SanDisk Releases 32 GB Solid State Drive

SanDisk is releasing a 32 GB, 1.8-inch solid state drive (SSD) that can be used in any device where a standard mechanical hard disk drive would be, such as a UMPC.

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The drive will be costly; SanDisk said it will cost $600 more than a regular hard drive -- which means the price will be about $800 to $1,000.

Why is SSD better?

There are a few reasons solid state flash is superior to the traditional hard drive that uses a mechancial head to read data from a platter:

• Fewer moving parts so less hard drive failures
• Lower power consumption, consumes 0.4 watt during active operation compared to 1.0 watt of regular hard drives
• Faster access to data, sutained reads of 62 MB/s. In some burst instances an SSD can be 100 times faster than a mechanical hard drive

SanDisk indicated that using that a drive loaded with Windows Vista Enterprise fully booted in a very fast 35 seconds. Of course, these numbers are all in house benchmarks quoted by SanDisk so they need to be taken with a grain of salt.

The 32 GB SanDisk drive is available immediately to manufacturers (OEMs), but there is no indication as to whether the drive will be sold through consumer channels.

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