Sweet merciful god of gadgets, we just snagged one of Samsung's new
64GB SATA II SSD drives, fresh from the NAND oven. If the prospect of gifting your laptop a ridiculously fast, low power hard drive free of moving parts (read: the thing that causes drives to fail) and with a two million hour MTBF doesn't catch your fancy, you should probably stop reading right now: we're unashamed to say SSDs make us swoon. Unfortunately we've yet to slap this slab of flash into a real computer and do some testing, but you can expect to see some more coverage there in short order. Those that don't want to wait can snag their own as we speak, but Samsung isn't selling to end users, so you have to snag a full machine from an OEM (like Dell's M1330, for example) and take a $950+ hit to get it. More shots of this sucker below.
posted Nov 8th 2007 2:27PM
That's hot. Maybe not $950 hot, but pretty hot nonetheless.
Where's the cheap chinese knockoff when you needed them?
How's the performance? Battery life gains?
We need some test results NOW!
hot hot hot.
Now... when can I get one for my macbook?
more like cool ;)
can't wait for the mainstream ssds to pop out!
Right now, for $950. Did you read the blurb?
@joe
but Samsung isn't selling to end users
just read it 'kay? ;)
You'll have to buy a Dell 1330 with this, then swap the harddrive of your Macbook. So it's a pricy endeavor for a lil bit faster Mac.
if youre in the uk you can get one at over-inflated prices
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-047-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=910
see link ^
good price for that much storage. most of the currently available SSD drives (SATA) are almost double that.
check your favorite tech shopping sites, they have them by other various vendors. I've had an IDE one for awhile, and the SATA versions are out, just not at $950 for 64gb. not that i'd get one yet, but if you're dying to try one, the 16gb are halfway reasonable prices.
Anyone know where to buy a 64 gig Samsung SSD? I'd like to pop one in my laptop.
Too bad this wasn't an option when I ordered my m1330, not that would have spent $950.... but still.
What the hell?! No one has taken it apart yet?!?!?!
or even tested it out.
A hands on review usually means putting it through its paces, here it looks like a hands on review simply means taking pretty pictures of it.
Guess we will have to go elsewhere.
- Roger
It's got some Flash chips on a greenish circuit board. There's some small capacitors and resistors and some misc. other ICs. Not much to see. Move alone.
It's really a hands on, as in, we got our hands on it. That's it.
I'd be more than happy to test this for you - purely out of altruistic reasons, of course.
This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of [spinning discs] and will soon see the end of [hybrid hdds] [/Vader]
Don't QUITE agree there. I predict something along the lines of a drive that includes this volume of Flash mem for a system/application drive, with rotating media for file storage (maybe with 3-4 GB cache to cut drive activity)
How long till the $950 becomes a $95? Anyone want to take a guess?
I sincerely hope it takes less than 2 years...
Spankys says:
4years, 3months, 2 and a half days..
SWEET MOTHER OF DIONYSIS! THAT IS AWSOME!
Oh and also, with SSD, am I right in saying that future storages will become smaller?
I'm in at the $500 mark.
I think you will see these become useful as operating system (boot) disks on desktops sometime soon, with traditional platters used to supplement media storage. Hopefully price-feasible in the next couple of years.
Magnetic disks will not go away as long as media size is so big. My raw files from my camera are 15mb each, my music files are 5mb each, and my standard definition DVD ISOs are 8gb each. I have a 1.5tb NAS and I am out of room and need to upgrade to 1tb drives!
Looking forward to the full review, guys. Color me jealous...
When 1TB versions of these are available I'm selling my house and brining my mega-SSD set-up into my tent :P
2,000,000 hour MTBF? That's like...
just a sec...
228+ YEARS! Sweet, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren can laugh at what a tool I was.
2,000,000MTBF means diddly squat.
If you'd look at current mechanical hard disk MTBF's they are also pretty high, but some may fail a whole lot earlier than that and some may fail later. It's an estimate based on statistics and not an exact number.
I cannot wait for the day when all laptops have SSDs as available options at the same size as HDDs are now. Oh how sweet it will be to be able to charge a laptop at night and use it the whole day!
I don't think anyone should be saying these drives are failure free... Sure there are no heads to crash, but I can't count how many flash devices (CF/SD/USB/etc.) I've had fail over the years... either corrupting files or flat out becoming un-usable. MAYBE the drives will be faster and they should easily use less power, but I'm not so sure that they'll prove to be safer for data than modern hard drives. I suppose only time will tell.
Right on, Tyler. Ask any professional photographer about how skittish flash memory can be! Why do you think big, pro dSLR's have two CompactFlash slots with redundancy as an option? :)
..Um, did u read "2 MILLION hours MTBF"?
Exactly. I have plenty of (authentic) flash memory fail in many years of using them. I always make a point of backing up content to my harddrive every few days because data corruptions tends to happens randomly causing total lose of content.
