Western Digital recants, announces its SiliconDrive III range of SSDs
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jun 16th 2009 9:42AM
posted Jun 16th 2009 9:42AM
What a difference six months makes. Back before Christmas, one of the VPs at Western Digital was saying that the company only "enters markets that exist," meaning, of course, that we had to take all the tales of SSDs that we heard (in product spec sheets and reviews) on faith alone. Since then the company's acquired SiliconSystems and -- a short trip down the road to Damascus later -- it's announcing the SiliconDrive III product range. SiliconSystems' meat and potatoes were heavy hitters in such industries as communications, aerospace, and military, and it seems that WD's new range will continue to target these markets. According to The Register, the range sports SiSMART (which keeps tabs on the drive's status in real-time, notifying the user when it needs to be replaced) and includes 2.5-inch (SATA and PATA) and 1.8-inch Micro SATA devices, featuring native SATA 3Gb/s or ATA-7 interfaces with up to 100MB/s read speeds write speeds up to 80MB/s. Max available capacity is 120GB. No word yet on specific products or prices, but you'll know as soon as we do.
That's slow for SSD standard but i trust WD quality
Hopefully we will see faster ones along the way
i agree
Since the transfer rate is an almost entirely useless benchmark (except for specific uses), having a slow transfer rate can sometimes indicate that the drive might have better performance in the areas that matter (random-access write to relatively small files; IOPS).
...or it might just indicate that the drive is slow! Need to wait for reviews. I'd assume these will be unbelievably expensive if they're still aimed at the military, anyhow...
You know, showing your schizophrenia doesn't make your opinions any more valid; in fact, it has the opposite effect.
Just because they are slower doesn't mean they are not high quality. Drives used in aerospace, military, industrial, etc applications are probably just optimized for things other than raw transfer rate like reliability, durability, error-correction, etc.
Also, people need to remember not to judge SSDs on transfer rates alone, as there is always a trade-off between sequential read/write speed and random read/write speed. As an example. Intel's X25M maxes out at 75MB/sec in sequential write which is half the speed or less of other good drives like OCZ's Vertex, Corsair P256, etc. However, the X25M has 10X faster random write performance.
(Although non-server uses of SSDs don't really benefit from the X25M's extreme level of random write performance, but just using it as an example.)
Similarly, you can find crappy JMicron-controller based drives with 200MB/sec sequential read speeds, yet they are basically crippled in random write performance --- which can lead to nasty stuttering and slow-downs during use.
I think the speeds are being kept low so they don't undermine their core business. For the money, a 300GB WD Raptor is just as fast and probably a whole lot cheaper per GB.
I agree
These drives are too small and too slow to make WD stand out as providing a different/superior product to their competitors who have been in the SSD market for some time.
Yup. Hopefully they'll get their stuff together for the next gen.
About F***ing time.
With all the time they took releasing their first SSDs, you'd think that they saw the future decline of the HDD as a convenient way of winding up their business.
I was in a particular mood today that wasn't in the aggregate, a 100% productive one. The wording in the latter part of the sentence doesn't necessarily convey the message, whether or not the "winding" would either be that of a continuation of the company's profit, or its profits' reinstatement, or rather, renewal. A wording fashion that has a intellectual provocative, is something I feel inclined to thank you for. So: Thank You.
i'd rather but ssds from someone with more experience in the memory sector.
So do we know how good the controllers are in these things?
It depends on what Steve thinks...
lame. not a good way to enter this market with products that slow.
Well they are not for the consumer market so they won't give us what we want: Speed at a low price.
Instead they will be boringly reliable, maybe extra tough against radiation and/or dirt, and such things.
As DR House did indeed point out these drives will get users who swear by WD just because of the sheer quality and reliability of their drives. That said I would have thought the drives use essentially the same components as any other SSD or am I wrong?
velociraptor ssd edition?
I don't care about those specs. Why cant manufactures simply list the controller used on their SSDs?
Because then no one would buy their piece of crap drives that use the shitty JMicron controllers. However, I do wonder why the manufacturers that do use the good controllers don't advertise that they are using quality controllers and not the JMicron POS.
@dave: well, the simplest solution is not to use the JMicron controller then, right? =) Its issues are well documented, so it's not like they don't know about the problems. I think it's a good marketing strategy for those that do use good controllers. I've been on a fence to buy a variety of SSDs lately because nobody knows the controller. It seems like we can only hope for somebody or a review site to open the thing up.
Sometimes it's just the marketing department that isn't on the money. There seems to be a fixation in many industries about marketing a disk drive based on some random, not well measured or representative spec just to fool gullible consumers. The same goes for the LCD industry. We know that the type of panel - TN, VA/PVA/MVA or IPS - is the biggest factor in image quality, but manufactures continue to quote crazy contrast ratios and the like.
Too bad Coyne, Rutledge and the other douchebags didn't keep their heads in the sand even longer and turn WD into the GM of the Hard Drive Business; -shame.
Upper management business pinheads FTL!
If you go to the WD site there is an animated GIF that shows the inside. It looks like a Phison controller.
Awww WD going SSD? Takes all the fun of their drives just dying on you with barely a noise. Wouldn't touch a product of theirs again anyways they were the quickest doorstops I've ever had.