Toshiba announces 512GB SSD, other smaller SSDs

We'd heard Toshiba was working on 512GB SSDs back in April, and the company's delivering right before CES. The industry-first half-terabyte drive is the highlight of Tosh's new line of 43nm MLC drives, which also includes 64GB, 128GB and 256GB units in both 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors -- just right to pudge out your laptops and netbooks. No word on price, but you've got plenty of time to save up, as these won't hit mass production until at least April.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 4:54AM]

Slap one of these babies in my PS3!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 5:13AM]

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. :)

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 11:10AM]

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?

[xxxsam Posted Dec 18th 2008 7:29AM]

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...)

[Ethan Posted Dec 18th 2008 5:32AM]

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.

[boutch55555 Posted Dec 18th 2008 7:03AM]

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...

[Vitruviux Posted Dec 18th 2008 10:51AM]

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.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 8:27AM]

@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)

[Level 5 Posted Dec 18th 2008 8:57AM]

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?

[Levi Posted Dec 18th 2008 10:17AM]

these things aren't small enough yet for that.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 11:13AM]

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.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 11:28AM]

Dear Engadget Super Editor,

It should read half a TeRa-Byte not GiGa-Byts, LOL OMG

[darngooddesign Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:38PM]

Dear "Late-to-the-Game"

LOL OMG, You're like totally the first person to mention that.

[MickBurke Posted Dec 18th 2008 1:47PM]

Yea, too bad I'll never buy another toshiba product as long as I live...

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 2:34PM]

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.

[tonyp12 Posted Dec 18th 2008 2:53PM]

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.

[neoprimalgmailcom Posted Dec 19th 2008 12:33PM]

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?

[gsmith Posted Jan 25th 2009 11:55PM]

So how about putting SSDs in a RAID 0 over an eSATA connection. That would be awesomely fast.