Consumer-grade SSDs saw a 12 per cent price decline over just the past quarter. Based on DRAMeXchange’s analysis, the price difference between 128GB SSD and 500GB HDDs will shrink to less than $US3 in this year.
Device and storage vendors are gradually embracing flash SSDs (solid-state disks) as a complement to spinning disk drives, but one executive at this week's Flash Memory Summit sees great potential in turning flash "upside down," as a lower tier of cache behind DRAM.
Micron Technology Inc. today said it is shipping what it calls the fastest enterprise-class solid-state drive (SSD) on the market.
OCZ Technology Group, Inc. today released a series of 1.8-in. solid state drives (SSD) to offer a storage upgrade for products such as netbooks, ultra-thin notebooks and tablets.
Israeli start-up Anobit Technologies Ltd. emerged from quiet mode today and announced its first product, a multilevel cell (MLC) solid-state drive that it says is as reliable as today's higher-end and higher-cost single-level cell (SLC) enterprise-class flash drives.
Prices on solid-state drives are dropping, and operating systems (particularly Windows 7) are beginning to take advantage of the potential higher speeds of SSDs, so it's a good time to consider slapping one in your computer.
To understand why I love the tiny, free FlashFire utility/driver, you'll need a little background. I bought an original Acer Aspire One netbook with an 8GB solid state drive instead of a hard drive to keep the weight down. I replaced its custom Linux OS with XP--but XP, not being optimized for a super-slow SSD such as the one on my netbook, froze every half minute or so for 5 to 15 seconds while data was written to the disk. It's not long before such behavior starts driving you nuts.
Seagate jumped into the SSD (solid state drive) market today with the unveiling of its Pulsar drives. SSD drives have been a growing segment, but Seagate adds significant credibility and opens up new possibilities for the nascent technology.
Solid-state drives recently hit the 1-terabyte mark with the release of the US$3,300 OCZ Colossus 1TB SSD. Obviously, drives at this price point are not aimed at masses. Yet, from a historical perspective the Colossus is remarkably cheap. It's easy to forget that just a few short years ago, neither mainstream SSDs nor 1TB drives existed at any price. It's also important to remember that smaller, affordable SSDs are available today and represent an incredible value.
While solid state drives offer increased performance, the key to figuring out the role they can play in the data center is balancing that performance against cost.
Though flash storage could be the most powerful tool yet for IT administrators who want to speed up access to frequently used data, reaping its benefits may require automation software that has just begun to emerge from the major storage vendors.