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Super Talent FSD56GC25H 256GB SATA SSD  (Source: Super Talent)
Super Talent claims to have the world's thinnest 256GB SSD

It seems as though a week can't go by without a new announcement in the realm of solid-state drive (SSD) technology. With each new announcement comes the usual "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" exclamations from manufacturers.

Earlier this week, Seagate CEO Bill Watkins stated, "Realistically, I just don’t see the flash notebook sell. We just don’t see the proposition." Watkin's comments brought an air of reality to the extreme optimism that often surrounds SSD technology.

Super Talent, however, can't be bothered by such commentary. The company is hard at work on expanding its SSD lineup and today announced what it calls the world's thinnest 256GB SSD (FSD56GC25H). The drive is built around a 2.5" notebook form factor and uses the SATA-I interface. According to Super Talent, the casing is 12.5mm thick which makes it 40% thinner than existing 256GB SSD drives on the market.

While the capacity of the drive is quite commendable, Watkins would likely point to the FSD56GC25H's relatively low transfer speeds relative to its competitors. Super Talent lists read speeds at 65MB/sec while writes lag further behind at 50MB/sec.

For comparison, Samsung's 64GB SATA SSD offers read speeds of 120MB/sec and write speeds of 100MB/sec. Mtron's 128GB 1.8" SATA SSD offers identical performance figures, while Samsung's 128GB SATA SSD offers reads and writes of 100MB/sec and 70MB/sec respectively.

"We designed this drive for applications that need rugged and reliable storage in a very compact form factor. This is the world’s smallest and thinnest 256GB SSD," said Super Talent Marketing Director, Joe James. "This product underscores our leadership in high density SSDs and demonstrates the technical capabilities of our Silicon Valley engineering team."

Samples of Super Talent's FSD56GC25H drive are available now. When asked to comment on pricing, Super Talent's Joe James told DailyTech that the OEM price of the drive is $5,995.

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Cost?
By Oregonian2 on 3/26/2008 12:49:01 PM , Rating: 2
Wonder what the price is. Might it be more than $110 that a hard disk equivalent would cost?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...




RE: Cost?
By SlingXShot on 3/26/2008 12:53:34 PM , Rating: 2
Thats slower... however there are plenty of other choices.


RE: Cost?
By Oregonian2 on 3/26/2008 1:17:13 PM , Rating: 2
True, details are different, but size and storage are roughly similar. Depends what is needed. For laptop use (what the size is used for) one may not care a tremendous amount on performance most of the time. I mean that if the SSD costed 50% more, it might fly -- but the overall system performance improvement of the laptop would be minimal other than to those who are doing disk intensive work on their laptop (and don't have much memory for cache) and/or are folk who like to time boot-up performance to see if they can get to their work a few seconds earlier in the day. The SSD will have it's niche uses, but I think it's a small niche for the price it's likely to be. I suspect a good bit more than $110. If it's $150, I'll go out right now and buy one for each of my laptops... But I doubt it. :-)


RE: Cost?
By 67STANG on 3/26/2008 1:30:05 PM , Rating: 2
Doesn't the title say it costs $6,000....? Who the F is going to buy this? The only people I know that pay that much for so little are Mac users, and this isn't made by Apple, so....


RE: Cost?
By Dribble on 3/26/2008 2:08:06 PM , Rating: 2
$6000 and it's not even that fast. Sounds like it just exists to get a few column inches in sites like this, they probably won't sell a single one.


RE: Cost?
By mmntech on 3/26/08, Rating: 0
RE: Cost?
By Tsuwamono on 3/27/2008 12:20:59 AM , Rating: 1
Industrial computers have been using these SSDs for a couple years now. HDDs dont stand up too well to heavy vibrations or prolonged short vibrations. Thus SSDs are king for most Industrial computers that my company builds. And 6k isnt too bad.. i have one product that costs 8k just for the board.. and thats not even with anything on it yet. Once you add all the parts its usually around 15-16k for a single board.


RE: Cost?
By RU482 on 3/26/2008 3:32:01 PM , Rating: 2
I'm guessing the military is the primary consumer of this drive


RE: Cost?
By martinrichards23 on 3/26/2008 3:46:40 PM , Rating: 2
I'm guessing the military doesn't buy super talent hard disks.


RE: Cost?
By marsbound2024 on 3/26/2008 3:50:23 PM , Rating: 1
If the military had any financial sense about them at all, they would not dare touch SSDs until they dropped substantially in price. They should use mobile, tough hard drives that are designed to better withstand g-forces than others. They can store important information on military-grade, encrypted flash drives. Besides, it is far more economical to use high capacity SD or CF rather than these SSDs. In the meantime, the military can continue replacing bad mechanical hard drives out of RAID systems or whatever they might use.

But in all honesty, I don't see the use for fielded SSDs of such capacity and storage located in servers can remain in hard drives for now.


RE: Cost?
By Tsuwamono on 3/27/2008 12:23:28 AM , Rating: 2
You do realize that most of the military stuff is WAY more money then consumer electronics and is usually several generations ahead.


RE: Cost?
By marsbound2024 on 3/27/2008 6:09:14 PM , Rating: 2
Sure, but that doesn't somehow validate their crazy budget. The United States spends way too much money on the military I think. No other nation even comes close. People whine and say "We must project globally." Ok, it doesn't take this much money to project globally. And we all know what mistakes the US has made militarily. The entire EU spends about half of what we [the US] do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Graph_(military...

I don't honestly understand the point nor see why the military has to continue purchasing outrageously priced tech just because it is several generations ahead. Unless it has some seriously strategic benefits, why do it?

