Solid State Drives, Now Bigger, Better And Cheaper

With SSDs becoming more and more popular, the race to make them faster, denser and cheaper is heating up. Several companies over the last couple of weeks have made announcements of price slashes and increased drive size.

Toshiba announced on Friday a new high-density 256 GB MLC-based SSD. While not appearing to be the fastest SSD around, the drive offers good performance, a large storage capacity and a potentially low price.

The maximum sequential read and write speeds of the new SSD are claimed to be 120 MB/s and 70 MB/s, respectively. Multi-level Cell (MLC) flash memory is generally considered to be slower than single-level Cell (SLC) flash memory, but benefits from by being cheaper to manufacture. The new Toshiba 256 GB SDD uses a SATA 3.0 Gb/s interface and is available in a 2.5-inch form factor.

Also last week Super Talent Technology, a manufacturer of flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, launched a pair of new affordable SATA-II SSDs. Super Talent's MasterDrive SSDs are now offered in 64GB and 128GB capacities, with he 64GB model expected to retail for about $179, while the 128GB unit is expected to retail for under $300.

The MasterDrive LX is built with NAND flash and uses a SATA-II 3Gbps interface that makes it 100% interchangeable with hard disk drives. These SSDs support sequential read speeds of up to 100 MB/sec, and sequential write speeds of up to 40 MB/sec. Integrated ECC, wear leveling and bad bit management functions also improve the reliability and lifespan of these SSDs.

The race to develop faster better drives is nothing but great news for us geeks. Price will continue to fall and both storage capacity and performance will rise!