Intel's 34nm-based 320GB solid state drive creeps closer to reality

Hankering for an SSD that's as big as your traditional HDD? So is Intel, or so we hear. In fact, we've been hearing whispers that a capacious 320GB solid state drive was in the works since January, and now those whispers have been upgraded to library-like voices. According to the generally reliable Golum, Intel's so-called Postville SSD family is well on its way to reality, and with them should come much needed price drops. The new series should top out at 320GB, with an 80GB and 160GB version falling underneath. Word on the street has it that both of the smaller two will be around $100 cheaper than the same-sized X25-M drives, though there's been no leaks on the 320GB model's MSRP. Still, Intel has a golden opportunity here if it'll just get these things to market -- a cheap(er) SSD with a brand name like Intel could blow the solid state market wide open.

[Thanks, Marius]

[themonsteraria @ Jul 18th 2009 8:35AM]

Oh ya.

[themonsteraria @ Jul 18th 2009 8:39AM]

Almost forgot to comment on the article.
Uh, Ya. Interesting technology. I think for most people, including myself, the price drop is the biggest news here. Yay for semi-affordable solid state drives!

[Nikesh @ Jul 18th 2009 12:02PM]

Yup...price drop is the most important for me. Can't wait until I can actually afford to slam one of these into my laptop. Although I'll actually have to buy a new laptop for that because this damned T61 won't support the full speed of the SSD.

[Youfou @ Jul 18th 2009 8:43AM]

I think it's still too expansive right now...

[themonsteraria @ Jul 18th 2009 9:00AM]

Don't get me wrong. I still think it's crazy expensive, but any movement in the "less expensive" direction is a good thing.

[10minutehobo @ Jul 18th 2009 9:06AM]

No, it's quite small.


(thatswhatshesaid)

[themonsteraria @ Jul 18th 2009 9:23AM]

I bet that's what she said. *oh snap*

[hangfire @ Jul 18th 2009 9:27AM]

maybe apple will come and buy up lots, and sell them in a new device, just like they did with the ipod mini

[paul34 @ Jul 18th 2009 1:13PM]

Really? I don't think you can ever be too "expansive" with storage ;-)

[Ypoknons @ Jul 18th 2009 1:18PM]

Dell has been buying lots and lots of Samsung SSDs and their SSD upgrade options are relatively cheap - IIRC $250 upgrade from a 500GB 5,400rpm hard drive.

I don't think the per GB price matters as much if the SSD is just a boot/application/important files drive used in conjunction with another drive. Which is a set-up for a lot of laptop users anyways - smaller internal drive, large external drive usually left at home for storing media.

[Youfou @ Jul 18th 2009 1:26PM]

Oh,,perhaps you good guys mistaken me, my english is poor...i said that just meaning "it's so expensive, and i can't afford it right now"
ah..i know...it is me that mistaken "expensive" with "expansive"
Sorry for my poor English...

[Mark @ Jul 18th 2009 8:50AM]

a big price cut welcome

[Magallanes @ Jul 18th 2009 9:21AM]

Capacity
Price
Performance

Currently SSD is 1 of 3 but still is far away from perfection.

[Maxwell Ash @ Jul 18th 2009 9:36AM]

Capacity is pretty good too, 320GB is probably enough for most people. Just the price to go.

[sk @ Jul 18th 2009 9:55AM]

Capacity is up there too. Here is a link to a 512GB SSD from Super Talent:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609415

[Sakerin @ Jul 18th 2009 10:23AM]

@sk: Yeah ... here's the thing. That drive costs about as much as people want to spend on an entire system.

[sk @ Jul 18th 2009 10:48AM]

@Sakerin, agreed, so performance and capacity is 2 of the tree now the price is the last hurdle.

[paul34 @ Jul 18th 2009 1:15PM]

I suspect that by next Christmas, we'll have SSDs that many of us will be able to just afford, at least for our system drives.

That's what I'm looking for - something to hold Win 7 and the bulk of my installed programs. The rest of my data, like photos, videos, media, documents, etc. will all be on "traditional" hard drive storage.

Of course, we need something like Intel's drives since many of the other still stutter and lag with lots of little random data writes, which is unacceptable to me.

[sam @ Jul 18th 2009 7:11PM]

Seriously for many people capacity is fine - even without the 512GB remortgage-your-house drives.

My work PC has a 40GB HD. Seriously. It's not even THAT old. (Three, four years?) And yes that isn't enough... My home PC has 120GB but I don't actually need all of that - I've got 20GB free at the moment, and if I got off my lazy arse and archived older photos to DVD, that'd jump up to 60GB free. For a new home PC for me, 100GB would be fine, maybe 80 at a pinch. For a netbook, ie anything that isn't my main PC, I'd be happy with 32GB.

