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Samsung Announces Fast 256GB Solid State Drive (SSD)

Samsung announced that they will begin delivering a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) later this year. The drive uses a standard SATA II interface, making it compatible with existing Macs. Besides becoming the largest Solid State Drive on the market, Samsung promises remarkable read and write performance:

With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speed of 160MB/s, Samsungs MLC-based 2.5-inch 256GB SSD is about 2.4 times faster than a typical HDD.

The drive will begin sampling in September, with mass production "by year end". Samsung will deliver the drive in 2.5" and 1.8" versions, though we are uncertain if the 1.8" version will be thin enough to fit in the MacBook Air.

Apple first introduced the use of a SSD in their products with the $999 SSD upgrade for MacBook Air. The price to performance benefit of the current SSDs has been somewhat disappointing, though there does appear to be a small battery life advantage. As the economics of solid state drives continue to improve, we are likely to see them being introduced into future Apple laptops. Unfortunately, Samsung has not yet announced the pricing of their 256GB drive, which will likely remain a very expensive option.

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49 months ago
Amen. Way to speed up the Air. More excuse to get one! :)
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49 months ago
man, this is really exciting with all the advantages we can have from large SSDs. I bet it will be super expensive though, unfortunately. (I might buy it anyway :D)
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49 months ago
At the rate that the capacity of SSDs is increasing, HDs could go the way of the floppy within 5 years...
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49 months ago
iPod, Touch and iPhone are just dying for this technology to reach the 1 inch storage drive form factor that they use! (iirc)
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49 months ago
Now the air will be really cool and worth the money- oh wait no it wont. I bet some air lovers out there even think this will boost sales.
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49 months ago
YYAAAAYYYY
this is an awsome thing, when they come out i might put on in my CD MBP :) give me awsome battery life.
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49 months ago

At the rate that the capacity of SSDs is increasing, HDs could go the way of the floppy within 5 years...


Realistic analogy.
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49 months ago

man, this is really exciting with all the advantages we can have from large SSDs. I bet it will be super expensive though, unfortunately. (I might buy it anyway :D)


Expensive as it may be, this will bring the price of the 64G SSD way down.
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49 months ago
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49 months ago
glad to see this. i know it will be very expensive, but it will make the 64 gb drive cheaper. hopefully this will make it into the air at macworld
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