Samsung Announces 64GB Flash-Based Hard Drive

Here’s some good news for laptop enthusiasts and modders. Samsung has recently announced its latest 1.8-inch solid-state disc (SSD) with capacities up to 64 Gigabytes. Sure, you can get hundreds of gigs’ worth with today’s laptop hard drives. But with this one, you get the advantage of solid state technology. This means lower power consumption, and less likelihood of moving parts crashing. And it’s reportedly faster than regular laptop 5400 RPM or even 7200 RPM hard drives.

The SSD is based on an 8-gigabit and single-level cell NAND flash technology, which means it should outperform traditional flash-based solid-state technologies. The read and write speeds have improved by 20% and 60% respectively, compared to the 32GB SLC-flash based drives that Samsung introduced in 2006.

Samsung also foresees that aside from being ideal laptop hard drives, these SSDs would likewise be ideal storage solutions for other mobile devices like PDAs, digital camcorders and personal navigation systems. Once Samsung develops hundred gigabyte-level SSDs, these will also be marketed for use with servers. These hard drives are meant to be drop-in replacements, meaning they can be plugged in to existing laptop parallel ATA ports.

Samsung plans to begin production of the 64GB SSD by second quarter of this year.