Published: Tuesday 3rd November, 2009 | Author: Parm Mann
Companies: A-Data (All A-Data content)
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A-DATA, one of the world's largest Flash memory providers, has today announced what it claims to be the industry's fastest solid state drive; its S596 series.
The drive, pictured to the right, is available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities, and A-DATA quotes sequential read and write speeds of up to 250MB/s and 180MB/s, respectively.
That's quick, but the Taiwanese manufacturer isn't delving into detail - there's no mention of which NAND Flash memory resides within, and no mention of specific controllers. We do know that there's a DDR2 SDRAM cache of unspecified size, but all we've really got to go on is A-DATA's promise that the drive will "perform assorted applications five times faster".
What's interesting is that A-DATA has also equipped the drive with a mini USB port, and it's touting it as the ideal external hard drive for PC enthusiasts.
Rounding off a generally uninformative launch, A-DATA doesn't specify any details on availability or pricing.
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I don't care how fast it is, they're still too small (capacity), and too expensive. Plus, if I'm quite honest, I don't really care that my computer takes 60 seconds as opposed to 20 seconds to boot into windows.
Yes, because boot speeds are the only reason why people buy SSD's.Quote
Well I'm never in that much of a rush, and in 8-12 months prices will bottom out anyways, same as they did with 1tb traditional drives. Prices are always silly to begin with until production volume pushes costs down.
I'm not convinced it's a production cost issue, I think it's more to do with all the manufacturers being happy to sell at the current price point. I'm not saying there is any collusion or price fixing going on, but why would anyone upset the status quo and undercut everyone, reducing their profits in the mean time?
I think it will happen eventually, but not as quickly as people have been speculating. I'm surprised SSDs are as expensive as they are at the moment, I had expected them to be a lot cheaper by now.Quote
Likely price tag(s)? When stock will start to be available? And more importantly, does it live up to the claims (or is it just usual manufacturer's bluff)?
Not sure how the on-board addition of DDR2 RAM would help to be honest, sure it's faster than the standard NAND, but how would it actually differ from the normal caching of the computer's main RAM? Surely it would just be duplicating the same thing?
Also is this '20 second boot time' some version of Windows 7 with lots of services etc disabled or a standard install?
(Just ordered X25-M G2 and hoping I've not done the wrong thing!)Quote
Even my PC (which is 2 yrs old) with an Intel G2 boots up completely in about 15seconds (and that includes post!)
I call poopookaka to they're claim ;)Quote
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