Lexar to ship Crucial-brand 32GB, 64GB solid state drives in February

[David Louis Harter]

Lexar to ship Crucial-brand 32GB, 64GB solid state drives in February

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 | by Rob Galbraith

Lexar today has announced 32GB and 64GB solid state drives (SSDs) for use as laptop hard drive replacements or in any external enclosure that accepts 2.5-inch SATA mechanisms. Because they use flash memory in place of spinning platters, SSDs are promised to be "more durable, require less power, and offer greater overall system performance than traditional hard disk drives." Both capacities are spec'd to deliver up to 100MB/second read speeds and 60MB/second write speeds (Lexar plans to release more benchmark information towards the end of January 2008).

Lexar's 32GB and 64GB models will be sold under the Crucial brand name and are expected to ship in early February 2008. The 32GB model has a manufacturer's suggested list price (MSRP) of US$799.99 in the U.S., while the 64GB model has a MSRP of US$1499.99 in the U.S.

The company has also announced the Crucial SK01 External Drive Storage Kit, a package comprised of a 2.5-inch USB 2.0 external enclosure, 3.5-inch SATA 3.0Gb/second hot-swappable drive bay and a 5.25-inch drive bay bracket.

[John Hunt]

Awesome!

I'm still going to wait for the price to come down some though.

[David Louis Harter]

Awesome, I'm still going to wait for the price to come down some though.

It will! These new drives will get larger and less expensive. They will take the place of traditional hard drives in time. This is exciting!

[Mt. Mama]

I agree. This is both cool and exciting! But alas, I too, will have to wait for prices to drop (substantially). :yay

[505]

this could very well be the data storage device of the future.
For one simple fact "drives like this do not have a motor,
and various other high power drain devices. As a result
they will become popular on laptops or anywhere you would
like to use less battery reserve. Think about how much power
reserve this would recover, it may be enough to double the
battery life. I did the math one time. I found that the Maximum
power drain of todays hard drive is somewhere around 27 watts
per drive. Another thing to consider is the reason most drives
today goes bad is because the drive loses control of the arm
that switches between the tracks on the platters, in otherwords
a nightmare balance of prescision electronics. All these
moving parts would not need to exist in drives on a chip.
So theoretically, you could design a drive on a chip with no
moving parts that will still function 100 years from now or
longer.

:)

[Dexter]

A typical laptop drive pulls around 3 to 5 watts. A flash drive I expect would require about 10% of that, although I haven't seen the specs on it. A flash drive would not require the speed up time that a disk would require from sleep mode.
I personally like the Compactflash format; Very reliable connector, Easy to change, Very compact for portable devices, Not too small for a person to handle without tweezers....This is what I'm putting the money on.

:rockon:

[David Louis Harter]

I personally like the Compactflash format; Very reliable connector, Easy to change, Very compact for portable devices, Not too small for a person to handle without tweezers....This is what I'm putting the money on.

:rockon:

I like the CompactFlash format. I have used this in my cameras for 10 years now--although I did take a "detour" and used 1GB MicroDrives for several years, because they were the first to be available in 1GB size and served well, although the power required for them is considerably greater than for CompactFlash. The MicroDrive format is CompactFlash II, however, they are not solid-state devices but are tiny hard drives.

[505]

Either way it seems that this technology is useful and I am
glad to see it. One of the greatest challenges in these portable
devices is the relatively short battery power time. There are only
two ways I can see to make battery power to last longer.
Improved battery technology or lower the power draw of the device
Battery technology is moving at a swift rate. This type of storage
will definately help.
Oh I forgot to mention my numbers came from my faulty memory
and were calculated using the specs from an IDE drive.

[505]

Actually something like a usb drive only uses power to read
write, or overwrite. Once the state of this type of memory has
been set it takes NO power to just hold the data. I estimate
this type of memory uses 10-15% of the power of a laptop
hard drive momentarily while it is resetting the data, then
draws close to none.

[Mt. Mama]

I'm no geek, so I won't try to imitate one. But I can tell you assuredly, anytime less drain on a battery is employed, I'm all for it!:yay

[505]

In some ways our portable devices are limited.
They are limited because battery technology has not
kept up. We are sorely in need of more mobile power
or devices need to draw less or both if we wish to
have more mobile control.

I have a Sony walkman model SRF-M37V. It runs off
one rechargable NiMH AAA, depending on the volume
setting and ambient temperature I may be able to listen
for 60 hours between battery recharges. This to me is an
incredible amount of play time for one AAA battery. I get
this much time because I use the latest NiMH rechargable
batteries, and this Walkman is digital.

The minds of electrical engineers of today picture very big
things, but they cannot build them due to limited battery life.
Some are starting to look at Capacitors, to me this is a very
interesting and POSSIBLE step forward because Capacitors
charge in seconds or less. It is also "outside of the box
thinking". I always enjoy thinking outside of the box, and I
admire others who are able to do this. One of my favorite
of the in the public engineers is Burt Rutan. I have been watching
Burt think outside of the box for all my life. Did you know that
Spaceship 1 used rubber for fuel in the specially built engine
that carried the test pilot up to 62 miles above sea level, this
is 2 miles above the Internationally accepted start of "space"
Who else would even consider rubber as fuel. If you think
outside of the box then you realize it is a perfect fuel. It
contains alot of energy potential without the weight associated
with other options.
:)