A-DATA exposes 128GB SSD to the camera

You already know the deal on A-DATA's 128GB solid state disk, which is currently the largest SSD you'll find outside of tightly sealed corporate doors and available for citizens to handle, but it looks like AVing got up close and personal with the device itself, mixing a little proof in with the pudding. So go on and click through for another snapshot of the (momentary) big fellow, so you'll know just what you're looking for when these land around mid-year.

[ug @ Jan 26th 2007 4:40AM]

One word:

IPHONE

[ietomit @ Jan 26th 2007 5:00AM]

why IPHONE, u cant load software on that stupid thing anyway, any Ipod or other gadgetry capable of supporting it should do better with it. I like it in ultra slim notebooks, i think that niche is widely accepting these atm, SSD FTW !

[Olivier @ Jan 26th 2007 4:56AM]

I would have so much more trust in my computer to hold my pictures with something like this. I know that all mechanincal hard drives are just running a countdown timer till they fail.

[Gil @ Jan 26th 2007 4:59AM]

So are these. There's a limited number of read/writes. Granted it's a huge number thanks to improvements in flash technology but it's still there.

[Aaron @ Jan 26th 2007 9:27AM]

Gil, as an FYI, these flash drives have a fixed number of writes (1 million +) and unlimited reads. So, even if you ran out of writes your data won't be corrupted, you just can't write to that part of the drive anymore. Your OS would just mark it as bad sectors. Data retention is 10 years so these are FAR safer than your standard mechanical HD. On top of that, 1 million write cycles? If you wrote 1000 times a day (to the same locations on a HD) that's over 3 years. The only time I could you see coming close to that would be if you were using the SSD for swap space.

[Olivier @ Jan 26th 2007 5:10AM]

Gil, from what I've read, Flash now has much improved on read/write cycles. They should no longer be capped to 100,000 R/w cycles.
In any case, I don't read and write pictures all day from my hard-drive (at least if I add new pictures, I am not deleting old ones).
So the whole limitation of cycles is not really an issue for me. I just want something that will hold the data for years to come.

[s i d @ Jan 26th 2007 5:12AM]

why is this so much bigger than those 64GB flash drives .....

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/07/kangurus-64gb-flash-drive-max-only-2-800/

[Blackster @ Jan 26th 2007 5:34AM]

you're not serious, are you?
comparing an usb-stick with ssd?

[Giles @ Jan 26th 2007 6:12AM]

I think he is - some people!

[s i d @ Jan 26th 2007 7:14AM]

was just wondering wats stopping SSD from being as small (U3, LiveUSB) could u elaborate plz ....

[nivz @ Jan 26th 2007 5:54AM]

well.. if someone puts one of these in a laptop, it's gonna cost like atleast $2000 or so more than the same laptop with a normal HDD. It's good that SSD's are improving in size nd all, but till the price drops down to an acceptable, don't think too many ppl will be going for these..

[nivz @ Jan 26th 2007 6:58AM]

enlighten him my brother :D

[Steiner @ Jan 26th 2007 6:49AM]

any indication of price anyone?

[mcubed45 @ Jan 26th 2007 7:25AM]

"was just wondering wats stopping SSD from being as small (U3, LiveUSB) could u elaborate plz ...."

nothing. they're being made to fit the form factor of regular platter drives. (1.8" 2.5" 3.5" etc). they can likely be made MUCH smaller like current flash drives but then you'd need a new form factor and wouldnt be able to do a direct swap into existing computers. i'm sure in the future there will be a new format for SSD drives as well as a new interface. i'm pretty sure SATA is now the limiting factor in read/write speed. until then we'll be seeing SSD drives which are made to look like HDD's.

[tchiseen @ Jan 26th 2007 7:57AM]

why wouldn't they just build an adapter? they did for micro sd, and that doesnt bother anyone. when u splurge for your new tiny SSD, you get 2 little plastic 2.5" and 3.5" adapters.

one reason they might be sticking to teh form factor is that their production facilities already produce casings/etc to this size, and it'd be more expensive to re-engineer the production facilities. eventually this will be the new standard of drives, and by then, someone will have come up with a smaller form factor, 1" or what have you, and everyone else will just abide by that.

[Dan @ Jan 26th 2007 8:05AM]

I look very forward to having one of these in my gaming machine one day. It's exciting to see this technology finally be introduced. It won't be long now till prices on this tech start falling, and it starts being placed inside laptops and soon desktop PC's.

[jerrt @ Jan 26th 2007 9:19AM]

how much does it cost, my ps3 wants one. [:

[R-R @ Jan 26th 2007 10:10AM]

Actually, if you run something like ext3 which writes a log every 5 seconds and _if_ it wrote that said log at the same place it would kill a sector in under 2 months. I know file systems like jffs2 are actually aware of the flash card and write at different places.

We'll have to see people burn testing them ;-)

[ExcavatE @ Jan 26th 2007 9:50AM]

I can't wait to see the cost of this technology come down. Not only would it be great for desktops/laptops but also for future ipod's/PMP's. Imagine a full sized ipod that's about as thin as a nano ! HOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTNESSSSSSS !!!

[Superpie @ Jan 26th 2007 9:57AM]

I can't wait until this develops like USB flash drives and goes to terrabytes instead of gigabytes :) *awaits 4tb ssd*

[Joshua @ Jan 26th 2007 8:06PM]

My macbook pro wants that inside of it RIGHT NOW. That is 8GB larger than the stock drive I have now. I hope in a year or two these will be on the market and not cost a million dollars.

[TekBoi @ Jan 27th 2007 1:41AM]

I'll be putting this into my MacBook Thin ! ! !

[kombizz @ Jan 28th 2007 4:25PM]

I don't mind three of them for my computer in order to save my photos.
At present I put them in the following site:
http://www.kombizz.photopoints.com

By the way how much that SSD cost? and how soon comes to the market?

[The Truth Beacon @ Feb 7th 2007 10:18AM]

If you were to write each sector once each second, for every second of every minute of every hour of every day, said sectors would be 'bad' in 11.574(continuous) days.

Or, 11 days 13 hours 46 minutes 40 seconds.

[wong @ Feb 16th 2007 11:13PM]

why are ssd producers confusing/cheating public with 32Gb (bits) and 32GB (bytes)??? was checking on samsung 32Gb ssd, and found that's it is actually GigaBits. thus, only 4GB (8bits to a bytes)