A Guide To Finding The Best SSD For Your Money

If you want to boost your computer's performance, solid state drives can deliver. However, if you find the choices out there to be daunting, LaptopMag's comprehensive SSD roundup can help you get the most performance for your money. More »

Intel SSDs May Suffer From Irreparable Fragmentation Slowdowns

PC Perspective's review of Intel's X25-M SSD, a custom-designed solid state drive, showed that the manufacturer's sector remapping actually lowered overall performance dramatically over time as the drive became irreparably fragmented. More »

Super Talent SSDs Boost Netbook Flash Storage To 64GB For $169

Not a bad price at all on a mini-PCIe solid-state drive. These are intended for the Eee PC S101, but will work with any machine that can take mini-PCIe add-ons. More »

Samsung Manufacturing 256GB SSDs, Just Like They Promised

It was nearly six months ago when Samsung laid out their plan to manufacture an affordable, super-fast 256GB SSD by the end of the year. It sounded a little bit optimistic at the time, but as of today, they're here. Sort of. Samsung says that manufacturing has begun, but still hasn't let loose on the most important nugget: price. They have, however, elaborated a little bit on their claims of "disruptive" performance: the news SSDs will offer speed "analogous to having a 15,000rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power and heating drawbacks." They also claim to have decreased the read/write speed gap to about 10% and dropped power consumption to a slight 1.1w. This all sounds great, it's cost that'll win the SSD war. [Akihabara]

Seagate Won't Do Flash SSDs, Waiting For Next-Gen Tech

Just last month we were reporting "Seagate to begin to switch to SSD" and now company CEO Bill Watkins has said that that's not quite the truth. Seagate will indeed be launching an enterprise-level SSD in 2009, but will not enter the "mobile SSD" market. Whyever not? Because there's no money to be made there: "Right now if you look at it whether it's Micron or Samsung or SanDisk - they're selling at a loss. To do the product is not a big deal but to make money at it - it's important to us." he notes. Instead the company is banking on post MLC technology, something like "a spin around magnetic RAM, it could be a phase shift type of process" says Watkins. Seagate hard drives might be around for a while longer. [Silicon via MRAM-info]

Intel's Superfast SSDs Make For Even Speedier RAID 0 Rig

Intel's solid state drives are real fast—$600 for 80GB kind of fast. It should come as no surprise, then, that they make a mighty quick RAID 0 setup, which does not provide data redundancy but does give twice the data throughput. Hot Hardware's numbers were a blazing 396MB/s read and 130MB/s write times (the fastest they've ever tested), making this quite a speedy 160GB volume. Head over to Hot Hardware for more numbers. [Hot Hardware]

Intel 80GB Solid-State Drives Get Official (and High) Price Tag, Are Blazing Fast

Intel's slightly delayed leap into the SSD game is now official, with the company announcing a $595 pricetag for an 80GB SSD, which comes in 1.8-inch (X18-M) or 2.5-inch (X25-M) sizes for the same price, with 160GB versions coming later this year. While that's a considerably higher price-per-gigabyte ratio than what can be found on more generic SSDs, Intel will hopefully bring the performance standards so badly needed in the SSD world, where actual real-world performance can vary greatly from what's stated (take everyone upset about the MacBook Air's SSD, for instance). Intel's SATA drive is rated for 250MB/s reads and 70MB/s writes, with 85-microsecond latency. Full details follow. More »

Samsung Working With Developers To Optimize Solid State Drive Performance In Operating Systems

Samsung is working with software developers to increase the performance of Solid State Drives for computers using the Sun's ZFS file system, which the next version of OSX Server, aka Snow Leopard, can take advantage of. The way traditional HDDs handle data transfers is different than how SSDs do, and it's Samsung's goal to make sure future operating systems are optimized for SSDs as well as HDDs. The performance upgrades could mean overall operational increases for OSX-equipped Macs that use SSDs. Currently the MacBook Air is the only Mac that ships with the option, but if Apple decides to make SSDs available on all MacBooks then this development would make the SSD option more desirable than it is now. Samsung is also starting talks with Microsoft to work the same enhancements into the next version of Windows. When all major operating systems have optimized support for them, SSD could finally replace HDDs as promised. [InfoWorld via MacRumors]

Micron Starts Production of Super-Fast RealSSD Solid-State Drives

The inexorable march of solid-state drive technology continues forward with news from Micron Technology (one of the worlds leading semiconductor suppliers) that they're going to produce SSD's with a read speed of 250MBps. That's more than twice the speed of the drives Samsung announced last month (90MBps.) More »

SanDisk Blames Vista For Slow Deployment in SSDs

You know how solid state drives aren't very common right now? SanDisk laid the blame for that directly onto Microsoft's face, accusing Windows Vista of not being optimized for those SSDs. The next-generation drives due out soon require more advanced controllers (the stuff that interfaces with the drive itself), which "need to basically compensate for Vista's shortfalls." More »

Tom's Hardware Corrects Study, Says Solid State Drives Do Improve Battery Life

Tom's Hardware tested battery life in laptops with SSDs yet again and found that they aren't such a power suck, correcting a previous study. SSDs didn't outperform their HDD counterparts in all tests, but combined with Laptop Mag's study I think we can safely put the issue to rest for now. [Tom's Hardware]

New Study Says Solid State Drives Are Better for Battery Life, Not Worse

I hope this SSD good/bad theme doesn't turn into one of those long-running "good for you/bad for you" food fiascoes (is coffee on the good list again, by the way? Blogging is thirsty work.) A new bit of investigation by Laptopmag seems to challenge the Tom's Hardware study that put SSD's battery performance in the shade. Citing flaws in the original method, the new study tried the drives under a more "real world use" test regime: cycling through webpages over and over. More »

