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by Zsolt Kerekes
editor of
StorageSearch.com - September 2003 |
I
contacted every manufacturer of SSDs to get contributions for this
article.
It covers the price range
from $50 to $2 million and is designed to give you an accurate idea of
what kinds of products are suitable for different budgets.
For more
complete SSD manufacturer listings see our
SSD directory which was the
#1 most popular subject accessed by STORAGEsearch.com readers in Q2 2003.
Products below are listed in approximately ascending price order.
The
Solid State
Disk (SSD) market will double in size this year and is the fastest growing
segment in the storage market. By
2012 it could be a
bigger market than the
NAS market is today. SSDs
have been around for
decades,
but were previously too expensive to be considered for most applications. The
cost per gigagbyte has now dropped to the level where SSDs are having a
disruptive effect on how computer networks are designed.
At the high end computer buyers can achieve higher performance from
their applications at lower cost by replacing typically half of the processors
in their servers with SSDs. At the low end SSDs are becoming the transfer
medium of choice for small quantities of personal consumer data. If you're
looking at SSDs for the first time this buyers guide will give you an idea of
what's available organised by budgetary price.As SSD pricing follows memory
pricing, the capacity you'll get in these price bands will increase over time. |
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section 1 - Solid State Disks from $50 upto $3,600
The
low end of this price range includes flash memory based SSDs connected by
USB used in a similar way
to floppy disks - to
transfer data between PCs. But we also start to see the appearance of
acceleration products, such as
RAMDisk acceleration
software for $49 from Cenatek.
At the $1,000 mark we start to see PCI cards, and even SSD flash NAS systems. |
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Cruzer
Mini, from SanDisk, is
one of the world's smallest flash memory drives and uses the latest USB
interface technology to achieve the maximum data transfer rates possible today.
The portable storage devices initially are being sold in two capacities –
128 and 256 MB - with suggested retail pricing of $49.99 and $79.99. |
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... |
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| SimpleTech's USB Flash
Drive plugs directly into the USB port on a PC or Macintosh. Measuring just 2.7"
x 0.75" x 0.31", the Flash Drive's low-profile design does not block
other USB ports when plugged in, and fits easily into a pocket, purse or
briefcase for convenient travel. The SRP is $49.99 for the 128MB USB Flash
Drive, $89.99 for the 256MB USB Flash Drive, and $179.00 For the 512MB Flash
Drive. |
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M-Systems offers two SSD
product families for embedded applications in this price range. The IDE 3000
come in 2.5" and 3.5" form factors and offers capacities up to 1Gbyte
at a budgetary price of less than $500. Typical applications using this product
include:- point of sales systems, ATMs, gaming machines and factory automation
systems which all need low storage capacity but with top data reliability and
the need to reduce maintenance costs. | |
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Cenatek
offers solid state disks based on an innovative PCI-based form factor, making
our SSD units very cost-effective, easy to install and easy to use. Rocket
Drive's entry-level pricing for 1 GB capacity boards start at $499 without
memory and $1,199 with memory. End-users such as gaming enthusiasts and
multimedia editors truly appreciate the affordability of these units.
Our
most popular model is the Rocket Drive with 4 GB capacity which is available as
a board only for $899, or populated and tested with certified memory for $3,599.
Rocket Drive supports Windows 2000/XP/NT, Red Hat Linux 7.3/8.0, FreeBSD, and
Solaris 8/UltraSPARC II platforms, and can be found in use today on GIS,
financial/trading, and other transaction-intensive database systems. |
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| Professionals using data-intensive
applications such as AutoCAD, Oracle, mail managers, and HTML document
conversion software also appreciate the scalability and high speed performance
of CENATEK's PCI-based solid state disks. Extending the life of existing
infrastructure (e.g., not having to upgrade their workstations or servers)
translates into cost- and time-saving benefits, in addition to the increase in
productivity gained by using Rocket Drive. With an access time of 0.6
microseconds, Rocket Drive has been benchmarked by our customers at over 35,000
I/O operations per second and has provided transfer rates over 5X faster than
that of hard disk drives.
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Designed for a
niche market where storage space is required in harsh conditions, the NAS-168F,
from
IEI, has been
implemented in trains, factories and warehouses across Asia, Europe and the
continental USA.
This compact desktop unit can be stored anywhere and
is available with up to 5.8 GB capacity. It has been used in Mass Rapid Transit
systems across Asia to store digital image data whilst journeying from station
to station. When it reaches the terminus, data can be uploaded into a laptop and
transferred wirelessly (or using the wired LAN) to a central storage location.
Running on the in-house developed firmware - a Linux based OS - the flash disk
NAS-168F is simple to set up and manage.
With prices starting at
around $750, the NAS-168F makes storing data in hazardous environments very much
affordable. | |
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| TiGi's TiGiJet
data-throughput accelerator is manufactured and tested in an ISO 9002 certified
facility, assuring consistency and reliability for mission-critical
environments. TiGiJet is proven to increase data response of applications and
databases by 800% or more. In some environments, such as Oracle and SQL,
performance gains in excess of 2100% can be acheived. Because of its unique
modular design, TiGiJet can install in the SCSI drive slot of most any server or
storage system as a hot-pluggable device. Budgetary pricing:- 2GB, low profile -
$3,495 |
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