14 DAY TRIAL // Oh this is too good to be true. And I'm not happy over nothing here. As I've told you, there are products that although they are available for only a week or two, feel like they've been here forever. And that's exactly the case of SSDs. Faster boot times, lower power consumption and no noise, that's what this is all about.
Yes, I know they are expensive (Ridata's 16GB SSD is the cheapest at "only" $189 and you could probably cram a full Vista install on it, but that's it). Actually, they are REALLY expansive with Sandisk's 32GB SSD having an expected price tag of about $600. And it's only 32 gigs. But that doesn't stop me from simply loving these devices. Because I am confident that the future evolution of SSDs will eventually put an end to the hard drive as we know it. And possibly to the optical devices too.
Following the SSD trend, PQI has released the awaited 64GB Flash SSDs with both PATA and Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. This 2.5" hard drive-like SSD has been expected for more than 6 months (PQI said they will release it in August but in never came out). Nevertheless, the unit arrived just in time to position itself ahead of the competition. Of course, you can always go for ADATA's 128GB SSD but aside from ADATA's products (which are non-existent on the market), the PQI 64GB unit remains the largest SSD.
The upcoming Turbo SATA SSD will be available in capacities up to 64GB and will have a maximum transfer rate of 100MB/sec (although I think that this speed is related to the interface and may not represent real-world performance). As a reminder, Samsung's 32GB device was able to achieve about 50MB/s in a transfer rate test. What's really interesting about this device is that it has a SATA interface rather than the older PATA found in other SSD devices.
I'm a big fan of SSDs, but the war is just beginning. And classical hard drives won't die easily, especially with Seagate announcing that they have developed a technology that will boost the storage space of magnetic based devices to more than 300TB. Moreover, optical units are not that far behind. Ultimately, the price will make the difference but SSDs are here to stay.