Super Talent ships $1,500 2.5-inch MasterDrive RX 512GB SSD
By Darren Murph 
posted Apr 8th 2009 4:49PM
posted Apr 8th 2009 4:49PM
[Via HotHardware]
posted Apr 8th 2009 4:49PM
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holy bejesus.. i am allocating my funds elsewhere tyvm
Seagate's 15k.6 SAS drives hit 192MB/s and cost less than $400 for the biggest 450GB model. A Few of those and a cheap RAID 0 SAS controller gives you more performance and storage per dollar.
The 15k.7 drives should be out in the coming months, if history is any sort of predictor, these drives could put out over 220 MB/s
Sorry normal guy here asking, what the hell is this? What is it use for.
If you have to ask, you don't need it. Just a hard drive without the hamster and the wheel.
It's a Solid State Drive. Just like a Hard Drive, just much faster, better and stronger (but much more expensive).
Cool. Thnx.
Are you suggesting us geeks aren't "normal"?
@bill cant fart
Lol. No sorry.
On Engadget? Maybe you just like some gadgets.. fair enough..
Now, on the COMMENTS section of Engadget, where all the nasty wars happen.. you're a geek
"Suddenly, that forthcoming Z Drive doesn't look so outrageously priced, huh?"
Actually it does. Just compare the size of the two things.
ME WANT.
Me no pay for it though. =/
Recession antidote...?
Is there any reason why SSDs are going up in the same intervals as RAM? why can I buy a 500GB platter based hard drive but I can only buy a 512GB SSD?
Anyone? Is it a technical reason due to the properties of flash memory? Are 500GB hard drive actually 512GB?
That's a can of worms you really don't want to open (see, e.g. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/18/2245200)
"Consumer flash drives typically have sizes measured in powers of two (e.g. 512 MB, 8 GB). This includes SSDs as hard drive replacements, even though traditional hard drives tend to use decimal units. Thus, a 64 GB SSD is actually 64 × 1024 (to the 3rd) bytes. In reality, most users will have slightly less capacity than this available, due to the space taken by filesystem metadata."
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Capacity
I believe because it works with the same premisis of RAM in that it goes by bytes as opposed to bits. (8 bits = 1 byte) and therefore it does by multiples of 8?
"Is there any reason why SSDs are going up in the same intervals as RAM?"
The FlashRAM used in an SSD actually is a randomly accesssed memory (hence the RAM) so logically the addressing is like that of DRAM and sizes go up most conveniently as sums of powers of 2.
Hard drives are under no such constraint. Sector size is arbitrarily fixes size, not imposed by any physical arrangement, so the capacity of a platter is pretty much just the density of differentiable bits versus the surface area of the platter.
Blimey! It's a can of worms aright! Thanks to the esteemed Engadget readers for explaining it :-)
So which is faster? This or $1500 worth of platter drives in raid?
If you copy files all day, the platters in raid are faster (sequential performance), if you're actually being productive I think the SSD would still launch apps quicker (random performance), platters don't scale very well in raid 0.
It's the other way around. SSDs are best for sequential writes and HDDs are best for random writes.
This is what the "stuttering" problem that plagued early SSDs is.
Any drive based on the jmicron controller completely sucks. If this drive is jmicron based, don't even bother with it.
Pretty important moment in history here I think...
SSDs officially overtaking HDDs in capacity. (At least in the 2.5" form factor)
Yeah but at what cost, you could buy 20x 500Gb SATA2 HDDs for the price of one of these SSDs.
$1500. Didn't you read the title? :P
and squeeze a raid array of platter drives into a laptop?
Give it time, the prices will plummet
Ships? Ships to whom? What kind of person who has $1,500 to blow would do so on a single hard drive?
Hrm... let's see, AIG executives, Fanny Mae executives, Wall Street executives... those guys who make millions of dollars in bonuses.
