SanDisk 32GB Solid State Drive (SSD) for notebooks unvealed

Until now, large capacity flash-based drives have been used mainly by the military, aerospace and telecom industries, which demanded good performance and reliability under all environmental conditions. But now, the cost of NAND flash memory has dropped and this has made SSD a viable alternative to existing mechanical hard disk drives in mobile PCs.

"This is an important milestone for SanDisk in our relentless quest to create new large-scale markets for flash storage solutions for consumers in the personal computing space," said Eli Harari, SanDisk CEO. "Once we begin shipping the 32GB SSD for notebook PCs, we expect to see its increasing adoption in the coming years as we continue to reduce the cost of flash memory. When these SSD devices become more affordable, we expect that their superior features over rotating disk drives will create a new consumer category for our retail sales channels worldwide," said Harari.

The new SanDisk SSD will improve the speed and reliability of mobile PCs. A laptop PC equipped with this new SSD will be able to boot Microsoft Windows Vista in 35 seconds, compared to the 55 seconds that it would take a laptop with a hard disk drive.

But speed is not the only advantage of the SanDisk SSD. The new SSD has a very low power consumption rate compared to the hard disk drive, which means more battery life.

It’s not all good news, though… The new SanDisk SSD is not cheap compared to existing hard disk drives. It is expected that the inclusion of the SanDisk 32GB SSD in a notebook PC could increase the end-user price by around $600 in the first half of 2007. But with the cost of NAND flash memory dropping every day it won’t be long before the new SanDisk SSD is an affordable option for all notebook users.