Of course some people have and need hundreds of gigabytes - they download (and keep) HD films, or have large porn collections, or are professional photographers, or play (and keep) PC games, etc. That might even be a high proportion of people who read gadget sites. But it's not everyone.

There's still the 'price' issue - 100GB or even 80GB of quality SSD remains expensive - but for a large proportion of people, I don't think capacity is a major problem (even without the option of external secondary drives for media).

[sam @ Jul 18th 2009 7:13PM]

@me: oh yeah, and for that 40GB work computer, although I do want more space, random read (and to lesser extent, write) performance is actually my biggest issue with it. Obviously the drive is really slow as well as small. When they finally upgrade my computer I might see if I can swing an SSD for that reason :) Yeah, probably not.

[nick @ Jul 18th 2009 9:30AM]

Another 2 years and we'll have cheap, extremely fast, reliable, shock resistant, cool to the touch, drives. Hooray?

[themonsteraria @ Jul 18th 2009 11:51AM]

I feel the same way about iPhones.

[davepermen @ Jul 18th 2009 9:47AM]

as they enhance your pc's performance like no other component can, they're worth the money.

yes, I have them. I love them.

Now with the new prices, I can switch some more pc's around here, can't wait :)

[sk @ Jul 18th 2009 9:52AM]

To everyone that is still hesitating to upgrade:
I made the switch over to a SSD from OCZ (Vertex II) and I'm telling you its the best $100 I have spent in the last 5 years on any computer part. I put Windows 7 RC on it and all my frequently used apps. The system jumped from an average computer to super fast. Windows boots up in just under 17 seconds and apps launch in the blink of an eye.
I'm looking to upgrade all my other computers as well and hope that capacity goes up and prices will continue to fall.

[yakapo @ Jul 18th 2009 12:09PM]

which one did you buy? where did you purchase it?

[sk @ Jul 18th 2009 12:21PM]

I got the 30GB Vertex II from Newegg. About a month ago it was offered as a shell shocker for $99. Now it sells for $149 minus $20 mail in rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393

[Exile @ Jul 18th 2009 1:33PM]

$100 SSD? I knew it was too good to be true.

[sam @ Jul 18th 2009 10:01AM]

$100 cheaper makes the cheapest about the same price as the ocz vertex drives BUT the write speed of the intel drives is only 70mb/s, if the speeds are 270mb/s read and 210mb/s write and with the price drops then i'll buy the 80gb drive however i doubt the speed increases will be huge, alot of the other manufacturers have pretty much caught up with speed in terms of intel's current offerings.

[Roy @ Jul 18th 2009 12:05PM]

Yea, but intel has the best random performance at small writes, where as the others are good at sequential writes. Small random is good for day to day tasks, and sequential is good for ripping a dvd to your drive. Most people get small drives, so whats the point of having a crazy high sequential? The random small writes is the key to speed!

[Ypoknons @ Jul 18th 2009 4:20PM]

I'm more concerned for TRIM support, since that will help with the speed degradation problem and the TRIM command is supported by Windows 7. OCZ's been great about supporting TRIM, but Intel really needs to get around to it. Hopefully they'll add TRIM support to the older X25's too - they were premium products when they first came out, and still are, depending on PoV.

[ilikespie @ Jul 18th 2009 10:16AM]

SSDs, i cant wait till they drop in price significantly, but one thing bugs me about them. They are SSDs, so there are no moving parts, why cant there be a 3.5" variant or even a 5.25" variant? I understand why there cannot be a 5.25" HDD variant (due to the fact that at such high speeds, the platter would be be pulling several hundred G's at the outer edge), it just seems weird.

[ilikespie @ Jul 18th 2009 10:19AM]

Answered my own question with some research, http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/02/ocz-intros-3-5-inch-colossus-ssd-at-computex/, but still, why not 5.25" ones either?

[Matt @ Jul 18th 2009 10:27AM]

Sure they could get it to a higher capacity at a bigger size, but the price would be immense.

[Matt @ Jul 18th 2009 10:29AM]

And anyways, laptop drives are 2.5" and they would benefit the most from an ssd considering their much higher shock resistance as compared to hdds.

