Silicon Power introduces today the 64 GB version of its combo eSATA/USB solid-state drive. With the size of a normal USB flash drive, this external solid-state drive can take up to 64 GB worth of data from any computer that has a free eSATA or mini-USB port. The 64 GB eSATA/USB SSD also features an integrated ECC (Error Correction Code) to ensure an accurate data transfer, as well as built-in wear leveling technology that guarantees long-term reliability and ultra-long storage lifespan. The new product is also available in 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB versions.Silicon Power released the availability of eSATA/USB SSD with 64 GB capacity, a higher capacity handy SSD on worldwide markets. This pioneering product won Malaysia HWM magazine’s Gold Award in February, awarding it a score of 9 out of 10. The eSATA/USB SSD features eSATA and Mini USB dual interface, hot plug and play and four-channel high performance technology. The eSATA connection has a read speed of 90 MB/s and a write speed of 42 MB/s, which is 8 times the write speed of the normal USB. TheeSATA connector provides external data transfer at speeds up to 3Gbps, which is higher than USB 2.0 interface with 480 MB/s. It is very convenient for large volume of data transfer at a short time. At the bottom side is a mini USB connector offering a read speed of 30 MB/s and a write speed of 25 MB/s.

With the mentioned high speed data transfer, the new units provides the advanced controller and flash memory, shock resistance, minimum vibration, low power consumption, no noise and high reliability, enabling the operating system to work well even if it is on the move. The 64 GB eSATA/USB SSD also features an integrated ECC (Error Correction Code) to ensure an accurate data transfer, as well as built-in wear leveling technology that guarantees long-term reliability and ultra-long storage lifespan. The new product is available from 8GB to 64GB capacities that are ideal for those wanting high-speed data transfer, high-capacity and portability.

Earlier this year, with the introduction of the Vertex series of solid-state drives (SSDs), OCZ sought to refine its SSD product lineup by introducing a performance drive. During the course of evaluating the new SSD, several reviewers and consumers found it to suffer 'drive-stuttering', lagging and momentary lock-ups. The problem was zeroed-in on the JMicron JMF602-series drive controller.

In the wake of several complaints and bad press, OCZ sought to issue a product change, by replacing the JMF602-series controller with a new Korean Indilink Barefoot 90 nm controller. The new controller will be able to enable speeds of up to 230/170 MB/s (read/write), when used in single-level cell SSDs, and up to 200/160 MB/s with multi-level cell SSDs. The controller is a favourite among SSD manufacturers,owing to its broad NAND-flash chip compatibility range, that includes chips from Intel, Micron, Samsung, Hynix and Toshiba. The new Vertex-series lineup will be available comprising of 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 250GB capacities starting this week, with retail-prices of $129, $249, $469 and $869 respectively. The 30GB and 60GB variants will have caches of 32MB, while the 120GB and 250GB ones will carry 64MB caches.

Tom's Hardware reports that Western Digital will be first to market with a 2TB drive. The WD20EADS is a part of WD's GreenPower series, and uses four 500GB platters. Other specs include 32MB of cache and a seek time of 8.9ms.

Although Tom's Hardware reports that the drive will run at 5400RPM or 7200RPM, you should take the claim of 7200RPM with a grain of salt until we get our hands on actual hardware for testing. As this analysis from SilentPC on the first GreenPower drive indicates, GreenPower drives normally run at the slower speed.

How much will the first 2TB drive set youback? Around $210-240, rumors say, but we'll all know for sure when the drive hits retail shelves later this week. Will you be lining up for the first 2TB drive, or would you rather have a couple of 1TB drives? Hit Comment and sound off.

Solid state hard drives are the next big thing when it comes to hard drive technology. Without moving parts these drives are the perfect candidates for installation into laptops, as well as being used for portable storage. There is also the benefit in increased battery life since there are no parts to power up and move. While 32 gigabytes does not seem like much space in this world of one terabyte and larger drives, the Cavalry Pelican should offer up plenty of space for the business user that is storing documents and Power Point presentations. So what exactly is an SSD (Solid State Drive)? It is a flash memory based hard drive that can be made up using one of two designs. MLC, or multi level cell, or SLC, single level cell. The difference is that the MLC contains two bits per memory cell versus a single bit in the SLC design. Since flash memory wears out over time, the life cycle of the cells is dependent on the drive controller to evenly distribute the write cycles to the individual cells. The MLC design is the less expensive design and should last from 1000 to 10,000 write cycles, where the SLC design using only one bit per cell may be as high as 100,000 cycles. The MLC design has made the transition to consumer level products happen quicker because of the lower cost of entry and large capacities. Making drives such as this one available at a price point that is more attractive and in the less than $100 range.

