Samsung's low-power 128GB SSDs go mass production on the cheap

Good news on the SSD front. Announced back in January, Samsung is now mass producing its 1.8- and 2.5-inch SSDs in both 64GB and 128GB capacities. And since these SATA II SSDs are based on MLC -- 64 MLC NAND flash chips of 16 gigabits each in the 9.5-mm thick 128GB SSD -- you can expect them to be cheap by comparison to SLC-based SSDs and faster by comparison to traditional laptop hard disk drives while lasting about 20 times longer than the expected 4-5 year life span of that mechanical spinner. We're talking 70MB/s writes and 90MB/s reads and power consumption rated at just 0.2-watts idle or 0.5-watts when active -- far less than any of the models (including the SSDs tested by LAPTOP) tested by Tom's which should help put any battery consumption concerns to rest. Heaping happy on top of good, Samsung tells us to expect the 256GB SSD to go mass production by the end of the year. Clap clap clap.

[lordofthedirectrix @ Jul 9th 2008 1:23AM]

That's excellent news!

[wickedpheonix @ Jul 9th 2008 1:26AM]

Price?

[gad get @ Jul 9th 2008 1:49AM]

"...On the cheap," duh!

[Aguiluz @ Jul 9th 2008 1:49AM]

Hope it's right.

[Jeremy K. @ Jul 9th 2008 2:09AM]

Here's hoping 128GB will be $199 and 64GB will be $99.

I highly doubt it, but it'll be that cheap someday.

[Ethyriel @ Jul 9th 2008 2:47AM]

Probably about 5-10% off the OCZ Core prices.

[Huh? @ Jul 9th 2008 3:09AM]

Actually, OCZ SSD's are "rebadged" Samsung SSD's. XD

[Ghen @ Jul 9th 2008 8:02AM]

I'm willing to pay $200 for the 64GB. On that you can load the OS and any one game besides MMOs for the life of the drive. That will make me happy.

[Eric @ Jul 9th 2008 1:26AM]

Cool, so please Creative can we get a 128GB Zen or atleast a 64, you were the first to put 32 in, why not step it up a notch

[Creative @ Jul 9th 2008 1:30AM]

No.

[SirPasta117 @ Jul 9th 2008 1:39AM]

"no"

WTF they were the first to use 32gb flash. That comment screams apple fanboy

[salimai @ Jul 9th 2008 1:47AM]

Woosh.

[Pochi @ Jul 9th 2008 1:55AM]

@SirPasta117

Your comment screams "retard."

[loosely_coupled @ Jul 9th 2008 4:46AM]

SSDs are NOT used in personal media players. They use much higher quality Flash and are integrated with a much better controller system.

The Flash memory and controller you find in a media player / USB stick / SD card are much simpler, slower, and less durable.

[rektide @ Jul 9th 2008 5:59AM]

@loosely_coupled: you are just making stuff up. the flash in this drive is almost certainly much higher performance than your media player; theres no reason to put high quality (read: high performance) flash in a media player when it just has to read fast enough to play a low bitrate movie. performance metrics aside, this drive probably does use the same types of flash as a media player. second, the controller on this ssd is certainly worlds advanced a media player's flash controller. media players just have simple NAND/NOR flash serial interfaces muxed directly to a cpu, this drive undoubtely has multichannel data access to achieve high speed data transfer, and the controller doubles duty by providing a standard sata interface / bad block management / load levelling subsystems.

[David @ Jul 9th 2008 7:25AM]

Rektide: you are correct, but I think you misunderstood that he was saying the same thing.

[chung @ Jul 9th 2008 1:32AM]

I've heard that Macbook Air now ships with this SSD and that's why the price has been dropped dramatically. (MBA used to carry OCZ one)

[Faroesima @ Jul 9th 2008 1:38AM]

That's the world upside down!
Normally everything that ships with an Apple costs more, not less.

