Micron reveals RealSSD lineup of 32GB / 64GB SSDs

Check it -- we've got a new entrant in the ever-expanding solid state disc market, and it goes by the name Micron. The firm's first SSD lineup (dubbed RealSSD) will feature a native SATA II interface, a rugged, lightweight plastic casing, and suck down less than two-watts of power while active. Furthermore, the units will come in both 1.8- and 2.5-inch iterations, with a 32GB and 64GB flavor to be available in each size. The newly launched family is expected to slip into mass production in Q1 of next year, and on a related note, the 1GB to 8GB RealSSD Embedded USB range -- which is slated to ship en masse next month -- was also introduced. We know, you've hung around this long just to get the low down on pricing, but unfortunately, Micron has yet to dole out that oh-so-crucial information.

[Flashpoint @ Nov 28th 2007 2:56PM]

Give me a 100 GB SSD in a laptop for less than $1000 with a web cam and a Core 2 Duo and I'll be very happy.

Most people who get laptops for education divisions would be perfectly happy with a 32 GB NAND because they need it only for web browsing and Microsoft Office documents/spreadsheets.

No need making stuff ridiculously expensive and innacessible when lesser space is usable.

[Blackster @ Nov 28th 2007 3:05PM]

16gb even would be enough for certain programs and your os of choice ;)

heck my os and apps-partition is only 15gb big!

[BigD145 @ Nov 28th 2007 3:39PM]

With the speed and size and weight of these, I'd settle for two drives. One for the OS and one for page file and everything else. Drives like this should be made in a hot swappable form factor considering they have a higher vibration tolerance.

But like many people say, we need a price range.

[Leonard Nimrod @ Nov 28th 2007 11:55PM]

Flashpoint wrote, "No need making stuff ridiculously expensive "

Exactly! So why the hell have SSD in laptop when HHDs are so much cheaper per GiB? If you rally the need the speed and durability that comes from SSDs than paying more than a grand for a C2D notebook shouldn't be an issue.

[crescentdavid @ Nov 28th 2007 2:57PM]

It looks as if this could be implemented in a variety of ways ... I personally like the idea of a hybrid desktop with the OS & Programs in SSD and data on a conventional hard drive. It'll definitely open the door for some ultra light, power-saving portables.

[engadget.mlc @ Nov 28th 2007 3:51PM]

You mean like the Vaio TZ? The model with a 64GB SSD and a 200GB HDD is only $4k...

[KC @ Nov 28th 2007 4:44PM]

You mean, like the hybrid HDD that Seagate has?

[cromas @ Nov 28th 2007 5:59PM]

Problem with this whole "OS on the SSD, Data on HDD" thing is, though you get to reap the speed and battery-saving benefits of the SSD, you don't get the feature that I am personally most excited about: shock tolerance. I would rather keep my OS & Apps on a hard drive and my data on the SSD. Loading apps off a hard drive doesn't take so long, and if it breaks, it's just a reinstall. It's the many GB of data that I'd like to load quickly, and it's the same data that I'd like to get off spinning magnetic platters as soon as possible.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Nov 28th 2007 8:29PM]

Lets not forget that HDD's can be set on fire and still have their data recovered. That you cannot say the same thing about an SSD, making the HDD an ideal back-up solution for your silicon based storage. I should also add, Flash based memory has a data retention life of 10years and I have several pre-1993/94 hard drives that still boot to DOS after being in storage for more than 10 years.

Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to the advantages of SSD, but the HDD will still have it's place for some time to come as each has it's own inherent disadvantages.

[Me @ Nov 28th 2007 3:02PM]

Everytime one of these flash manufacturers releases news on such an item without a price I lose interest more and more.

Remove the news item altogether, noones going to give a crap if the price isnt there, which is the only thing that matters here.

[Steven @ Nov 28th 2007 3:03PM]

Will it be easy to replace your regular laptop HDD with one of these?

[Paulmichael @ Nov 28th 2007 3:07PM]

Yes, if you have a SATA II port. I've got an mALX, so I'm personally planning on picking up a 32 GB version that will have the OS installed, and with my other SATA slot I'll keep the regular 100 GB hdd. Should be awesome.

[Speddy @ Nov 28th 2007 3:05PM]

Micron...crucial... I see what you are "plugging" there.

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 28th 2007 4:32PM]

They said "dole" too... does that imply fruit products?

[tresmith @ Nov 28th 2007 3:20PM]

If you know what's good for you, you should not buy any SSDs right now. with all the players in this market, these things are going to get cheap fast. early adopters will get hosed for sure. I predict that not too far into the future SSDs will be cheaper per unit of storage than regular hard drives.

[anonymous @ Nov 28th 2007 5:02PM]

don't count on SSDs being cheaper per unit for at least another 5-7 years

[paragraph @ Nov 28th 2007 3:36PM]

Said it before, and i'll say it again, call me when the $/gb reaches within ~$1 of hard disks and then we can talk, until then SSD is overpriced for what it does, it may be fast, but the cost just isn't worth it, add to that the space limitations currently and we're looking at a sad camper.