The Cavalry Pelican 2.5 in SATA II/USB 2.0 32GB SSD is available in both a 32GB and 64GB sizes, as well as both the MLC and SLC designs. This drive is the 32GB MLC design that uses a SATA II or USB 2.0 interface. The drive features a seek time of .1ms, 0dbon the noise front and a Mean Time Before Failure of 1,350,000 hours, sequential reads of 80MB/s, sequential writes of 60MB/s and resistant to 20G's worth of vibration. Lets see just how close this drive comes to meeting its specifications.
Closer Look:

The Cavalry Pelican drive comes in a standard retail clamshell. Contents include the Pelican drive and marketing materials. The front view shows the drive, the connectivity options, that the drive can be used in both a Mac and a PC, and carries a one year warranty. Kind of strange when the listed MTBF is closer to 150 years. The rear view gives the specifications in detail.The Pelican drive is a small 2.5 in form factor and can be used in both notebooks and desktops alike. The top view shows the drive with the decal showing the size of the drive prominently (32GB), as well as the model number and the operating systems it can be used with. The back side shows no useful information. The bottom has four mounting holes. The sides contain mounting holes and screws that can be removed to open the drive if you so choose. The end of the drive features the connectivity options. To run this drive as a USB drive all you need to do is connect your USB cable and start transferring data. To use it as a hard drive in a computer, be it laptop or desktop, you will need to connect to the SATA interface and supply power to the drive via the SATA power connection.

Intel and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced plans to jointly develop and deliver Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel (FC) enterprise-class solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers, workstations and storage systems.

The move marks a strategic shift for Hitachi, the world's third-largest hard drive maker, which until now has not made a commitment to SSD technology.

Hitachi GST is leading Enterprise drive supplier while Intel is a major manufacturer of NAND technology. The two companies said that they would work together exclusively to deliver enterprise SSDs with SAS and FC interfaces, with the first products expected to be available in early 2010.

The new generation of solid-state drive technology complements existing enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) and is intended for use in storage applications that require extremely high Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) performance and power efficiency.

The new SSDs will be branded and exclusively sold and supported by Hitachi GST and use Intel NAND flash memory and SSD technology. The the first shipment planned for 2010, the companies said in a joint statement.Hitachi GST said that it would continue to provide its OEM customers with a portfolio of enterprise storage products that includes traditional HDDs and forthcoming SSDs. Intel will also continue to develop, market and sell its product lines of SATA SSDs.

Hitachi's SSD business would market the devices for business-use such as in servers and computer storage systems, and will not follow rivals like Toshiba in targeting laptop PCs and other consumer-based applications.

"The new solid-state drives for the enterprise include a number of architectural breakthroughs and improve performance and energy usage models that will change enterprise computing," said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager, Intel NAND Solutions Group. "Intel and Hitachi GST share a common objective in delivering SAS/FC products based on solid-state technology that will help enterprise customers meet the skyrocketing demands for performance while reducing space, power and cooling costs."

"We understand the needs of today's enterprise customers and are committed to delivering breakthrough products that increase their data center performance and reduce total cost of ownership," said Shinjiro Iwata, executive vice president, Strategic Business Operations, Hitachi GST. "By expanding our product line-up to include both traditional enterprise hard drives and new SSDs, Hitachi GST will continue to provide customers with a proven set of products tailored to meet the high-performance, high-reliability requirements of today's data center."

Samsung has begun mass producing 256 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives for use in notebooks and desktop PCs, featuring double the performance of Samsung's currently available 64GB and 128GB models.

The new 256GB SSD combine sequential read rates of 220MB/s with sequential write rates of 200MB/s. This sharply narrows the performance gap between read and write operations to only 10 percent, compared to a read-write speed difference of between 20 and 70 percent for other SSDs. In addition, erase cycles are a rapid 100GBs per minute, allowing the entire drive to be re-written much faster, when needed.

Getting our exceptionally high performing 256GB SSD in a notebook is analogous to having a 15,000rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power and heating drawbacks," said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.The Samsung 256GB SSD expedites data transfer when large multimedia files are simultaneously read and stored. It can store 25 high-definition movies in just 21 minutes, a significant advancement over a 7200rpm hard disk drive (HDD), which takes about 70 minutes. Furthermore, the 256GB SSD launches applications 10 times faster than the fastest 7200rpm notebook HDD.The 256GB SSD?s performance can be attributed to a new, optimized, single platform design consisting of a chip controller, NAND flash and special drive firmware all developed by Samsung. This single platform is designed to easily adapt to Samsung?s 40nm class NAND flash memory.