[rektide @ Jul 9th 2008 6:02AM]

The Macbook Air SSD is made possible because of the plethora of portable media players. Portable media players far exceed sales of all SSD drives combined right now; Macbook Air and this drive both have portable media players to thank for advancing flash memory to price points low enough for SSD. I doubt the Macbook Air had any real influence or impact on this drive becoming available.

[Bill @ Jul 10th 2008 9:32AM]

MacBook Air uses a parallel-ATA interface, but all new SSDs are micro-SATA.

Also, the MBA can only use 5mm high SSDs - 9.5mm is too tall.

[thedesolate1 @ Jul 9th 2008 1:34AM]

Now we just need an OS that takes full advantage of this tech...

[helloUser @ Jul 9th 2008 1:36AM]

id like two of these in RAID1 on my desktop.

thanks.

[Faroesima @ Jul 9th 2008 1:43AM]

How many times a day your desktop falls of the table?
Just a ballpoint figure will do.

[gad get @ Jul 9th 2008 1:48AM]

A "ballpoint figure" which dispenses ink onto solid surfaces when pressure is applied to the business end?

[slackercow @ Jul 9th 2008 1:57AM]

i would like ballpark figure, plz

[Jack @ Jul 9th 2008 4:19AM]

RAID0 might be a bit better for speed...

[Ghen @ Jul 9th 2008 8:05AM]

Just to clarify, I also want SSDs in my desktop for faster game loading times, less moving parts to break, and lower power consumption in that order. Just because its not portable doesn't mean those things don't matter. I've also been known to put mobile processors in desktop systems for power consumption reasons.

[retro77 @ Jul 9th 2008 1:45AM]

Sweet, I'll swap out my 7200RPM 160GB in my XPS1530. Oh about that pricing?

[Pochi @ Jul 9th 2008 1:56AM]

You have an XPS1530 with a 7200RPM 160GB HDD?!

Can I have your autograph?!

[jkr @ Jul 9th 2008 2:03AM]

looks like MLC isn't as fast as HDD's
MLC 120 MB/sec read, 30 write http://www.mydigitalssd.com/
HDD1 3 Gb/sec (for some reason I think it's probably less) http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16822148288
HDD2 150 MB/sec http://www1.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=709904&cm_mmc=Traffic%20Leader-_-Overture%20SMX-_-Pro-Tec-_-Maxtor_200GB_Ultra_Series_SATA_Internal_Har

[futurepastnow @ Jul 9th 2008 2:24AM]

You know what, I'll trade a little bit of speed to have a drive I can dropkick without hurting my data.

[jason @ Jul 9th 2008 2:25AM]

I think it has more to do w/ your mobo.

old motherboards cant do anything near that fast

[jkr @ Jul 9th 2008 2:35AM]

don't know if I can edit my posts, so I'll just reply. That was a narrow selection of products.

[Alex @ Jul 9th 2008 2:43AM]

The SATA interface speed that you listed for HDD1 & HDD2 has nothing to do with the read/write speed of the drive...

[Ethyriel @ Jul 9th 2008 2:46AM]

Uhm... I don't know how to tell you this, but that's the max speed of the interface. The drives aren't actually anywhere near that fast. Right now 2.5" drives are maxing about 60MB/s on the inner tracks, 40MB/s on the outer tracks.

[loosely_coupled @ Jul 9th 2008 4:52AM]

"Looks like MLC isn't as fast as HDD's"

Thats an incredibly ignorant statement. That's like saying electric vehicles aren't as fast as gasoline combustion engine vehicles. It COMPLETELY DEPENDS on the specific implementation of either technology.
There are 3 different sizes of HDDs, 5 different rotational velocities, 3-5 different interfaces, not too mention hundreds of different disk controllers.
Although MLC isn't traditionally as fast as SLC when speaking in terms of raw performance, it really depends on the whole architecture of the SSD, especially the disk controller.

[Jeremy K. @ Jul 9th 2008 2:08AM]

w00t!!!! Maybe Cowon will make an A4 with 64 or 128GB of SSD. Awesome! This is what I've been waiting for.

