Samsung Announces 64 GB Solid State Drive
March 27, 2007 | by Geoff Duncan
Samsung is upping the ante in the solid state drive market, announcing it plans to ship a 64 GB, 1.8-inch model in the second quarter of 2007.
The market for flash-based solid state disk drives which act as drop-in replacements for traditional hard drives used in mobile and portable devices is heating up: Samsung announced today that it plans to ship a 64 GB solid state drive in the second quarter of this year. The announcement comes on the heels of SanDisk announcing a 32 GB flash drive only a couple weeks ago, and Fujitsu announcing solid state drives as an option in selected LifeBook portable computers.
Not only does Samsung's new offering increase the capacity available in solid state drives, it increases the performance as well. Samsung claims the respective read and write performance on the drive have been increased by 20 and 60 percent: the 64 GB unit can read 64 MB/S, write 45 MB/s, and consumes just half a Watt when operating (one tenth of a Watt when idle). In comparison, an 80 GB 1.8-inch hard drive reads at 15 MB/s, writes at 7 MB/s, and eats 1.5 Watts either operating or when idle.
Samsung plans to start mass production of the 64 GB solid state drive in the second quarter of 2007, although the company didn't release any estimates on the unit's price to OEMs or consumers.
Post Your Comment...Comments
Ken Ohrn on Mar 27th, 2007 at 12:01 PM:
Hi:
Nifty stuff! I want one, Call me back when they are cost-competitive.
I wonder, though, will we forever refer to these as "Disk Drives". They don't have any disks in them -- they replace gadgets that do have disks.
But none of this is new: we still talk about "dialing" a phone call, and you send copies of an e-mail by using the "c.c." field, which stands for "carbon copy".
Ken
Steven Squires on Mar 27th, 2007 at 12:03 PM:
Max, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use these drives in a desktop machine. You just need some ATA adapters for the hard drive interface as well as an adapter for the power. You would probably want a 1.8" to 5 1/4" mounting bracket as well. I wonder if they are selling these retail, though, as I heard something about the drives only being available to wholesalers/OEMs.
Owen LaGarde on Mar 27th, 2007 at 12:19 PM:
This tech has been in and out of the HPC arena for some time but not yet "mainstream". The primary limiting factor this far (aside from price) has been MTBF wrt. refresh cycles. The designs unearthed earlier this year IMO addressed both issues quite nicely. I'm betting we'll be seeing this in OEM packages within the year.
Kurt H. on Mar 27th, 2007 at 12:51 PM:
Given I can buy a 16GB USB flash drive for $140, I am guessing < ~$500. How much less is the question.
MixedBlog on Mar 27th, 2007 at 2:02 PM:
Nice. I wish that Lenovo would put them in their Thinkpad line. I wonder if they would make sense as a USB Harddrive as well. Opinions welcome.
James on Mar 27th, 2007 at 2:29 PM:
Another amazing annoucement today, 1TB optical discs!?
http://digg.com/tech_news/Mempile_Promises_1_TB_Op...
I need both of these in my system.
Max on Mar 27th, 2007 at 2:30 PM:
Steven,
I hadn't thought about that, thanks for the info. I just need a 100GB now for my main drive, and then I can add a SATA for my backup.
Ted Hunter on Mar 27th, 2007 at 2:37 PM:
James, I wish you would have just linked to the story on here instead of pimping it on Digg...
http://news.digitaltrends.com/article12559.html
Molly G. on Mar 27th, 2007 at 2:40 PM:
So what is the price of something like this? $300 or more you think?
Jeff L. on Mar 27th, 2007 at 5:23 PM:
Do they happen to mention the expected life span on these things? Solid state has a limited life and I wonder how they would perform as the main drive for a laptop/desktop.
Runefox on Mar 27th, 2007 at 6:11 PM:
Jeff,
Most current hard drives are warranted for 3 years or less (Seagate's the 5-year exception), and, working at a local PC shop, it's in actuality much less than that. I would say that the MTBF for this would be comparable to that of a standard HDD, with the same high and low outliers in terms of lifetime.
It would also depend upon how many writes you'd like to make. If you decided to do a Secure Erase on it (no point in doing so, but bear with me), you could easily start using up your writes. However, even a standard hard drive comes under significant strain during such things, so again, you're probably looking at something similar. I believe I read somewhere a long time ago that the "current" (as of then) maximum writes for most flash devices is in the vicinity of 1 million. If that's the case, then even using that number, that's a lot of writes spread over a lot of space. Unless you're routinely using all of the SSD, you're not going to stress it in day to day operation. In fact, end users who do nothing but check their e-mail and write Word documents would probably find the SSD to last a LOT longer than a standard drive, and eat up vastly smaller amounts of power doing so.
Paul on Mar 27th, 2007 at 6:11 PM:
Uhh Ken...FYI, this article did not refer to the 64 GB storage gadget as being a "disk" drive at all...read it again. They call it a "solid-state drive".
Ben Krupt on Mar 27th, 2007 at 7:27 PM:
Jeff,
Whats the lifespan of these drives? I am sure everyone would want to know.