Also offering a high degree of energy efficiency, the new drive consumes 1.1 watts of power versus two or more watts for a comparable HDD. The high operating speed of the 256GB SSD translates into longer periods in either stand-by or idle mode resulting in up to 40 minutes of extended operation on a single battery charge.

Similar in weight to a 128GB SSD (81 grams), the 2.5-inch multi-level cell (MLC) 256GB SSD retains the standard 9.5 millimeter (mm) drive thickness.

Samsung's 256GB SSD is also available with optional proprietary encryption programming that provides full disk encryption, a key feature for many corporate users.

Transcend has announced the release of its all-new 128GB high speed 2.5-inch Solid State Disk (SSD) in India.

Featuring a new controller, Transcend's MLC-equipped 128GB SSD delivers sustained read/write speeds of up to 145MB/92MB per second.

Austin Huang, Regional Head - Sales, SAARC & APAC, Transcend, said, "With the ever-increasing popularity of compact notebooks and high-end portable devices, the demand for solid-state disks (SSD) is greater than ever. Transcend is poised at the forefront of this new solid-state revolution, offering a new all-new high-speed range of SSD products with a fresh new look and phenomenal read/write speeds."Transcend's 128GB Solid State Disk's integrated ECC (Error Correction Code) ensures reliable data transfer and increases system integrity. Its built-in wear leveling technology also guarantees ultra-long storage lifespan and data-retention durability for prolonged use. Transcend's 2.5" Solid State Disks are available in capacities ranging from 8GB to 128GB in SATA-II and IDE versions, and are all backed by a two-year warranty along with the support of a global service network.

The SSD is priced at Rs. 20,000.

Arguably no other company is doing more to push SSDs into the mainstream than OCZ, who earlier this year released its Core Series SATA II SSD drives, undercutting the competition in price and hurdling past in performance. Now the company is at it again, slashing prices one more time.

It was just a week ago that OCZ's 32GB Core SSD dropped down to just $99 after mail-in-rebate, and now the company's 64GB model is receiving similar treatment. Newegg is now selling the bigger model for the same price after a $70 mail-in-rebate, which means you can now get double the storage space for a single C-note than what you could have received last week.It's not all peaches and cream, though, as the price cuts come on the heels of heavy criticism by Anandtech, who faulted the drives for random write issues resulting in "horrible stuttering/pausing/lagging."

Is the new low price per gigabyte enough to make up for SSD technology's shortcomings?

There's an old cliche' that certainly applies to commodity semiconductor and electronics technology, as well as many other competitive arenas; "go big or go home". If you look at major semiconductor manufacturers, like Intel, AMD, Samsung and NVIDIA, you'll notice that they generally do not enter a new market lightly. In addition, they almost never partially resource a new market penetration effort. Timing is definitely key but it usually doesn't pay off to tread lightly when it's time to execute. It's simply a question of doing the business case analysis, justifying the ROI and then placing your bets. Go big or go home. It's all-in or sit on the sidelines and watch. And you know, when Intel decides they want in, the stack of chips they're playing with isn't the kind you find at the cheap tables.With that in mind, let's consider the future of the Solid State Disk market and where it's going. We've said it before, the days of rotational media are numbered. Though SSDs and spinning drives will likely coexist for some time, traditional hard drive technology will eventually go the way of the dinosaur. SSDs have no moving parts to wear out, they consume much less power, produce very little heat and their performance will continue to improve over time, with the kind of scaling that comes along with a semiconductor performance evolution curve. Though the migration will be gradual, starting first at the consumer level, then moving into the industrial and enterprise space, it's a matter of time before the world literally goes solid state for its storage. In the short term, especially at the consumer level, the SSD market is expected to have explosive growth over the next year or so, some analysts predicting well in excess of 100% annually.

And so it goes without saying, Solid State Storage is a safe bet. Today Intel just bellied up to the table and dropped their chips down on the SSD market, and in typical Intel fashion, they're going in big. The following is a full evaluation of Intel's new consumer-targeted X25-M Solid State Drive.

Samsung is attempting to answer the question of how low can you go while doing the solid state limbo. The semiconductor company this week said it has begun sampling low-density, higher-performance solid state drives (SSDs) measuring just 30 percent the size of 2.5-inch SSDs. Samsung also says they're highly cost-efficient to manufacture, which should help the technology continue to penetrate the mainstream market."We've refined our manufacturing techniques and redesigned our low-density SSDs to get what the low-priced PC market is looking for in the way of improved cost, performance, and availability," said Jim Elliot, VP of memory marking.

