SimpleTech announces "world's thinnest" 2.5-inch 64GB SSD

World's thinnest titles aren't just for cellphones and DAPs, don't you know, Solid State Drives need to shave those millimeters just as much as the next guy, and SimpleTech seems up to the task with its new 64 gigger. The 2.5-inch drive, a member of SimpleTech's Zeus SSD lineup, measures a mere 9.5mm thick (0.37-inches), compared to some competing solutions more than twice as thick, making it a solid option for squeezing into those ever-slimmer laptops. SimpleTech is currently targeting the device at high performance applications such as military, intelligence and aviation, and has apparently buffeted the drive against shock, humidity, vibration and altitude -- most of the stability naturally thanks to the flash technology, of course. No word price, but with those kind of customers, we're guessing this one won't be cheap.

[aural @ Jan 31st 2007 10:28PM]

How many of these things do we have to see before one even becomes available to purchase?

[shirizaki @ Jan 31st 2007 11:26PM]

Yeah, especially for the external HDD market. For the space that these take up, 1 TB of solid state goodness would be awesome.

[John Doe @ Jan 31st 2007 10:46PM]

I'm more interested in seeing these things get thinner and thinner so someone can put a more traditional drive in there for mass storage and one of these drives for OS\App storage.

[Mikey @ Jan 31st 2007 10:50PM]

I would like to see them put two of these in a case so its the same size as the others available. They could market it as a 128 GB SSD. Really expensive, but a lot more useful.

[brendan Sheehan jnr @ Jan 31st 2007 10:54PM]

All these advancements are irrelevant until SSD become affordable. I'm holding out for 2.5-inch 120GB SSD that costs less than a car.

[fred @ Jan 31st 2007 10:59PM]

All standard 2.5-inch laptop drives are 9.5mm thick.

12.5mm thick used to be the standard for all but thin/light laptops (and 15mm and maybe even thicker way back when) but I haven't seen one for at least 5 years.

[lov0w93 @ Feb 1st 2007 12:30AM]

What about the 1.8 inch (iPod) love?

[Eric M @ Feb 1st 2007 12:58AM]

Sweet. I can't wait for hard drive technology die. Such old technology.

[Lonnie McClure @ Feb 1st 2007 4:22AM]

You'll be waiting quite a while. For SSD's to completely eliminate hard drives from the market, SSD's would have to make a leap forward of several magnitudes, or hard drives would have to hit a brick wall with increasing areal density.

By the time a 120GB SSD is available for the current price of a 120GB hard drive, you'll likely be able to buy a 1-2 TB hard drive for the same price.

The costs of the basic hard drive components (i.e., case, metal shell, motor, etc.) that are the same for any capacity hard drive limit its minimum cost, however. For this reason, SSD's will eventually displace lower capacity hard drives. Expect 20-40GB notebook hard drives to be the first to disappear.

[Bryan B @ Feb 1st 2007 9:56AM]

You should see 32Gb versions for $300 by the end of the year.

Flash prices/mb were down 30% last quarter, and an additional 30%+ drop is expected this quarter. Sandisk is saying OEMs are looking to introduce the drives in performance laptops once the price hits $300 (which we should get to by the 3Q +/- a quarter depending on how fast the bottom falls out on flash.

[Jonathan Sundy @ Feb 1st 2007 11:12AM]

Somewhere recently some company announced a breakthrough 2GB flash chip that was said to source for $31 a chip.

So that means that a 64GB drive based on them would cost over $992 and a 128GB drive would cost over $1984.

So using these chips you are paying $15.50 per GB. In the most expensive 2.5" laptop hd I could find on newegg (Toshiba 200GB, $223.99) you are paying $1.12 per GB and on an on a randomly chosen 100gb drive (Hitachi, $90) you are paying $0.90 per GB.

The point is, as much as I want it, flash has a LONG way to go.

And on another note, 20GB drives will completely vanish rather quickly since Vista Home Premium requires 40GB min.

Just my 2c.

[Michael La Framboise @ Feb 1st 2007 11:19AM]

What I would like to see is a few of these drives in a stripped RAID - I would imagine it would be pretty damn fast :)

[blore40 @ Feb 3rd 2007 12:27PM]

64GB meh.. I will wait for Bose-Einstein (or was it Ford-Firestone?) atomic chamber swapping model that will have 128YB in 0.25 inches.

1YB = 10^15 GB

[ssd1 @ Feb 6th 2007 1:59AM]

This is a marketing LIE. The PQI 64GB SSD is actually the "world's thinnest" 64GB SSD. It is 8.45mm. More than a full 1mm thinner, or 11% thinner than the SimpleTech. I really wish parrots would do a little research before just spouting out what they are told. Here is the PDF on the manufacturer's website - http://www.pqi.com.tw/product2.asp?oid=142&cate1=151&PROID=280 . The SATA model of the 64GB is out now, with the IDE to follow early March '07.

And here is where I have found that entire line of SSDs (and much cheaper than SimpleTech, try finding a price on the SimpleTech. I'm curious, but I bit its WAY over $10,000) - http://www.dvnation.com/nand-flash-ssd.html