The military knows little of efficiency and creativity I think. They don't have to use consumer electronics and I wouldn't want them to. But they also don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money to achieve the same goals.

The Air Force had it right. They sought to purchase a lot of PS3s to research applications of the Cell. Smart move.


RE: Cost?
By MrPoletski on 3/26/2008 11:12:47 PM , Rating: 2
You wonder what the price is?

Perhaps reading the article title might help:)

"Super Talent Announces $6K , 2.5" 256GB SATA SSD"


...
By SlingXShot on 3/26/2008 12:38:58 PM , Rating: 2
These drives seem to come out less and less attractive... I'll stick with my 150GB Raptor...




RE: ...
By mkrech on 3/26/08, Rating: 0
RE: ...
By yodataco on 3/26/2008 12:50:08 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Samples of Super Talent's FSD56GC25H drive are available now. Pricing will come at a later date.


Pricing: "One MILLION Dollars! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

Honestly, if these guys wanted to get serious about making an impact on todays consumer storage market, they would all rethink their pricing policies for SSD's.


RE: ...
By PAPutzback on 3/26/2008 1:11:35 PM , Rating: 2
Why rethink it. Obciously people are paying it. AS long as their is demand and the competition isn't undercutting you then there is no reason to drop the price.


RE: ...
By mikeyD95125 on 3/26/2008 5:08:43 PM , Rating: 2
Who is demanding these? Review sites...

It's a $6000 SSD. I could put 150GB Raptors in RAID 10 for cheaper than that.

Living in the Bay Area I have never met a single person with an SSD.


RE: ...
By Silver2k7 on 3/26/2008 6:16:26 PM , Rating: 3
Nah get some Seagate Cheetah 15k6 SAS drives instead.. way better than any Raptors. :-)


RE: ...
By MrPoletski on 3/26/2008 11:18:43 PM , Rating: 2
Well sure, for now they are out of reach for all but the most cash laden, but those prices will come down and capacities will go up. These things are particularly nice for notebooks because of their low power requirements. But I'm not getting rid of my RAID 0 Raptor X's :D

This particular model is very thin, making it a better candidate for a RAID 0 array in a notebook. Won't have to worry about it being a bit slower then;)

What needs to happen is that more memory manufacturers need to tool up for the NAND memory used in these rather than killing their own DDR2 profits by flooding the market.


3,5"
By Rebel44 on 3/26/2008 1:14:14 PM , Rating: 2
Why are SSDs 2.5" instead of 3.5" ?




RE: 3,5"
By xsilver on 3/26/2008 1:17:06 PM , Rating: 2
because if you filled up 3.5" of flash memory you'd have to drop 20k on it instead! 500gb ssd? o_O

you can always get a 2.5" to 3.5" bracket so thats no issue if you want to mount it on your desktop


RE: 3,5"
By zshift on 3/26/2008 2:34:33 PM , Rating: 2
SSDs are mostly used in laptops due to enhanced power consumption over traditional HDDs, as well as better performance in most cases. e.g.: a business user that uses the laptop as a mobile workstation with max performance but also needs it to last all day for their everyday tasks like surfing and checking email. 3.5" SSDs haven't been selling well on the desktop end because the money you save on energy doesn't usually make up for the extra thousands you have to pay for the "power saving" drive, so the only benefit is better performance in a 3.5" form factor.


RE: 3,5"
By martinrichards23 on 3/26/2008 3:48:23 PM , Rating: 1
Why not, is clearly the most obvious response.


the cost?
By 3p on 3/26/2008 5:33:13 PM , Rating: 2
Where do they get these prices. 256MB requires 64 4MB flash chips, $10 each... What about other $5360? Ok, I get it... design, controller, profits, but $5000 seems a bit much.




RE: the cost?
By MrPoletski on 3/26/2008 11:22:29 PM , Rating: 3
"Where do they get these prices. 256MB requires 64 4MB flash chips, $10 each..."

So does that mean that 256 GB would require 65536 4MB flash chips?:)

But that would make it $650k


huh?
By Souka on 3/26/2008 1:43:36 PM , Rating: 2
"the casing is only 12.5mm thick "

std. notebook drives are 9.5mm thick. The last time I had a 12.5mm was on a T30 Thinkpad laptop years ago...whopping 7200rpm 32GB...woo hoo.

The Lenovo X300 uses a SDD only option...and it is 9.5mm thick too...




RE: huh?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 3/26/2008 1:50:15 PM , Rating: 2
But the height measurements ST is making are in comparison to other 256GB SSD drives on the market. The SSD used in the X300 is only 64GB.


Capacity increases are all well and good, but...
By Goty on 3/26/2008 3:47:43 PM , Rating: 2
... when are the prices going to come down?




By martinrichards23 on 3/26/2008 3:50:23 PM , Rating: 2
In reality this won't sell for 6K, you'll see it for much less, that's if it ever makes it to market.


sure, why not.
By Oroka on 3/26/2008 2:21:54 PM , Rating: 3
This type of SSD will be good for the new aircraft blackbox being required by the FAA (SSD, longer recording capability), but $6k for 250GB storage for retail usage is not worth the investment.




By Joz on 3/28/2008 11:51:33 AM , Rating: 2
The all new Apple iMac, now with huge Internal Solid-State Storage Device. ONLY $10,000.

The all new Apple MacPro, now with RAID SSD, $50,000, comes with quad core cpu with over 8ghz in total power(apple is stupid.) and 200gb of memory (1gb stick +199 pf.)




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