Pretec debuts CFast storage card, proclaims it world's smallest SATA SSD

Pretec has already pushed standard CompactFlash cards pretty far, and it now looks to be branching out beyond the confines of the format, with it today announcing its new CompactFlash-sized (but apparently not CompactFlash-compatibile) CFast storage card. Helping the card earn that title is its use of a high-speed SATA interface, which boosts the maximum transfer speed to a blistering 375MB per second, or roughly 300% faster than the speediest CompactFlash card on the market today. In a bit of a twist to these usual announcements, Pretec says the the first 32GB cards are actually available starting today (albeit not directly to consumers), with some 64GB card promised to be following "soon."

[Makavre @ Jan 9th 2009 2:18PM]

No Picture ???



:(

[Coolty @ Jan 9th 2009 2:43PM]

use your imagination, it looks like a CF card.

[ingle_d23 @ Jan 9th 2009 2:48PM]

OK, but I can only imagine it with boobs

[Scott @ Jan 9th 2009 2:55PM]

if it really looked like a CF card, it would probably work in a CF card reader and not have a SATA interface.

[breaklaw @ Jan 9th 2009 3:04PM]

If it isn't CF compatiable then why is it a CF card? Or a CF sized card?

[Wolfticket @ Jan 9th 2009 3:12PM]

A dual interface CF card with a fast sata adaptor would be nice for people who do a lot of photography.
CFast is a terrible name though, whatever it is.

[Scott @ Jan 9th 2009 5:21PM]

yes but only if it was compatible with cameras that accept CF cards. The line "not compact flash compatible" in the description makes me doubt the usefulness. I'm open to the possibility that is wrong and it's got 2 modes. Use it as a CF card with CF compatible devices and then an ability to attach to a SATA port where available for super fast xfers. There is a USB memory stick that does this very thing. It's USB on one end and eSATA on the other.

[Wwhat @ Jan 9th 2009 3:48PM]

I wonder if all SSD's have the same lifetime and equally good algorithms to prevent overwriting the same area too much, if not then I'd like to know who's reliable and who's just boasting speed, I bet such a company would have a site consisting of too much (adobe-)flash content, or maybe not.

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 9th 2009 5:32PM]

Engadget should require their writers to actually research something before writing...

1) First of all, nowhere it is mentioned that "CFast" is not a proprietary technology, but actually the next-gen CompactFlash *standard*.

2) I don't know where he got 375MB/sec, but "CFast", like the regular SATA standard used for HDD/SSDs (aka SATA/300) is limited to 300MB/sec. Perhaps he took the raw rate of 3.0Gps? SATA has 20% encoding overheard, so 3000Mbps turns into 300MBps.

3) Currently-existing high-speed CF cards can't do much over 40MB/sec, so they are not in need of this new SATA interface yet, although it will be nice for the future.

[Mike @ Jan 9th 2009 8:15PM]

The card looks like a PCI slot on a motherboard with something seperating the 2 interfaces, around similar size to a compact flash card. You can see them on the Pretec website.