Guillotine

A few weeks ago intel released their new line of Solid State Drives (SSD).  These drives promise to be different than previous SSDs from other manufacturers which have had some reported problems. This is essentially due to the new multi level cell flash memory vs the single level cell architechture used in previous SSDs. These drives are supposed to be much more reliable, and so far most are feeling that Intel has definitely lived up to that promise.

What is an SSD??? Basically it’s a hard drive based on flash memory technology rather than the magnetic platters used in conventional hard disks. As some said when I tried explaining it to them: “So it’s like a flash card for a digital camera only bigger?” Well… Yes… That’s exactly what it’s like. The benefits??? It’s fast, it produces less heat than a standard HDD, it’s fast, there are no moving parts so it’s more reliable, and finally it’s fast… Did I mention that SSDs are fast??? There have been benchmarks showing that SSDs are anywhere from 6X to 12X faster than the average hard drive. A good example would be one fellow that installed one on in his laptop… He said it takes 15 seconds to reboot the computer… Next time you reboot your computer time it. On average I’d say it takes 2 to 3 minutes using a standard HDD. Not to mention all the time folks spend watching that hourglass icon waiting for a program to load.

At the moment the Intel Mainstream drives come in 2 flavors. the XM-18M is an 80 GB drive and the XM-25M is the 160 GB version. Granted they are rather small by todays standards, and rather expensive (the 80GB model is retailing around $700), but the standard rule of thumb on flash memory products is that capacity doubles while price drops by half each year, so it would not be a surprise to see the 160GB drive selling for $350 or so by next fall and a 320 GB version releasing along the same time.

For more info on Intel’s SSD Drives
Click here: http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/index.htm