Samsung's awe-inspiring 256GB SSD now available, still unpriced

We can think of exactly one reason Samsung still won't dish out a price on its completely mind-melting 256GB FlashSSD: because those that have to know, can't afford. The drive, which was announced way back in May of the year two-thousand and eight, doubles the performance rates of the firm's 64GB and 128GB SSDs. More specifically, we're looking at sequential read rates of 220MB/sec and sequential write rates of 200MB/sec, and in layman's terms, it's quick enough to store 25 HD movies in 21 minutes and open basic applications 10 times faster than the quickest 7,200RPM notebook drive. In other words, you want.

[Techie @ Nov 20th 2008 3:41AM]

I don't think anyone want to drop down $1,400 - $2,000 for a 256GB SSD

[Ian @ Nov 20th 2008 3:45AM]

if i had a million dollars i might just do that!

[aznofazns @ Nov 20th 2008 4:10AM]

I wouldn't even do it if I had a million dollars. To me, the majority of Americans are too wasteful when it comes to spending. Nobody needs to plunk down that much money on an SSD unless you are filthy, filthy, FILTHY rich. Why not save that thousand bucks or two so we can help prevent another economic disaster like the one we currently got ourselves into?

[Steve @ Nov 20th 2008 4:26AM]

actually spending would actually help the economy,

Anywho this is nice step towards the ever faster ssd and the speeds we was expecting when they first came out. These will go in the top servers first, as 256gb is more then enough for most server that aren't file servers.
and then the price will come flying down

[nikster @ Nov 20th 2008 4:45AM]

Why not? Those $5000 laptops find buyers... why not get a $3k laptop and pop a 256GB SSD in it?

However... I wonder why nobody makes a hybrid SSD/Hard drive. I need speed for the OS, and for maybe 10GB of my work related data. That needs to fly. But it would easily fit on 32GB. I don't need speed for my 100GB of movies and music. Or for my 100GB of porn. These are perfectly fine on a plain old big slow hard drive.

So the laptop should contain a fast 32GB SSD and cheapo 320 GB hard drive. Total cost when bought separately: $250 - $300 at current prices. Currently this kind of thing can only be done with monster laptops that support two hard disks, but why is it not more common?
Or why not cram the flash into the hard drive and use it as cache (as had been promised a while ago)?

[Mike10010100 @ Nov 20th 2008 6:29AM]

I like this economic downturn! Gas prices have dropped by half!

[Nicholas @ Nov 20th 2008 10:25AM]

Um Sony does do that.

My next dream laptop! =)

http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProduct.action?product=VGN-AW11XU%2FQ&site=voe_en_GB_cons&pageType=Overview&category=VN+AW+Series

[RichardBronosky @ Nov 20th 2008 11:17AM]

"Why not save that thousand bucks or two so we can help prevent another economic disaster like the one we currently got ourselves into?"

A strong economy relies on the exchange of liquid assets. Economic downturns can almost always be attributed to the spending of money that is [merely] speculated to exist in the future.

In non-academic English: Going into debt almost always kills an economy (eventually). (Whether that be the economy of a nation, state, county, city, business, church, or family, it still holds true.) When you go into debt you spend tomorrow's money. When tomorrow gets here*, you are in trouble. This problem is resolved when people spend money they have. That "spending" can be on groceries or fancy restaurants, netbooks or expensive SSDs, charitable donations or investments/savings (which get invested). The only thing you can do with money that is bad for an economy is take it out of circulation. (aka: "Save" it under your mattress.) Huh? But what about debt? Aren't I contradicting myself? No. Debt is not money. Debt is like anti-money. The collision of money and anti-money is similar to that of matter and anti-matter. Tomorrow finally got here*, and this is what it looks like. Go spend some money. Just do it responsibly. For some that means buying 256GB SSDs. For me that means having $0 debt and socking money into low to moderate risk investments to be prepared for layoffs, retirement, and kids going to college (in that order). But, do not think that luxury items or those who purchase them are evil. That's politics. We have to be smarter than that.

[James @ Nov 20th 2008 3:44AM]

Hmm, ill wait a year or two...or more

[BLee @ Nov 20th 2008 5:59AM]

Is there a pricetag on happiness?

[spacegravity4me @ Nov 20th 2008 8:22AM]

that's what she said....

[SiXiam @ Nov 20th 2008 3:47AM]

Yes, I want!

It's nice to see that storage devices are now going to be able to compete with the enormous advancements of all the other computer components...

Better late then never...

Oh, yeah we had such fun magnetic hard-drive, but I think maybe it's time we date other people.
...I then drive to the house of ssd.

[wickedpheonix @ Nov 20th 2008 3:47AM]

I've got a 64 GB re-branded Samsung - it's a friggin' dream man!!! I would KILL for the extra storage space though, I'm really hurting over here on Vista :(

[digitallysick @ Nov 20th 2008 4:01AM]

Thats good speeds love it

[xValentine @ Nov 20th 2008 4:30AM]

The speed is not worth the price tag.

[Nacho PATA @ Nov 20th 2008 7:19PM]

Company just spent over $60K on a SAN to get speeds a little better than that (though MANY more IOPS and 12TB). That was just for drive bays (already had controllers), and it is one of the cheaper brands (read, not EMC).

I'd use it on a server like (ick) exchange or MSQL (tmpdb?) that eats drives for breakfast.

Not all new tech is immediately destined for average Tim the Tech's home PC. So no, the speed would not be worth it ... to you. But it does have it's place.

[Shinigami @ Nov 20th 2008 4:35AM]

... but will it make me type faster?

[Pretol @ Nov 20th 2008 4:35AM]

1gig/5seconds.... 12 gig/min.... that is some good scheet...