These failures are not permanent and a quick format would fix things. Not the data though.
These don't use the same memory design as CF cards, which is why a 64gb SSD costs 3x as much as the same amount of capacity in CF/SD in a much larger form factor. They are designed to transfer faster (especially random read/writes), and have wear leveling. Consumer flash memory is designed to transfer fast in sequential access only, low cost, and for maximum density. Even now you can buy an IDE to CF converter, but it's mainly used for embedded systems that don't do a lot of writes.
WANT! Hell I would settle for an IDE version at 40gb for my old school srx77 ultra portable.Im sure the demand will be huge for these once they start pumping them out the the price will plummet with a quickness. (wishfull thinking?)
Needs more capacity.
If you put two of the 1.8" versions in a box, will they fit in a MacBook Pro?
And, I’ll just keep my rant going… If I can have a MacTablet with a real processor (not a large iPhone), I’d gladly drop a couple grand for 200 gigs of solid-state pleasure! 128 is so close.
God I want one of these. After you're done testing it, please send it to me. k? thanks.
make an iPhone out of that, Steve, and you're flying!
A 2.5" hard drive in that? That thing would be pretty big... My Archos 504 has a 2.5" hard drive and it ain't small.
Yes, yes. Very nice. But will it blend?
So, Engadget... Is this drive gonna show up in one of your famed leave-a-comment-get-a-prize giveaways? Or are gonna have to break up?
Erm... "Or are we gonna have to break up?"
$1000 for a SSD. I like them, a lot, for they cost a lot, too.
Sweet merciful crap that's expensive. I can't wait till this is in mainstream price range. Man, oh man, that's gonna be sweet.
It's so sexy.
I would spoon with it before putting it into my tablet.
I am warming to SSD the more I read about it and I can't wait till it becomes mainstream, although I must admit that when hard disks are finally gone, I will miss the reassuring ticking sound it makes as it works away... that sound will be all but a distant memory...
Yeah, about as much as I miss the screeching of my dial-up modem.
Yeah, about as much as I miss the screeching of my dial-up modem.
Seriously, those hard drive noises used to be the only way I knew my computer (running unnamed OS) hadn't completely locked up. If these catch on, what am I supposed to do?!
WOW !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VKqXhvJ5Ic
sweet, but not worth $950-upgrade price in addition to the price of the computer itself...guess I'll have to wait for the pricedrop...hopefully soon!!
In Samsung Korea, you no price drive. Drive price YOU!!!
Ya, But can it play DOOM?
Just die, please?
I don't know much about this. Can you just place it where a normal HDD would go in any other laptop, if you theoretically had this SSD?
Yes, provided your laptop has a SATA interface (not widespread, even now)
My M1330 with one of these babies is due early next week. Can't wait. I expect Engadget will have a review up before then but if not, I'll pop back and let you know how it goes;).
You early adopters are good for 2 things: paying WAY too much for the first wave, knowing that the price will plummet in the next year, and making me SURER FREAKING JEALOUS!!! I want one of these. Bad. Can't wait for the review.
I don't have the patience to wait until the price drops before I buy. I've been waiting for this for months and I'm just going to go for it. Besides, it's tax deductable and in a year or two there'll be the next new technology at a premium price and I'll probably buy that too;). It's a three year investment so not that expensive all told.
envy ...
So wait... you got the drive but you haven't even bothered to take the 15 minutes to put it into a machine to run even a basic HDD test?
So it's simply bragging at this point.
This is the size of SSD I have been waiting for. Anything smaller would require too many compromises for storage. But, I can live with this size, and the low power, quiet operation, low heat production would be sweet!
oooooh can I have it when your finished please!
I'm inclined to agree, but I'd like to see this kind of non-volatile memory built into the laptop, with provision for an extra rotating drive, if desired.
Put the OS and apps on the SSD for performance and power savings, and maintain a conventional HDD for cheap file storage.
I thought Samsung had dumped the brushed metal look... Oh wait.
Juat took delivery of this in my XPS M1330. Fantastic. Fast, cool, energy efficient and very desirable;).
Boot times are great. App load times are fast. The future of ultraportables is definitely here;).
Get one;-).
when I can buy an 8gb SSD to try for less then $50, I'll jump...
not a flash drive mind you, but a real SSD.
Thanks for the scoop, interesting information. FYI I wanted to point out some facts here. Did you all notice the label on the SSD pictures were noted as SATA I, and Engadget labeled this review SATA II? Also, Samsung's site does the SATA II labe. However, SATA-IO.org clearly states this product to be under the SATA I classification, see references below:
REF:
http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
http://www.samsung.com/us/business/semiconductor/newsView.do?news_id=871.0
Just stating the facts tersely, and flaming anyone.
Let the drooling continue please B-)
Please , You bring about MTBF laptop
Now I study University Wolvehampton.
I need this information urgent
Thanks so much
Reagard
Patricia