samsung proprietary, high-speed SATA controller and supporting software.

Not only do you get faster speeds but the drives use less than half as much power as current notebook PCs so you get to save the planet at the same time.

So whilst these drives aren’t exactly mainstream yet, with this amount of time and effort (and money of course) being spent by drive manufacturers, they obviously believe that SSD are indeed the way forward.

Source: StreetInsider

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