[ilikespie @ Jul 18th 2009 10:32AM]

@Matt

Comment #1 mmmm idk, it is very possible no doubt, but look at the market for HDD's 2.5" vs 3.5" market, i would assume the same would carry over relatively the same when it would come to SSDs touting 3.5 or even 5.25 over the 2.5

Comment #2 the big selling point about these SSDs isnt just shock resistance, it is that plus the fact that they have extremely high write/read speeds in comparison to SATA or SCSI (i think, at least the price vs performance SCSI vs SSD is better for SSD), which is HIGHLY beneficial for multiple applications (ex. video editing, data base cache disk)

[jon @ Jul 18th 2009 11:24AM]

Simple answer?

The market for 5.25" storage drives doesn't exist, and there's no reason to create it.

[jimhsu77479 @ Jul 18th 2009 4:14PM]

You could, but you'd be wasting space because Flash memory is just that small (physically).

[Joe @ Jul 18th 2009 6:06PM]

There's little to no reason to have 3.5" or 5.25" drives SSDs when they can fit in a smaller form factor.

With a 2.5" laptop drive, you can use it in a laptop or desktop. And if you only have 3.5" or 5.25" bays, simply get a bay adapter, they're super cheap and were a dime a dozen when the transition from 5.25" to 3.5" drives were happening.

If you make it 3.5" or bigger, you're unnecessarily limiting the market that you can sell too.

[ilikespie @ Jul 18th 2009 8:27PM]

@Joe

Or expanding it, just by keeping it in the 2.5" factor area you limit the market you sell to, contrary to what you just said.

I can see how a 5.25" wouldnt be good to sell (probably be over priced, etc), but 3.5" 's would be very useful to have (ex. video editing, server caching, etc) Professionals want high performance, low cost, 2.5" drives do not equal both. What would you rather have, 4x 256GB 2.5" SSDs in RAID0 taking up 4 drive slots (maybe only 2x 5.25" with a nicely done adapter) costing 1200$ (exemplary figures) or 2x 1TB 3.5" SSDs in RAID0 taking up 2 drive slots (or 1x 5.25") costing 500$, with room left over for all the other optical/breakout boxes. This would be specifically for video editors and the like who need high speeds and a large amount of room on demand.

[mikeg @ Jul 21st 2009 11:39AM]

@ilikespie

or you could simply use something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111060

and put those four 2.5" drives in the space of 2 3.5" HDD's.

There is no need for 3.5" SSD drives.

[sk @ Jul 18th 2009 10:38AM]

I found the first listings for the 80 and 160GB drives. Prices are at $246 and $486 which is slightly higher than offerings from ocz and others with the Indilinx controller. Neither of the companies shows any further specs. (nextwarehouse.com, buy.com and fadfusion.com)
80GB Mfg Part#: SSDSA2MH080G2C1
160GB Mfg Part#: SSDSA2MH160G2C1

[Gungel @ Jul 18th 2009 11:07AM]

That's still $3 per GB. I think the sweet spot should be no more than $1 per GB. But that's probably not gonna happen any time soon. Especial if you consider that this new generation is using the smallest flash memory available today. It will take at least another 1 - 2 years before we see anything smaller than 34nm in the flash memory market. The next generation is 22nm but mass production is not expected to ramp up any time soon.

[sk @ Jul 18th 2009 11:16AM]

@Gungel, Intel and Micron, which produces the 34nm flash memory, is just one manufacturer of solid state flash memory. Others will follow with less expensive 32nm and 22nm chips. Check out this link for more on new copper barrier/seed PVD for solid state flash memory from Applied Materials which claims a 40% in cost reduction.

[sk @ Jul 18th 2009 11:17AM]

forgot the link:
http://www.solid-state.com/display_article/363806/5/none/none/TCHNE/Applied-targets-22nm-copper-barrier/seed-PVD

[ilikespie @ Jul 18th 2009 10:40AM]

@myself

"in comparison to SATA or SCSI" should say "in comparison to SATA or SCSI HDD's"

[ilikespie @ Jul 18th 2009 10:41AM]

ment to reply to myself in my previous post T_T

[sam @ Jul 18th 2009 11:28AM]

sk, there are 2 uk places with those models on pre-order, cheapest for 80gb is £173: http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=SSDSA2MH080G2C1

those models are also listed on here: http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/nand/feature/index.htm

[sam @ Jul 18th 2009 11:33AM]

these are on sale on 21st july btw.

[Per @ Jul 18th 2009 11:45AM]

How reliable are SSDs compared to a regular HD? Is the data as safe or safer?

[yokel @ Jul 18th 2009 12:11PM]

They have a similar lifespan under normal conditions but SSDs are much more durable and you know exactly when they are going to die according to software.