Toshiba announces 512GB SSD, other smaller SSDs
By Nilay Patel 
posted Dec 18th 2008 3:20AM
posted Dec 18th 2008 3:20AM
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APRIL! Come on!
Look mate, as long as it doesn't come out on April 1st, I think everybody will be happy that the SSD thing is finally starting to get somewhere, go hush hush in the corner now and touch yourself or whatever you usually get up to in-between destroying the atmosphere in club:engadget.
Perhaps you may want to reconsider writing "half-gig" as it has exceeded that many times over.
Yea is it just me or does it hurt your brain to read that... Atleast I'll only see the post once.
Also, is it just me or does anyone else feel that when Engadget wants to fix a word in their articles, they first setup a meeting, discuss the issue for a couple of hours, create a poll in between them, then chose one of them to go in to the quest of changing that simple mistake?
maybe they count the reader comments concerning and when they reach a certain number, they fix the mistake?
Not only that, but the mistakes are pretty frequent. Engadget writers should re-read their articles before posting, or get another writer to read them over.
Just think of the damage it would do to Toshiba's stock price if an error like this was uncorrected. Engadget could be responsible for a japanese government bailout.
Half a gig?
Man, I'm going to party like it's 1999.
I think you mean half-terabyte unit...not half-gigabyte.
It's a half TB. Not a half gig. Haha. But sweet, none-the-less.
1 please.
I guess good for laptops, but its MLC...
Hopefully Samsung trumps them with a 512 GB ...
"The industry-first half-gig drive" ehhm that would be 512MB. That probably should have read "The industry-first half-TB drive"
@Nilay
Lol, I think a lot of people are noticing your mistake.
why, oh why, can we not edit our comments.
Or just an edit button for article instead
@Mic2000
"Or just an edit button for article instead"
Engadget gone Wikipedia.....that would be a scary day indeed.
All these nice powers of 2 and yet intel has its 80gb x-25, what gives?
yea everyone has already caught the mistake ... now its only how long till they get to the update!
Did somebody forget to tell Toshiba that MLC SSDs perform like....CRAP?????????
They are slower and run hotter than traditional hard drives and cost 2-3 times as much.
That's actually not true. Some MLC SSDs (namely those made by intel and possibly others in the future) vastly outperform traditional hard drives and even beat SLC SSDs in certain situations.
Welcome to 6 months ago. Read: Intel.
Thank you for playing.
This looks really good at first, until you find out that its MLC and not SLC SSD. This makes me believe that this is rather a "ha, we're first!" product, rather than a true breakthrough in capacity (as it would have been if it was SLC).
Still, with much faster access times, an SSD is still heaps better in many ways.
Has it ever been about something else than being first?
AWESOME! Now, please announce more affordable ones!
"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", Daft Punk.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4ItqVgaTIjI&feature=related
That's how long I've been on ya!
Lets hope these are FAST and reasonably priced to compete with the SanSung breed. I understand Toshiba took a large stake in Mtron the leader in fast flash who uses FPGA as the controller. Now the Toshiba people can put that FPGA into a cheaper and smaller ASIC within weeks. Or implement similar with embeded controller and DRAM combo.
If the read rates are less than 200MBps it will not be competitive. The write rates better be over 120MBps. Yes, give the Intel X-25 a good kick. I think 512GB is way over board while 256GB is just perfect for a notebook. And it has to be fast otherwise the coming 7200 rpm 1/2 Terabyte drives are just round the corner at rock bottom prices for sure.
I think pricing will matter more. By the way, what are you doing that needs a 200 MBps read rate? Multiple uncompressed HDTV streams? Isn't that what a RAID array configuration is for?
A 200 MBps read can load the entire Vista OS into RAM before you finish reading this sentence, ok the sentence isn't finished yet, hmm ok fine I'll end the sentence now; just kidding, ok fine it's ended.
FYI, cut & pasted from the link:
Reading speed Maximum speed 240MBps (sequential mode)
Writing speed Maximum speed at 200MBps (sequential mode)
Reading speed Maximum speed 240MBps (sequential mode)
Writing speed Maximum speed at 200MBps (sequential mode)
http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/12-17-2008/0004943967&EDATE=
200MB/sec writing with MLC??
"I think 512GB is way over board while 256GB is just perfect for a notebook."
Maybe if all you're concerned about is notebooks, sure. But I'm waiting for the day these can replace desktop drives as well. 512GB is still way too small and the drive is likely still way too expensive. Nice progress, but still a long way to go.
I just want it in my iPhone.
Any Phone with 512 GB SSD: $1000 - $1500
Apple iPhone with 512 GB SSD: $6500 - $7000
But the apple logo is totally worth the extra bucks. That and the white headphones...
You mean iPhonies?
@ Saad Rabia
I'm pretty sure the 512GB version already costs anywhere in the range of $700-$1000, and please saying that Apple products are 6X more expensive than competing products show nothing more than ignorance these days. They are priced much more reasonably nowadays. It still amazes me how some people cling on to age old stereotypes and use it even now when clearly prices show otherwise.
