SanDisk SSD Ultra ATA 5000 Ready For Primetime

SanDisk feels it’s ready to take on the mobile PC market with its first solid-state hard drive. The SSD Ultra ATA 5000 1.8-inch hard drive comes in a 32GB size and can boot Windows Vista Enterprise in under 35 seconds. This drive is being touted for its speed, thanks to solid-state memory instead of moving parts like a conventional hard drive.

The geeky-goo from the press release:


With no moving parts, SanDisk SSD does not need to spin up into action or to seek files in the way that conventional hard disk drives do – enabling SanDisk SSD to work much faster. SanDisk SSD Ultra ATA 5000 achieves a sustained read rate of 62-megabyte (MB)*/sec and a random read rate of 7300 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer – more than 100 times better than any hard disk drive.
These performance figures boost system performance. For instance, SanDisk SSD UATA 5000 can boot Microsoft Windows® Vista™ Enterprise on a laptop in as little as 35 seconds. SanDisk SSD achieves an average file access rate of 0.12 milliseconds.** On Windows Experience Index for Microsoft® Vista™, SanDisk SSD scores 5.4 out of a total 5.9, whereas a hard disk drive scores 3.7 on the same test inside the same laptop.***

Oh, and your laptop will get a longer battery life if you slap one of these SSD Ultra drives into it. This drive only uses 0.4W while active as opposed to 1.0W on standard hard disks. Less power consumed means more juice. Everybody wins. No word yet on how much this’ll cost or when bigger sizes will become available.

Official Site [SanDisk]