[Johan S @ Nov 20th 2008 4:59AM]

If you think the data transfer rate is fast, you should check out the wallet cash transfer rate when purchasing one of these suckers.

[ITRanger @ Nov 20th 2008 5:46AM]

Outstanding!

[Cantevid @ Nov 20th 2008 8:00AM]

unaffordable price.

[ubn2 @ Nov 21st 2008 1:10AM]

what the price in unannounced. this could be one of those sell-at-a-loss items like retailers od to get people to buy their other products.

[mirakutea @ Nov 20th 2008 8:19AM]

So SSDs are really going to blow away rotational media sooner or later for most uses at least.

[Kevin @ Nov 20th 2008 8:20AM]

Finally! I've been waiting for SSDs to hit the 256gb mark for a while now. I have a 200GB hard drive in my laptop and I don't want to "upgrade" to less storage, SSD or not. Now all I need is a little more competition and a little less price! Oh... and if Apple could put it in the Macbook Air, then I'd be just dandy!

[Fanfoot @ Nov 20th 2008 12:37PM]

So far its a 2.5-incher so no, it won't fit in the air, which uses a 1.8-inch drive.

I'd like to put one of these in an Acer Aspire One. A $350 netbook with a $2000 hard disk...

[NoOneKnew @ Nov 20th 2008 9:00AM]

Skip ahead 8 years into the future.

Father, "So how long does it take to load this new game you have son"?

Son, "Loading....what's that"?

[JoeNES @ Nov 20th 2008 8:48AM]

I can't wait until my next computer build: SSD, fanless PSU, passive CPU heatsink = totally silent PC. By that time, I think the price of this will come down.

[Sharone @ Nov 21st 2008 12:11AM]

And of course a motherboard with USB 3.0 support.

[Mike C @ Nov 20th 2008 8:54AM]

Considering how fast people are increasing the sizes of these things, We're probably going to be seeing 1TB+ by mid next year pushing these speeds.

And then at that point, well I don't know what I could possibly need that kind of speed/size for.

[Ricardo @ Nov 20th 2008 9:37AM]

How is it available AND unpriced? So I just walk into a store and say, "I want to buy it", and the store person goes, "sorry, can't sell it, it doesn't have a price".

[GingerFox @ Nov 20th 2008 2:35PM]

they just have a random number generater next to the till, good luck:P

[sonicwind @ Nov 20th 2008 10:01AM]

I'm ordering one the day they're available.

[mirakutea @ Nov 20th 2008 10:33AM]

Oblig: imagine these in RAID :).

[Jase @ Nov 20th 2008 4:04PM]

RAED maybe?

[Mike Bison @ Nov 20th 2008 12:05PM]

Heck, skip the 256gb drive, I can't even find prices or sellers for the 64gb or 128gb drives. You must need to know the secret handshake to even buy from Samsung.

[Fanfoot @ Nov 20th 2008 12:39PM]

Here's the 64GB Samsung drive on newegg for $549.00:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147054

[supersp33d @ Nov 20th 2008 12:42PM]

SWEEET, this drive screams performance & expen$ive! IF you have a CD/DVD drive in your laptop, you can easily swap it out with a Universal HD Caddy (newmodeusDOTcom). Then you can have your dual HD laptop. I bought one for ~$40 and stuck my 250Gb drive in it, and bought a patriot 64 SSD as my main drive. My e1505 seems to breath fire with the SSD! Next step is to buy a slim USB powered CD/DVD enclosure (fleabay) for the CD/DVD drive.

[Omar @ Nov 20th 2008 1:46PM]

This is pretty awesome news. SSDs are getting really close to replacing mechanical drives on laptops. At this rate, we may see a 2.5in 1TB SSD in a little over a year or so. That would pretty much kill mechanical drives in laptops, which were stuck around 250GB for years until recently achieving 500GB. Sure, it's going to be expensive at first, but it will push the prices for everything else down so that the 128-256GB drives that computers typically ship with today are cheap enough for the masses to afford.

[MSM @ Nov 20th 2008 7:45PM]

I am waiting until I see a 512GB for $500,,, I guess I'll be waiting a few years for that!

[locuus @ Nov 20th 2008 9:28PM]

200 MB/sec sequential reading it says, but how much is the random reading/writing speed? I don't think a whole lot of a computer's hard drive work is sequential, especially for a server.

From what I remember them writing about the earlier SSDs, the random reading/writing speeds, which are much closer to real world usage are drastically lower than the sequential write/reads.

[Anthony @ Nov 22nd 2008 6:01AM]

has anybody found anywhere where this is available to buy...? just got a dell m6400 covet and would like to get me one of these...

[Auricle @ Nov 22nd 2008 5:14PM]

I have a few Cremax 122SKGF’s removable trays housing noisy WD Raptors in a rack mount PC. Would love to replace the Raptors with the new Samsung 250gig SSDs. But would like to use my existing 5.25 drive bays and retain the removability the Cremax allows.

Anybody know of a product/adapter that might help me out.

Thanks.

R.

[guest @ Nov 23rd 2008 7:34PM]

the only thing people need more than 250gb for is video. 99% of the people who use computers can fit all their music and photos on 250gb with room to spare. those who are excited about 500+gb drives are PORN ADDICTS. come one, confess that you just want a place to store your giant porn library, you filthy heathens. sluts.

[godlyhalo @ Nov 24th 2008 2:30PM]

Porn and torrents, thats what large hard drives are for.....what could you fill 500gb of text files, music, and movies?

[Ed @ Nov 25th 2008 11:49AM]

My girlfriend and I have four terabyte NAS drives, about 75% full -- no porn. (Well -- less than 10g. :D )