Available in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB flavors, the new multi-level cell SSDs will use the same SATA II controller found on Samsung's recently introduced MLC-based 128GB SSD. The company says the 32GB SSD will read data at 90MB/s and write at 70MB/s, while the 16GB will sport read and write times of 90MB/s and 45MB/s. Bringing up the rear, the 8GB model will also read at 90MB, but write at 25MB/s.

Mass production will start in September 2008. And mass consumption? That question remains to be answered.

If solid state drives (SSDs) ultimately fail to curry favor among enthusiasts, it won't be from lack of effort in OCZ's headquarters. OCZ, who once sold only DRAM products and now offers everything from DIY notebooks to mind-controlled input devices, has been one of SSDs most aggressive pushers, first with its Core Series SSDs, and now with a second revision dubbed V2.
Capacity

Whereas the original Core Series come in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB flavors, the new V2 will be available in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB. By offering a 250GB model, a case could be made for going HDD-less in that new build.Speed

Storage space isn't the only feature getting a boost and the V2 series will offer read and write speeds up to 170 MB/s and 98 MB/s respectively. By comparison, the previous Core Series top out at 143 MB/s and 93 MB/s respective read and write speeds. The V2 also touts improved seek times of less than 0.2-0.3ms as part of the new architecture.
Firmware

One of the more interesting features OCZ brings to the table with the V2 is the ability to update the SSDs' firmware.The drives will come equipped with a mini-USB port, which paves the way for consumers to cash in on speed bumps and other future enhancements simply by installing new firmware.

Of course, the big concern with all SSDs continues to be the long term reliability, and OCZ rates its 2-year warrantied V2 series with a 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF). No word yet on pricing or availability.

One of the biggest hurdles preventing solid state drives from bursting into the mainstream continues to be the relatively high price points compared to traditional hard drives. Recent strides have started to reverse this trend, with OCZ pushing its lower cost Core series and Super Talent slashing the price tag on its MasterDrive MX line, but SSDs still have a ways to go if they're to challenge HDDs for the bang-for-buck crown.Stepping to the plate is Micron, who today announced it will ship a series of speedy SSDs up to 256GB in capacity as part of its next-generation RealSSD line. But the real story here is that Micron's new line will check in at one third the price per gigabyte of existing drives.

Hit the jump to see what Micron has to say about the RealSSD's pricing strategy after the jump.

With the all the brouhaha surrounding solid state drives (SSDs), there remains a question of exactly how big of a performance advantage flash memory really holds over today's hard drives. On paper, most SSDs scream ahead in both read and write speeds, but real-world benchmarking paints a different picture. So why the discrepancy? At SandDisk, they're blaming Vista. The company's CEO, Eli Harari, says SSD "performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs. Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid-state disks."It's not hard to find fault with Vista, but blaming the OS for underperforming SSDs qualifies as a new one that even Apple hasn't yet exploited in its many mocking commercials. To be fair, Harari made the statement as part of a pitch to improve SSDs' next generation controllers, which he says "need to compensate for Vista's shortfalls." Because of this need, the company claims it is behind schedule bringing competitive SSDs to market.

Is SanDisk justified in pointing the finger at Vista?

Notebook makers like Apple and Lenovo have shown that solid-state drives can be superior alternatives to hard drives for ultra-thin laptops, thanks to their small footprint, low power consumption, and high performance. However, with your typical 64GB SSD costing around a grand, SSD-based notebooks remain prohibitively expensive for the most part.

This is where Super Talent comes in. The memory maker has released five new 2.5", Serial ATA SSDs with prices that one could almost call reasonable. The new MasterDrive MX line includes 30GB, 60GB, and 120GB SSDs priced at a respective $299, $449, and $699. Super Talent says all three drives can hit 120MB/s in sequential reads and 40MB/s in sequential writes through a 300MB/s Serial ATA interface. Users seeking higher performance may also want to look at the more expensive MasterDrive DX line, which includes a $1,299 60GB model and a $699 30GB model both rated for 120MB/s sequential reads and 70MB/s writes.According to SuperTalent, MasterDrive SSDs are already available from Newegg and eWiz. Newegg currently has the 30GB MasterDrive MX in stock for $299 and the 60GB model in stock for $449, while eWiz has the 60GB drive on sale for $404.35. Super Talent says the drives are "100% interchangeable" with conventional hard drives, too.