[Ethyriel @ Jul 9th 2008 2:43AM]

Maybe they'll fix ogg playback noise while they're at it.

[tekdroid @ Jul 9th 2008 2:34AM]

gee, love to see how they worked out those long life claims.

[neofolklore @ Jul 9th 2008 7:18AM]

They started testing it in 2003 and it just died now. Math, genius.

[tekdroid @ Jul 9th 2008 9:34AM]

Sure, love to assume that. Where's the testing method? Where's the proof? Oh that's right...nowhwere. How convenient...

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Jul 9th 2008 4:05PM]

It's a statistical calculation. Usually, the drive manufacturer has a room full of hundreds of drives and at set (weekly) intervals, over a period of x number of months (6 maybe) they check to see how many drives have failed. Each failure is factored in to the equation and lowers the total MTBF factor. (There are several formulas used to calculate MTBF.)

I'd love to add more, but Engadget Allows Only 3 URLs.

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/pc_hardware_faq/8_13_My_drive_lists_a_MTBF_of_300_000_hours_Will_it_really_last_34_years.html
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/learningresource/whitepapers/LearningResource_OverallReliability.html
http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/fileserverdisks.html

(Please correct my errors, It's been a while since I learned about this)

[Jeff Lewis @ Jul 9th 2008 2:53AM]

yaddayadda...

Well, since we don't have an actual price - just a 'it's gotta be cheaper than'... so we can't really compare price per unit storage which is the major difference between these two products.

And unless MLC doesn't have cell-fatigue (or at least has far less of it), then the 20x numbers sound like they're pulled out of someone's a.... hat.... Then again, let's assume they're right - we're talking 80 to 100 year lifespans. Why does that just seem insanely improbable unless we're talking all that time in a box on the shelf?

But ok - as I noted before - how many of us hold on to their laptops for 5 years? (And while we're at it - where did the 4 to 5 year lifespan for HDs in laptops come from? I have several laptops and four of them are 8 years old or more and their HDs are fine... Collectable laptops, ok?)

Then there's the speed. The 3Gbps figure isn't realistic - that's SATA2 max bandwidth, no one gets that - but 160MBps is more believable. Mind you, the real issue is access speed - and at least in theory, SSD should win there even if it's not that much better at burst.

Powerwise, we'll I'll wait until someone does the OBVIOUS test and sticks a current meter on these things and just measures real world power consumption rather than trying all the indirect tests.

Finally, if you REALLY have a need to dropkick your laptop - then it's only fair that you'll have to spend more on your laptop. Stupidity shouldn't be free.

For the rest of us, a tiny amount of self-control and forward thinking and we can save a ton on storage devices.

Cheers.

[blah @ Jul 9th 2008 3:12AM]

Hint: OCZ SSD's are just "rebadged" Samsung SSD's.

[linuxamp @ Jul 9th 2008 5:23AM]

"20 times longer than the expected 4-5 year life span of that mechanical spinner" Really? Wonder how long SLC lasts since MLC is supposed to be significantly worse than SLC as far as error and failure.

[Gaz @ Jul 9th 2008 6:15AM]

can if be fitted into a PS3?? :-?

[OX4 @ Jul 9th 2008 6:23AM]

So, is every post regarding an SSD going to mention Tom's power consumption article? I can imagine 3 years from now when the new 1 TB SSDs come out for $100, Engadget will sneak in a comment about Tom's power consumption article of 2008.

[Wwhat @ Jul 9th 2008 7:03AM]

I'm not sure if it's good or not, I think that kind of story as tom's need to be cleansed from people's mind by pointing out facts so that they don't cling to it when any part of that story that was valid isn't valid anymore, typically people do cling to such things so long, like the famous UPnP scare story, which was valid for like 3 months and only under certain circumstances but people still believe it to be current and valid (and under all circumstances) years later.

[Sheila @ Jul 9th 2008 8:26AM]

Please let the Dell E Slim have the option of the 64g of this drive!!!!

[Kris @ Jul 9th 2008 8:57AM]

That thing looks beautiful though.