Solid State Drives may well be the future of data storage in the computer industry, but with the high price of flash memory at this time SSDs are not seeing much adaption in the consumer market. So poor is the uptake by consumers for SSDs that Seagate will not even target the consumer market with its SSD line launching in 2009.
Somehow OCZ has got around the cost issue normally associated with SSDs with its latest offering called the Core Series SATA II Solid State Drive. OCZ says that the Core series are the first truly affordable SSDs and that the retail price of 50% less than competing products on the market.
OCZ will offer a 128GB SSD for $479, a 64GB SSD will retail for $259 and a 32GB SSD will retail for $169. OCZ promises that the drives will have read performance of 120-143 Mbs and write speed of 93Mbs. Seek times for the drives are quoted ad less than 0.35ms. The performance numbers are claimed to be about 40% faster than HDDs on the market. The Core series SSDs will be 2.5-inch drives and may fit inside some laptops. An exact launch date is unknown at this time.