Trevor on Mar 27th, 2007 at 8:49 PM:
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/2873/52/
"Fast forward to the end of 2005, and flash memory has finally matured into a large capacity product that takes up little space and has much lower power requirements than a hard drive — using 30 times less power. It is lightweight, reliable, highly durable being able to withstand being dropped and other rough treatment and is getting ever cheaper, although today still very expensive for traditional hard disk sizes of 30Gb and larger. As with hard drives, flash memory is not indestructible, nor does it last forever, with 10 years being the expected data retention life span for flash and a lifespan of at least 5 years and more for hard drives, although by then you're likely to be using much more advanced technologies (flash, hard drive based, optical or something else) with far greater capacities."
Technology would probably outdate it before it dies.
Tim on Mar 28th, 2007 at 11:38 AM:
I'm just wondering when these will become useful in server enviroments. Would make more sense to buy 6 of these than 6 10,000 rpm scsi 18gb drives IMO.
Your guys' thoughts...
Panaboard on Mar 28th, 2007 at 1:07 PM:
This can't come soon enough. I am sick of no-battery life and counting RPMs. I really think that this is the first technology is awhile that will really enhance portable computing...and allow many devices to run OSs that would normally take too long to load up.
---
Destroyit
Dan on Mar 30th, 2007 at 1:53 PM:
Before you plan on adding one of these new drives to your laptop it would be good for you to know that the SANDISK drive at 32 GBytes is currently priced at over $2000 in low quantities. I inquired about the press release that stated $350 in high quantities and was told that a pricing mistake was made in the press release. I don't know what the final price will be when they show up on store shelves ... but I would guess $800 to $1500 each is about the range I would expect to see for initial pricing on these drives.... the good news is Flash pricing drops at a rate of about 40% per year so this high pricing will not last long.
I do not have pricing on the Samsung drive.
Yeo on Apr 21st, 2007 at 6:12 AM:
It would be good to have the SSD or HDD as a add-on or detachable so that consumer can decide what they want. Price would be a deciding factor. If SSD can come close to HDD pricing, it is time for HDD to exit the computer industry just like analog camera being replaced by digital camera.
John on May 3rd, 2007 at 3:15 PM:
To all of you http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prod...
look @ that
Thomas W. Stevens on Jun 27th, 2007 at 1:38 PM:
Dell is selling the 32GB model for an additional $600, when you order a select system.
flippaStyle on Jul 9th, 2007 at 5:07 AM:
Actually Dell's Latitude ATG is available with a 32GB SSD for an additional $200. I just ordered one...
flippaStyle on Jul 9th, 2007 at 5:10 AM:
Looka here.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx...
Norm on Sep 18th, 2007 at 5:04 AM:
These things run about 64'ish tops ? Heck, my raptor does that now. What's so great about this thing ? I can RAID0 two 74Meg raptors and still have change in my pocket for what one of these flash drives costs.
Austin Lazanowski on Sep 19th, 2007 at 12:49 PM:
Norm, The issue isnt with the fact that you couldn't set up a RAID 0 across multiple drives, and achieve the same performance if not better for your buck. The difference is, that, with laptop owners, having multiple drives is almost out of the question, and even when it is possible, its not practical for laptops. The main benefit of this, is to remove another spinning part on your machine; if you remove that, then energy consumption and more importantly, heat generated, is reduced threefold. Battery life lasting 3x longer on laptops because of a hdd change, would appease most people. Now, i dont recommend it for the desktops, unless you just have plenty of money to throw away and want to set a couple of these up as Raid 0 anyways.
Martin on Oct 4th, 2007 at 12:24 AM:
life span of solid state drives is about 145 Years when flashing 50 gig every day
So far better than any hard disk !!!
Jack Rodgers on Oct 5th, 2007 at 8:06 AM:
The Macintosh Pismo of a decade or so ago had drive bays. I had one internal drive and two removable drives in my Pismo. I could swap out for a battery or other device as available.
Ken Ohrn on Oct 18th, 2007 at 4:41 PM:
Hi Paul:
Duh Paul... Here's a quote from the article. Too bad your mental acuity is so dulled by your love of snarkiness. Have a mediocre day.
"The market for flash-based solid state disk drives which act as drop-in replacements for traditional hard drives used in mobile and portable devices is heating up: "
shantzy on Apr 3rd, 2008 at 5:29 PM:
apple is offering these new solid state drives on the macbook air although the pricetag is very expensive.
ingkiller1 on May 11th, 2008 at 9:54 AM:
That sounds awesome. I have always had problems with low battery life. Also now with advancements in processors, batteries will finally be useful in laptops for extended time.
JimMorris on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 AM:
? Is any manufacturer offering a Desktop equipped with a 64GB Solid State Drive ? ?
JimMorris9269@hotmail.com
JC on Jul 16th, 2008 at 11:33 AM:
yes, dell offers a xps laptop with 64GB SS Drive, but adds 830 dollars to the price.....
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Max on Mar 27th, 2007 at 10:19 AM:
This is what I am talking about. Once they get close to 100GB is when I will pick one up. Any idea if they plan on making these for desntop machines rather than just laptops? Image one of these for your primary drive, and a 750GB for your storage drive. What a nice gaming rig that would make!