3.5 inch SSDs guide - StorageSearch.com

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3.5" SSDs - market, vendors and products

	3.5" SAS SSDs from OCZ

2.5" PCI Express SSDs
SSDs vs HDDs - groan... not that again
flash wars in the enterprise - MLC vs eMLC etc
SSD sudden power loss management architectures
Adaptive flash care management IP (including DSP) for SSDs

How popular is the 3.5" format for SSDs? - by Zsolt Kerekes, editor

It has declined. 7 years ago it was the most popular form factor out of the hard disk sizes. Nowadays - in 2013 - 3.5" SSDs are way down the monthly charts the top SSD topics viewed by our readers (although still in the top 30).

Although 3.5 inch form factor SSDs are a niche market - historically this form factor revealed a lot about the different types of application for high performance storage drives in legacy servers. In the 3.5" package we used to find hard disks, hybrid drives, flash based SSDs and even RAM SSDs competing for slots, often with exactly the same interfaces. You can see some examples of current and past 3.5" SSDs below. For other form factors see the listings in the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide

Notes from SSD market history

The product shown below, from Mtron (which is no longer in business) was the most popular product here on StorageSearch.com in the period August 2007 to October 2007.

SATA flash SSDs with 150M bytes / sec burst read and 80M bytes / sec sustained write time from MTRON

3.5" (128G) & 2.5" (32G) SATA SSDs
80MB/s sustained write
from Mtron

Maybe you don't need old style 3.5" when you can pack so much into a modern 2.5" SSD

Notes from SSD market history

The product shown below, from Imperial Technology (which is no longer in business) is an example of a 3.5" parallel SCSI SSD featured here on StorageSearch.com in June 2002.

MegaRam-35 solid state disk from Imperial Technology - click for more info

MegaRam-35 - 3.5" SCSI SSD
from Imperial Technology

Notes from SSD market history

The product shown below, from Memtech (acquired by STEC in 2005) is an example of a 3.5" PATA SSD product featured here on StorageSearch.com in 2004 - the AT3550 Wolverine.

3.5" low profile IDE
mil temp solid state disks
from Memtech

Notes from SSD market history.

BiTMICRO was one of the earliest companies to talk realistically about deploying flash SSDs in the enterprise SSD market - and published articles and case studies supporting this view. In a 2004 case study BiTMICRO showed how a single 3.5" flash SSD speeded up a 25,000 user server by 15x compared to the previous hard disk system.

The BiTMICRO ad (below) shows an SSD which the company started shipping in November 2008 and advertised here in 2009.

click to see details of historic product - 3.5 inch fibre-channel flash SSDs from BiTMICRO Networks

3.5" FC flash SSDs - from BiTMICRO

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Megabyte combined
modern horsepower with
traditional storage values.

Fusion-io fast SSDs - click for more info

world's fastest production PCIe SSD
from Fusion-io

3.5 inch SSD OEMs

manufacturer

A-DATA

Adtron

Altec ComputerSysteme

Red Rock Technologies

RunCore

SMART Modular Technologies

STEC

Super Talent Technology

Trident Space & Defense

Notes from SSD market history.

M-Systems (acquired by SanDisk) pioneered the use of SSDs in smart phones and in 2001 introduced the first SSD chips.

They were also involved the military and enterprise SSD markets - and in 2003 M-Systems was one of the first flash SSDs to get Solaris ready status.

They advertised here for several years. The archived ad below dates from November 2003.

M-Systems, 3.5" Ultra Wide SCSI Fast Flash Disk

3.5" Ultra Wide SCSI Fast Flash Disks
from M-Systems

Notes from SSD market history

The product below - a RAM SSD from Curtis - was featured on StorageSearch.com's main SSD news page in the years from 2003 to 2007.

It was the world's fastest 3.5" SSD during that period. The original device was still faster than 90% of 3.5" SSDs in the market in 2010 too.

worlds fastest 3.5 inch solid state disk from Curtis

world's fastest 3.5" solid state disk
from Curtis

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