Move over, mechanical hard disk drives. The new kid on the block, solid state storage, is ready to give you a run for your money.

 

That’s the message embedded in SanDisk’s announcement today introducing a 32-gigabyte, 1.8-inch, solid state drive (SSD) designed to act as a replacement for mechanical hard disk drives in laptop computers.

 

Until now, SanDisk noted in its announcement, the cost of large-capacity flash-based drives made them a specialty product used mostly by the military, aerospace and telecom industries. But price drops in NAND flash memory means this type of memory can be economically produced for enterprise and consumer applications.

 

SSDs offer several key advantages over mechanical disk drives, most notably improved ruggedness (because there are no moving parts) and lower energy usage (in the case of this new product, 0.4 watts during active operation versus 1.0 watt). SanDisk's drive also provides sustained read rates of 62 megabytes per second, greatly surpassing the capabilities of most hard disk drives.

 

In its announcement, SanDisk said that, by combining NAND flash with the company’s patented TrueFFS flash management technology, it is possible to offer a drive that delivers two million mean hours between failures.

 

“With no moving parts, it does not need to spin into action or seek files in the way that conventional hard disk drives do,” the company explained. “These characteristics, combined with SanDisk's advanced flash management technology, make it possible for SanDisk SSD to deliver excellent performance compared with hard disk drives and competing solid state drives.”

SanDisk CEO Eli Harari said the company is on a relentless quest to create large-scale markets for flash storage solutions, and that this new SSD is just the latest in a line of products designed with that goal in mind.

 

“The 32-gigabyte SSD that we are announcing today represents the fifth generation of flash-based solid state drives developed by msystems, which we recently acquired,” Harari explained in a statement. “The 32GB SSD has been made commercially viable through SanDisk's technology leadership coupled with msystems’ tremendous experience and intellectual property, which are captured in the high-performance, low-cost system controllers that distinguish this product.”

IDC (News - Alert) (News - Alert) analyst Robert Gray noted that, in the past few years, NAND flash memory has become increasingly popular in portable devices such as MP3 players, mobile phones, and digital cameras.

 

“There are dramatically higher bit capacities and lower prices, so the technology is now well positioned to be the foundation for new generations of potentially disruptive solid state drives,” Gray said in a statement. “Enterprise mobile PC users will find the high performance and low power consumption especially attractive.”

 

SanDisk’s new SSD is available now to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

 

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