A laptop isn't going to have this and a hard drive, so 64gb isn't enough for most people these days (with music, and movies, and whatnots)

A desktop could easily squeeze in a 10k rpm raptor at over 100gb for the same price, and not notice much of a performace boost (allthough, i do recocknize the fact that hard disks are not as stable as SSD)

personally, i don't see a real win for the consumer yet, and when that happens i'll be a happy adopter, but not til that day (256gb drives for under $100, thats what i want ;))

[anonymous @ Nov 28th 2007 5:18PM]

the biggest thing an SSD provides at this time is a huge reduction in the amount of electricity needed to access the data which can more than double battery life. Size is a concern at this time but that is being overcome bit by bit ( no pun intended ). a couple of months ago, the biggest was just 1GB and no they are starting on 64GB. In another year or so, they will be up to 250 or 300 GB SSDs. Until, they get up to what consumers of such devices consider a decent size ( >120GB ),and purchases start to increase, prices will be outrageous

[Spanky @ Nov 28th 2007 5:46PM]

There are laptops on the market that contain two HDDs, so I would think your statement "A laptop isn't going to have this and a hard drive," is wrong. The SSD would be installed and contain the OS and system related files for stability, minimal power consumption and quick boot times while the HDD will be where the bulk of the users data storage will be.

[Mark Jordan @ Nov 28th 2007 3:43PM]

Re: ..."Micron has yet to dole out that oh-so-crucial information."

*snort*

you know... it's that kind of subtle humor that keeps me reading this blog... Problem is, I have no doubt most of the humor slips right by me...

[Ron Hands @ Nov 28th 2007 3:59PM]

Why in the world are we still calling these things discs or drives? They don't have discs or drives in them so why continue with a name that is so inacurate? Let's see who can come op with the best name for these devices. I'll start with a couple of choices. How about SS for Solid Storage or CS for Circuit Storage or MS for Main Storage. If you really need to incorporate that letter D into this use the word Device on the end. MSD for Main Storage Device.

[anonymous @ Nov 28th 2007 5:21PM]

you'd probably be surprised to know that the D does stand for device. Because marketers are not always the brightest bunch, due to assumptions by others or intentional mis-labellings the D being taken for the word drive is more because that is what they are replicating function of.

[ET @ Nov 28th 2007 4:05PM]

Two stats are missing--Read times and write times. I can wait on the price but if you aren't fast, don't bother. This tech is revolutionary if the write speed is 90-100 MB/sec. 60 means the stability is nice but probably a waste of money and time.

[Towncivilian @ Nov 28th 2007 7:54PM]

Seagate's 7200.11 hard drives have a maximum 105MB/s sustained throughput, and a review I read reached around 100 MB with their system. It's not revolutionary.

[Matthew Hilario @ Nov 28th 2007 4:45PM]

is there any company that allows you to customize your laptop with an SSD beside alienware? i'm willing to dish out 500 for a 32gb one but not if i have to buy a 4000 laptop.

[anonymous @ Nov 28th 2007 5:31PM]

Dell provides what you are asking for:

Dell Latitude ATG D620

here is a notebook review with information

www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3658

[paragraph @ Nov 28th 2007 6:16PM]

There are few laptops that do have multiple hard drives, they are the big beefy ones with the 1 hour battery life, the desktop processor, and the unessisary video chipsets.

I'm talking about consumer goods here. I guess i was a bit vauge there, but i never said it couldn't i said it isn't. If you go into a big box store you'll be lucky to find a laptop that has two hard drives in it because they make up a small percent of laptops.

if size were to reduce significantly (lets say to 1/4 of the size of a hard drive) i can see a 32gb SSD very useful, thats just enough room for the OS and some important applications (Office, Adobe Products, etc), up it to 64 and you have something that could hold damn near all of your apps. But right now, AFIK we're talking about something that mounts in place of a hard drive, and the 2nd reason (behind compatability) is because that much room is needed. In time sizes will shrink, but i doubt these will replace hard drives any time soon. Take a NAS situation, where you need to condense 2tb of usable space into a single RAID array, how are you going to do that with anything under 256gb/disk? and really would you want to spend that much for SSD? These things are what, like on the order of $300 for 32gb? i could get a 1tb hard drive for just about that, the $/gb isn't even close to being something reasonable. If you take the pricples of moore's law*, you get something like 2012 before SSD prices get that low, and then what about hard drive prices? even if disk space dosn't go up, costs will come down, cheaper more effecint means of production will be developed. By that time we could be seeing a 1tb hard drive costing a scant $50.

*I know moore's law is not a law, is constantly broken, and given it's history flash memory will probably surpass moore's law, but i think you get my point, hard disk drives can still be developed further, and will continue to be developed further.

One of these days MRAM, SSD Disks, 76 Core Cell Processors, Tactile Holographic Displays, and eInk printers will be the norm, and cost what a cheap eMachines costs now... but until then i'm not adopting any of those technologies, what good is a 4 Core processor when the majority of (consumer grade, ie: games, office apps, anything windows based) software utilizes only one of them? (dont give me lip, you know i'm right, and i do have a Dual core computer, so don't say I've never experinced it)

Anywho, back on topic here for a second. Since there isn't going to be a 512gb SSD for under $200 in the year 2007, i'm not insterested in buying, but when the sizes shrink, and the costs follow suit, i'll get one.

[Alex VC @ Nov 28th 2007 10:47PM]

Wait... Micron? MICRON? The "back in 2000 we sold horrible computers by the six-pack at Wal-Mart with Windows ME on them" Micron?!

I fear for all your data's safety.

[benjim @ Nov 29th 2007 11:38AM]

Your obviously an idiot since you know nothing about Micron. Go do some research.

[Jason @ Nov 29th 2007 2:19PM]

I don't care what anyone says...this is some of the most exciting stuff I've seen on engadget in a little while.

[SJT @ Jan 10th 2008 7:07PM]

Will the Real Slim Sha-D please stand up? Sorry, couldn't resist. I hate when companies make tacky names for products. As if Samsung's SSDs are somehow less 'real'?