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CES 2013: SanDisk Launches Fast, Low Cost Ultra Plus / X110 SSD

Subject: Storage | January 7, 2013 - 09:55 AM |
Tagged: x110 ssd, ultra plus, ssd, sandisk, ces 2013, CES, 19nm

SanDisk has officially launched a new solid state drive that is slated to offer up a good balance of performance and price. Based on 19nm flash used in a 2.5” form factor drive acceptable for either notebook or desktop upgrades, the new drive is the Ultra Plus in retail channels and known as the X110 to OEM partners.

The basic specifications that SanDisk have released include a SATA 3.0 6Gbps connection, and respectable sequential read and write speeds of 530 MB/s and 445 MB/s respectively. Random read and write speeds and IOPS were not listed in the press release.

SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD.jpg

However, in an odd twist for CES news, the new SanDisk solid state drive is actually available now at Amazon, Microcenter, and Newegg. Amazom and Microcenter will have 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB SKUs while Newegg will carry the 128GB and 256GB models.

Interestingly, SanDisk has priced these drives fairly cheaply with MSRPs of $79.99 for the 64GB model, $109.99 for the 128GB model, and $219.99 for 256GB drive. Granted the 64GB model is not great on $/GB, but the higher tier models are under $1/GB. Unfortunately, the 128GB model is out of stock on Amazon, and the 64GB and 256GB models are all well above MSRP at $120 and $250 respectively. Here’s hoping the price comes down as more stock becomes available.

Coverage of CES 2013 is brought to you by AMD!

PC Perspective's CES 2013 coverage is sponsored by AMD.

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Source: SanDisk

Sandisk's Extreme 240GB, not the fastest but certainly the lowest in power consumption

Subject: Storage | November 6, 2012 - 12:15 AM |
Tagged: sandisk, 240gb, toggle NAND, SF-2181, sandforce, Extreme 240GB

SanDisk has been taking advantage of their long experience in the flash memory market to develop a line of SSDs which, apart from the controller, are all made in house.  That way they only have to license a controller, in this case SandForce's 2181, avoiding the costs of developing and improving their own controller.  The cost might be a bit high at $215 when you compare it to some of the deals currently available on the previous generation of SSDs.  [H]ard|OCP saw better performance than they expected from the older SF-2181 but still not to the level of the current generation of controllers.  What helped make this particular drive more attractive was the Toolkit which makes updating your firmware quite easy and remarkably low power consumption.

H_sandiskX.jpg

"The SanDisk Extreme 240GB is SanDisk's SandForce-powered SSD. Featuring Toggle Mode NAND and the SF-2181 with the latest firmware we give the SanDisk Extreme a spin. How does it stand up to its enthusiast competitors in terms of steady state and out of the box performance?"

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

Source: [H]ard|OCP

$50 cache SSD anyone?

Subject: Storage | October 17, 2012 - 07:39 PM |
Tagged: cache, ssd, sandisk, ReadyCache 32GB

SanDisk has been making flash based storage product for quite a long time and while they may not come to your mind when you are thinking of buying an SSD, they do have a variety of product lines available.  [H]ard|OCP recently reviewed their 32GB ReadyCache SSD, which is powered by their own software and is a full sized SSD, so you won't need an mSATA slot in order to use the device.  SanDisk also ensures your data's integrity by copying any data it is going to cache, so that a copy remains on your HDD in case the SSD dies on you.  [H] were impressed by the ability of this drive to cache multiple HDDs and RAID volumes, a trick many other solutions can not manage.  If you are looking for an inexpensive and easy way to increase your PCs performance you could do a lot worse than SanDisk's ReadyCache.

H_Sandish.jpg

"SanDisk enters the caching solution market with the SanDisk ReadyCache 32GB SSD. This SSD provides instant acceleration to users' computers through intelligent software provided by Condusiv Technologies and hardware from SanDisk. By adding two tiers of data storage, both SSD and RAM, this solution looks promising."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

Source: [H]ard|OCP

Sandisk Launches PCIe Solid State Accelerators (SSAs)

Subject: Storage | July 3, 2012 - 12:21 AM |
Tagged: ssd, slc, server, sandisk, PCIe SSD, flash, enterprise, caching

Flash storage company Sandisk has recently jumped into the world of enterprise PCI-E caching SSDs – what they are calling Solid State Accelerators. Currently, they are offering a 200GB and 400GB model under the company’s Lightning PCIe series. The SSDs feature a proprietary Sandisk controller driving 24nm SLC NAND flash, a PCI-E 2.0 x4 interface, and maximum power draw of 15 watts.

The Lightning Accelerators use the NAND flash for Sandisk’s own foundry and offer a large performance boost for servers and workstations over hard drives and SATA SSDs. It is capable of 410 MB/s sequential reads or 110,000 IOPS. Further, when using 4KB and 8KB blocks, the drives can reach 23,000 and 17,000 read/write IOPS respectively. Other specifications include an average response time of 245 microseconds, and less than 30 millisecond maximum response times. The Solid State Accelerators also feature sustained read and write latencies as low as 50 microseconds.