Fast 7200RPM drives is already fast enough (100MB/S~)
Raid two of them for 200MB/S and its 150$ only not 1500$ plus not only its cheaper but you get bigger space that way
I rather buy Full gaming laptop with Quad Core for 1500$~ over a SSD that cost 1500$
640K is Enough For Anyone
do you even know what are you saying means? what bill gates said was completely different and unrelated to this
We are talking about normal HDS = Bigger space/same speed when you raid 2 of them/AND million time cheaper plus you don't even need more than 100MB/S for mainstream people use which the normal 7200RPM drives already offer
SSD space still lacking/overpriced/unproven and they have too many problems to list them there
Dont tell us they save battery power and that kind of BS freaking HD use 2-4WATT only its nothing when your cpu use +100 and your gpu+300 million
western digital 5400 blue series is already silence and cold enough and as fast as the normal 7200 drives for laptops so people need to cut all this talk about SSD I'm sick of it
Unless SSD problems is solved and they get some kind of standard "MLC SSD SUX" no one gonna bother with them till we get 256GB SSD for 200$ or less
Geeks who wanna brag about there 1500$ SSD will buy it , Real people will tell you to shove it and unvirgin yourself
Never say there isn't a need for more powerful technology.
There are no exceptions to the rule.
Show me where did i say we never need newer technology then cause i never said that or anything close to that
All what I'm saying is that SSD still got long way to go till they become "Mainstream" because the little speed boost WHICH most people doesn't even need RIGHT NOW isn't worth the sacrifice of space or the price and in case you people didn't know most people in 2009 right now buy laptops with 5400RPM drives and they are happy about it
I'm sorry if reality is your worst enemy but SSD still got looooong way to go... you can get a seagate 1500GB HD right now for 120$
thats 15 Terra for 1200$ vs HALF Terra ~ for 1500$
Unless we get new media that require HD stream over 100MB/S nobody gonna need SSD and video editors prefer Raid for capacity and speed
Say whatever you want you SSD Fanboys but SSD have no future ZERO none UNLESS they drop prices to Normal HD prices and offer the same capacity
There was too many inventions in the past which failed and already forgotten because simply no one needed them or wanted them so its not about me or you its about SSD and the market, if they wanna matters drop the price
SSD prices have been going down quite a bit lately, which was why the article said $1500 doesn't sound that bad.
I don't really think anyone here is really going to be buying these for their gaming comp anytime soon
Although the average person wont be able to tell a difference, the transfer rates are a bit more than twice as fast as a 7200rpm HDD, it's a bit more than a 'little' difference.
And yeah, this is only 512GB but remember this is a 2.5" drive. I haven't even seen any 2.5" HDD's bigger than 500GB.
Just wait... the prices will continue to drop. They just cant magically drop the prices to the same as HDD's right now
the better question is do YOU have any idea what you are talking about?
because I'm willing to bet Anand Lal Shimpi has more information, more experience, and more LEGITIMATE testing numbers than the one's you just pulled out of your ass.....
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3531
let's do a quick rundown:
Sequential Read:
Western Digital Velociraptor = 118MB/s
Intel X-25M = 230.2MB/s
Sequential Write:
Western Digital Velociraptor = 119MB/s
Intel X-25M = 71MB/s
[b]RANDOM WRITE:
Western Digital Velociraptor = 1.6MB/s
Western Digital Caviar SE16 = 1.26MB/s
Seagate Momentus 5400rpm = 0.81MB/s
Intel X-25M = 23MB/s[/b]
Oh, and those are the speeds for a "used" SSD.
don't forget that the latency for the Intel drive is also on average 0.51ms versus the 8-12ms for a hard drive
"The VelociRaptor has a latency of 7.2ms in this iometer test with a queue depth of 3 IOs; that's an order of magnitude slower than the slowest SSD here."
MasterDrive? It's like a mashup of the Master System and Mega Drive! Sega would be very interested.
if it's jmicron.... meh
nice to see they don't have that information anywhere either.....
The real question is what's the random small file write performance? Only drive I'd want to buy right now are the Intel ones but they need to be a tad bigger...
my next laptop will have one of these and a bluray burner
its going to be a couple years, but I have no need to upgrade until this is possible in a mac for less than 2k all told
Super Talent??? LOL more like SUPER CHEESE.
Nice hardware, but who's the moron who chose that cheese-fest of a name??????
Unbelievable.
damn
Wake me up when it's under 3 bill's.. i'm in.