Wednesday, December 19th 2007
Buffalo unveils a 100GB flash drive
Buffalo Unveils a 100 GB Flash Drive
Although we've seen flash SSDs that top out at 416 GB, nothing in the mainstream is really bigger than 64 GB -- but Buffalo's new SHD-UHRS series seems like it's bringing the status quo up to 100 GB. The USB 2.0 external drive uses two different types of flash memory to reach that capacity, yet it's only about the size of a business card and weighs just two ounces. Those of you somehow entranced by the case design but lacking the 952 USD for the 100 GB model needn't worry, however: Buffalo is also shipping a 32 GB version for a pretty competitive 312 USD and a 64 GB model for 665 USD.
Source:
Engadget
Although we've seen flash SSDs that top out at 416 GB, nothing in the mainstream is really bigger than 64 GB -- but Buffalo's new SHD-UHRS series seems like it's bringing the status quo up to 100 GB. The USB 2.0 external drive uses two different types of flash memory to reach that capacity, yet it's only about the size of a business card and weighs just two ounces. Those of you somehow entranced by the case design but lacking the 952 USD for the 100 GB model needn't worry, however: Buffalo is also shipping a 32 GB version for a pretty competitive 312 USD and a 64 GB model for 665 USD.
28 Comments on Buffalo unveils a 100GB flash drive
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Gimme a 3 terrabyte drives in RAID 5 and you have more storage, more speed and redundancy. For the same price, but a bit physically bigger.
But ain't that a portable storage device? I guess SSD's best suit portable storage, notebooks included.
Still, it's got some ways to go before it can compete with the hard drive. That doesn't mean Western Digital and Seagate should rest on their laurels. If I were them, I'd invest big in flash memory R&D right about now.
TBH, I'm looking forward to the time when SSD's can successfully replace HDD's (replace as in SSD's running as fast as HDD's and costing the same), mainly because I hate having things that spin up and generate noise inside my case. Bu that's just me :)
I just got a portable 120gb 2.5" 5400rpm drive off Newegg for $75. Flash wont reach that price level for years. And even as flash advances, so will magnetic storage. They are just starting to introduce the vertical bit drives, and there are still advances to be made in making the bits smaller.
With perpendicular recording being implemented I guess mag-rec will at least survive this decade
perpendicular recording even cuts mfg costs.
There used to be a time when for $25 you'd get a 32MB pen-drive. It took two years for you to get a 2 GB pendrive for that price. For the same $25 now, I guess you'll get better. The thing is, the size-standard of NAND flash banks is growing exponentially unlike magnetic drives which on an avg take 9 months to grow in size.
eg: if 1 TB is the highest a magnetic-drive can give you now, it'll be a while before that can goto 2 TB
but with flash, every now and then, either a current sized bank standard gets cheaper or it grows exponentially in size.
Companies like Samsung, Micron and Hyundai (Hynix) are going overkill in expanding their mfg capabilities and shrinking the fabrication-process of NAND flash chips. Once they manage to do that, manufacturing a highly dense highly compact NAND flash chip wafer would cost peanuts, if the manufacturer gets his fabs right.
www.engadget.com/2007/12/13/battleship-mtron-the-absurdly-fast-ssd-raid-array/
This article puts 9 ssd hdd in an array showing an amazing 212x faster iops rate than a 15k seagate and a transferrate of 800MB/s which could be even faster if the controller wasn't holding the speed back.
Now these are top notch ssd-drives right now and inaffordable right now, but like flash memory is getting cheaper with the minute, these'll be mainstream in no time.
As for the durability the ssds are already holding out longer than an average HDD.
So when ssds get affordable there is no reason to hold onto HHDs except if you like the sound of spinning disks :roll: .
edit: of course it's 9ssds against 1 hdd in the benchmark, but if you put 9 hdds in raid you won't even get near the 53000 iops, you'll probably get about 1500 with an hdd raid...
Im willing to bet that decently priced 250GB SSD models will be available in fall 2009 Thats 2 years away people. Plenty of time to let the economy known as competition work its way down in price.
36Gb Fijitsu SAS drives are $139 each and at that price my next build will have a RAID 0 for games and OS, and main storage of a TB for less money.
F*** Raptors and this overpriced BS.
I love the idiots who don't have a flying fuck of a idea what these drives are for or are capable of and they rate the drives with a 2-3 rating. And they never bought the drives, just posted a review.
For what a Raptor gives you, it's more than worth it.
With 1.6 million of sales and 3 people, if I can save seconds by using faster drives, per transaction and fit more transactions per day in it would be worth it, however when confronted with the current speed and and capacity of magnetic drives in different RAID arrays the performance per dollar right now is SAS. Hugely fast, decent capacity's, and high reliability.
$152 per hour of average sales. Or $2.54 per minute. If we can save 15 minutes of wait time due to systems lag per day we would generate a extra $39,000.00 per year.
So do I compare performance? Every day, every minute, every second.
4x Raptor drives: Installs Windows XP in 9 minutes flat.
Loads a HDR Counter Strike Source map in 5 seconds compared to 12 with non-RAID
Windows Vista Home Premium boots in <17 seconds from push-button to desktop
If someone were to simply turn on your computer you would be in some serious doodoo especially if they were federal agents who finally tracked the illegal graphics cards down :laugh::laugh::laugh:
But they have a harder time figuring out the passwords especially if its something lilke this:
Qu!ZWiz
ok ok lol im done going off subject here, and theres nothing wrong with letting your siblings use it, but just be careful. I have learned the hard way never to let my brother on my laptop, he saw that as a free ticket to porn where his parents would never catch him looking at it since they always check the history. Guess what he did he frickin filled my laptop with viruses. Its taken its toll on this lappy but I have managed PAINSTAKINGLY to remove most of the viruses. No harm but there is foul