I don't support that original poster (Trevor)...but your point was just plain stupid. I think people get the point now.
Worry not. I'm sure iFixit will have a way. Of course, that would mean that I could store more stuff on my iPhone than my computer, but it'd still be cool.
@PM1
That is only partially correct. Obviously Apple's products do not cost 6X more than a comparable product from Dell/HP/IBM, but they are more expensive. It does really depend on the circumstance... It appears that the higher cost products like the Mac Pro, Xserve, MB Pro, etc are a much higher value than the cheaper consumer products..
If apple didn't overcharge for their products, then why would they do through all the hassle of preventing Psystar from making OSX computers?
Simply stated, psystar could make a computer 1/2 as expensive as Apple and it would have the same specs.
would they go*
for once. just once... i want someone to say "fuck apple".
fuck apple.
you, sir... are my hero for the day.
the half tb one will probably cost over a grand.
More like over ten grand - its "first-in-whatever" product, remember? When there are 0 competitors, you set the price you've always dreamed of.
@Shinigami
Yup. Until Transcend stops by, that is.
Wow, a couple more years and there will be no more hard drives :D
The only problem now is the price
1/2 terabyte?? ROFL.
Slap one of these babies in my PS3!
i'm alsways asking for 1gig drives and getting weird looks, its just such a lovely number that your brain gets all excited when you are asking for it or i guess fondly thinking about it. I don't know if id trust ssd to storage tho, its ok for a os drive but who wants to download half a 'gig' at 10 'kilobits' a second again. :)
So which is more subject to damage?
the potential for crashing the old school Platters/heads?
or
potential for static electric damage?
are they really more durable or are we all just caught up in the hype of no moving parts?
Depends if you're more likely to:
a) drop your netbook
b) be within EMF range of a nuclear strike
(Just kidding - actually I have no idea and it would be interesting to know. SSD drives are kind of new technology, and even if they're based on all the existing flash stuff it's a different usage pattern... hard disks usually don't fail for a couple years or so... so we wouldn't really be due to see mass SSD failures yet...)
Presumably when these get actually popular they'll just have one memory unit rather than a bunch stacked together and they'll be able to shrink these things.
the chips are not fast enough yet... that's why they have to put lots of them to archieve those insane speeds... like putting raid 0 in a single hard drive...
SSDs are advancing really fast, much like flash sticks.
It's great in 2009-2010 a 128GB SDD will be available at a very reasonable price, and there will probably be 1TB SSDs around.
@DCJames,
ummm... actually not quite... MLC drives are cheaper than SLC ones and have a higher storage density... the trouble is in writing to them in short bursts and that's why people don't like them. If you use MFT (from easyco - no i'm not associated in any way) or other tools like supersteady, you will have a much better (perceived) write performance.... I'm using a MLC 128GB disk in my notebook and it was stop and go until I looked at some tuning tools and now it's outperforming pretty much all 7k disks, stays absolutely cool and quiet and uses less energy... but I admit, unless something happens around filesystem implementations and caching SLC is much better (and also orders of magnitude more expensive when comparing GB for GB)
I know the guy who wanted it in his iPhone got low ranked, but I wonder how this would pan out for PMPs like the iPod or Zune? They use 1.8" drives as it is, and I know that means the cost is nowhere NEAR where it needs to be for these things to be at a consumer price point. However.... I wonder if someone would want to hack a 256GB into an iPod Classic? What exactly are the power consumption, heat, and speed benefits of one of these bad boys in an application like that?
these things aren't small enough yet for that.
Yeah i just know i have a very short life for most of my flash drives for what ever reason. perhaps getting sloshed around my pocked isnt very helpful though.
Dear Engadget Super Editor,
It should read half a TeRa-Byte not GiGa-Byts, LOL OMG
Dear "Late-to-the-Game"
LOL OMG, You're like totally the first person to mention that.
Yea, too bad I'll never buy another toshiba product as long as I live...
I didn't expect them to announce 512GB so soon o_o It won't be shipping for a while, but traditional laptop drives reached 500GB only about a year ago. It's just about over for traditional notebook drives. They have been beaten by SSD's in capacity and performance, and they will continue to be as SSD's rapidly evolve. Their price advantage will only keep them viable for a few more years.
As Samsungs 128GB SSD is a $460 optional upgrade at dell
I guess $100 base cost for the regular drive = $560
256gb would cost around $900 if you could buy it right now.
This 500gb may cost $1400 in April when it comes out, so at a price point for only expensive servers.
Yay!
BUT...could these people please work on a $50 120GB SSD vs. upping the space AND price? I'd love to make the switch to SSD full-time for all my computer's OS drives but $270+ for 120GB just doesn't work for value, or am I just massively cheap?
So how about putting SSDs in a RAID 0 over an eSATA connection. That would be awesomely fast.