It is actually quite a significant step forward for the computing industry to be able to have a drop-in replacement for the venerable hard disk drive that has been in use since computing began. Sandisk Corp. has launched its 32GB 1.8-inch solid state drive. You can drop it in as a replacement for your standard notebook hard drive and you’re good to go.
The biggest advantage of solid state flash drives over standard ones is that they don’t have moving parts inside, no spinning disk and no noise. They are far more reliable, that’s why it has been in use by the military, aerospace and telecom industries. As the cost of NAND flash memory chips comes down, it is beginning to be an affordable alternative to existing technologies in a wider variety of applications, including mobile PCs aimed at enterprise and consumer users.
Sandisk says its 32GB flash drive achieves a sustained read rate of 62 megabytes per second (Mbps) and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer – more than 100 times faster than most hard disk drives. It also consumes less power: 0.4 watt versus 1.0 watt for rotating drives.
These are significant improvements indeed in terms of reliability, noiseless operation, faster throughput and lower power consumption.
[Via: PiranhaDailyNews.com]