Solid-State Hard Drives Gaining in Capacity, Dropping in Price

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147015' target='_blank'>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147015</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Weighing in at less than a third of the weight of the disk-based notebook hard drives, the new standard in low power, shock tolerant drives is here! Samsung's 2.5" 32GB SSD is a Nand Flash-based Solid State Drive ideal for people whose notebooks work as hard as they do. Fitting neatly into the spot where your regular hard drive would go, but it's much, much faster and much, much tougher. This brilliant development in drive technology brings up to 53MB/s reading speed and up to 28MB/s writing speed? With 1500G shock tolerance, 20G vibration tolerance and a temperature range from -13 to 185° F, this drive can go just about anywhere. A stingy 0.5W active and 0.1W idle power consumption is environmentally-friendly and will keep your notebook system going on those long flights, and in complete silence, too – no moving parts spoil your peace."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/samsung-_sdd_32gb.jpg" /><br /><br />NewEgg is selling this 32 GB Samsung SSD (solid state drive) for $549 USD, and I have to admit I'm tempted. The reality is though that unless I was willing to sacrifice my data by leaving it behind, I need to wait until these things hit 80 GB - which I'm betting will be late this year. The price point is moderately painful, though not too bad. If they hit 80 GB and $400 by the end of this year, I'll snag one. What about you? What price/size ratio are you waiting for to pick up an SSD? Or are you happy enough with the magnetic-based storage?

[Felix Torres]

32Gb and $200 would suit me fine.
80GB at $300-400 I would think about but my Tablet PC (Where I'd use it) is low powered and I mostly use it as a webpad ebook reader. Even 16-20GB might do for me, would still be enough to load in Encarta and Britannica.

[bluemax]

What about longevity. I thought SSDs had a limited number of read/write cycles. Are they durable enough to run for 4 or 5 years?

Bill B

[timmy]

Funny with the product name as well:

2.5" 32GB SSD

Must be as in "fits in a 2.5 inch HD drive slot" since what I recall the 2.5" comes from the diameter of the HD discs themselves and not from the external casing measures...

[myrampar]

I can't wait until these come down in price. I would love to pick up an 80GB+ size when they become more affordable to throw in my HP laptop.

I am also very curious as to how much more run time I can get compared to using the standard hard drive. As it sits, I'm lucky if I get 2.5 hours and this is on a new laptop running Vista Ultimate with the standard battery.

Also, how soon will these SSDs be available with a SATA interface? Is there an adapter to make the current gen SSDs work with SATA?