Swindled: Solid State Drives Don't Extend Battery Life, They Shorten It

Solid state drives (SSDs) are the inevitable future of mobile computing, but a new experiment by Tom's Hardware is extremely disappointing. It ends up that the touted power savings of SSDs over their moving-parts-laden cousins are nonexistent. In fact, SSDs are sucking more power than conventional hard drives. How is this possible? Tom's Hardware thinks they know. More »

Intel Bringin' SSD Drama: 160GB Capacity, 50% Price Drop

We already told you about Intel's new ultramobile SSDs, but their tiny size means high cost and low capacities, only up to 16GB. That's why the company promised SATA-II SSDs in the 1.8" and 2.5" sizes with capacities up to 160GB, with read and write speeds exceeding Samsung's 100MB/s and 70MB/s, respectively. Best of all, Intel says its goal is to drive down the currently exorbitant prices of solid-state storage to something less punitive, predicting two subsequent 50% drops in 2009 and 2010. [Daily Tech]

Ridata Intros 128GB SATA SSDs, Speeds Past Competition

Ridata introduced three SSDs today, in 32-, 64-, and 128GB capacities. We've seen SSDs this large before, but Ridata claims 170MB/sec read and 105MB/sec write speeds, blowing out their recent competition. Full release after the jump. More »

Giz Explains: What's So Solid About Solid State Drives?

The best way to explain why SSD is a buzz acronym for the solid state drives we want in our notebooks is to show the problems with practically stone-age spinning hard drives inside most computers (and iPod classics). Since they have platters w/ magnetized surfaces that spin fast as they read or write data—think record player—they can be quite slow, and are really fragile. Anyone who's owned a computer or iPod knows (or will one day learn) that if the read/write head bumps into the platter, it's all over. SSDs aren't like that at all. More »

Crucial Announces Line of SSDs...Again

Crucial issued a press release today announcing their forthcoming line of Solid State Drives, but it appears to be the same news we covered in November. [Crucial]

Toshiba Introduces 3 New SSD Flavors, 128GB is the Tastiest

Toshiba is throwing its hat into the SSD business with a new line of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND SSDs in three distinct flavors: 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. They will also be available in three distinct form factors: embedded module, 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drive enclosures. Expect 100MB/s peak read speed, 40MB/s peak write speed, a SATA II interface, and a lifespan of 1,000,000 hours. No word yet on pricing, but we should be able to see these on store shelves starting in March 2008. [infosync and MacBidouille via Ubergizmo]

Samsung Unveils New 64GB SATA II SSDs

Samsung is intent on leading the way in SSD adoption with their new 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch 64GB solid state drives featuring a super-fast SATA II interface. With a combination of speed, 100 MBps write speed and a 120MBps read speed and lower power consumption, it won't be long before we see these babies popping up in a lot more devices. Unfortunately, prices are still a barrier, and that is not expected to change when Samsung finally announces how much these drives will cost. [Akihabara News via SciFi Tech via Uberreview]

Samsung's 1.8" 64GB SSD Gets Mass-Production Go-Ahead

Samsung has announced plans to put its 1.8-inch 64GB Solid State Drive into mass production. Consisting of 64 eight Gigabit single-level cell flash memory chips (each one's circuitry is 1/2500th the width of a human hair) the new SSDs will be making devices faster, more efficient, and should boost battery life by up to 20 per cent. This move makes the Korean company the largest producer of high-capacity SSDs worldwide. More »

PNY and SanDisk Boost SSD Offerings; SSD Lappies Imminent

PNY and SanDisk have some pretty slick new offerings on the solid state drives front, inching us ever closer to the time when all new laptops will come with flash hard drives for faster, quieter and more efficient access. More »

Asus to Sell $199 Flash-based Laptops

Those flash-based laptops we're all dreaming about may be a lot cheaper than we expected. Asus just announced their plans to make five budget, solid state laptops this year priced from $199 to $549. Each machine will have a 7-inch display, and depending on the model it'll have a flash drive ranging from 1GB to 40GB. The lappies are expected later this year (the pic above isn't one of them). – Louis Ramirez More »

Samsung Warns of Severe NAND Flash Shortage

It seems like just yesterday Samsung was proudly touting around their 64GB solid state drive, but today they're singing a different tune, claiming there's gonna be a severe NAND flash shortage during the second half of the year. More »

Fujitsu Gives Its LifeBook Tablets Solid State Drives

Our hats go off to Fujitsu this morning for giving two of their Tablet PCs flash drive makeovers. The 12.1-inch LifeBook B6210 and 8.9-inch P1610 will both have the option of coming with either a 16GB or 32GB solid state drive. Because flash drives have no moving parts, they'll help speed up performance and save battery life, although the drives will add a $700 (16GB) and $1,200 (32GB) premium to the tablets' prices. – Louis Ramirez More »

SanDisk Announces Cheap 32GB 2.5-inch Solid-State Drives

CeBit, the largest consumer electronics show in the world, starts up on Thursday, and it's gotten to be a favorite time for disc manufacturers to roll out 32GB 2.5-inch solid-state drives. Samsung announced its 2.5-inch 32-gig drive last year at the show, and now SanDisk is getting in on the act, with the big news being its $350 price. More »

A-Data's 128GB Solid State Drive Sees the Light of Day

A-Data was showing off this 128GB 2.5-inch solid-state drive in the back rooms of CES, and finally a picture of the largest-capacity SSD in the world has surfaced. Not much is known about it except that it's a SATA II drive and might be shipping about six months from now. More »