 

SandiskSSA.jpg

Sandisk has built the drives so that they can be configured as boot drives, storage drives, or caching drives. The company supports up to 5 drives in a single system, for a maximum of 2TB of flash storage. In addition, Sandisk is offering up its Flashsoft software that allows the Lightning Accelerators to be used as caching drives on Windows-based systems. Unfortunately, that is an additional cost which is not included in the already pricey SSDs (good thing for corporate expense accounts!).

Speaking of pricing, the 200GB LP206M has an MSRP of $1,350 while the 400GB LP406M has an MSRP of $2,350. Both cards have five year warranties and a MTBF rating of 2 million hours. You can find more information on the Sandisk Website.

It will be interesting to see how this Sandisk accelerator stacks up to the likes of the Intel 910 and FusioIO drives! The FusionIO FX, for example, gives you 420GB of QDP MLC NAND for $2,495, which works out such that Sandisk has a slightly lower cost-per-gigabyte value and SLC flash. We will have to wait for some independant reviews to say which drive is actually faster, however.

 

Source: Sandisk

SanDisk releases new 'Lightning' bootable, lower-cost competitor to the Intel 910 Series PCIe SSD

Subject: Storage | June 5, 2012 - 01:07 AM |
Tagged: ssd, sandisk, pcie, enterprise, computex

Just over a month back we took a look at the Intel SSD 910 Series PCIe SSD. While the specs and performance were excellent, there were some factors preventing use in workstation systems - namely the prohibitive cost and lack of a Boot ROM. With that, it seems SanDisk has made an attempt to answer that call. Today at Computex they announced a new PCIe Enterprise SSD, the PCIe Lightning:

image001.jpg

This is a much simpler layout, with flash right alongside the controller - an option not possible with the multi-PCB Intel 910 Series as it contained much more flash on its daughter boards. With this simpler layout comes lower cost but unfortunately lower maximum capacities. Less complexity also means lower maximum specs, but they still look quite good given the price point this card will be filling:

  • Price: $1350 (200GB) / $2350 (400GB)
  • 4k 70/30 R/W split: 23,000 IOPS
  • Sequential Throughput: 425 MB/sec
  • Warranty: 5 Year
  • Endurance: 10 full-drive writes per day for warranty duration

I'm glad to see some good PCIe SSD competition cropping up - especially the bootable kind.

Full release after the break:

 

Source: SanDisk Lightning Product Page

CES Storage Roundup Part 4 - Sandisk, PQI

Subject: Storage, Shows and Expos | January 16, 2012 - 06:36 PM |
Tagged: ssd, sandisk, PQI, memory, flash, CES

Sandisk

Sandisk had a booth with a large array of small nand flash storage devices, though most of it appeared to be SD, CF, or for embedded mobile applications:

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One of the more interesting pieces was a 64GB e.MMC nand flash part that fit *within* the dimensions of a penny! This is not a plug-in module - it's the type that would be soldered onto the mainboard of a cell phone or other small mobile device:

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While the booth was generally light on SSD's, there were a couple on display, namely the U100, in both 7mm (left) and 9.5mm (right) form factors:

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The U100 is also available in even smaller form factor. We're currently taking a look at an Ultrabook equipped with the same Sandisk U100 SSD - mounted to an even smaller PCB.

PQI

PQI has been a favorite of mine for years. They were among the first to make a really tiny thumb drive, and I'm glad to see they continue to make a versatile line of products:

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A little known fact is that PQI also has a line of SATA SSD's:

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The S525 Series (also available as the S518 - 1.8" form factor), is a bit long in the tooth and uses a dated JMicron controller, but PQI made the extra effort to include the optional USB 2.0 interface that most other manufacturers chose to omit.

More to follow

I've still got some pics to sift through, so stay tuned for more CES Storage goodies!

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

Source: PC Perspective

SanDisk joins the hard drive haters with the release of their Ultra SSDs

Subject: General Tech | July 28, 2011 - 12:40 PM |
Tagged: ssd, sandisk, sandisk ultra

SanDisk is releasing a line of SSDs, called the Ultra series.  They are not aimed at the high end market, they use the older SATA 2 interface and claim sequential transfer speeds of 280MB/s read and 270MB/s write.  The prices should range from $130 for the 60GB product to $450 for the 240GB model, which puts them about middle of the road for pricing.  They also list expected lifetime in terms of the amount of data written to them; 40TB of data written for the 60GB up to 120TB of total data written to the 240GB.  The Register covered the release here.

Elreg_sandisk_ultra_ssd.jpg

"SanDisk has a new Ultra line, a cruise flash missile aimed at taking out PC and notebook hard drives and replacing them with much faster SanDisk SSDs.

These are 2.5-inch format, 2-bit multi-level cell flash drives, coming in 60, 120 and 240GB capacity points. The Ultra brand is used by SanDisk for consumer flash products such as SDHC cards, and now a trio of SSDs will be sold under the Ultra name."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

Source: The Register

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