Samsung's Solid State Drive Of The Future

Solid state drives have been popular but expensive components since they arrived on the scene a few years ago. Essentially an array of flash memory and a controller neatly packaged into a shell resembling a typical notebook hard drive, solid state drives have many desirable characteristics.

With no moving parts or motors, solid state drives consume considerably less power than typical hard drives. In addition, they are virtually silent and generate almost no heat. This also contributes to power savings because it takes less equipment and electricity to cool the system. Many early netbooks utilized solid state drives to help increase battery life, although the high cost and low capacities have made them an unwanted option for most users in that market.

Technological advances and lower prices have finally brought capacities to more realistic levels. Samsung Electronics recently released its highest-density solid state drive to date, the MMDOE56G-5MXP-0VB, a 256-GB drive that doubles the highest capacity previously offered by the company, at a lower cost per gigabyte. Physically, the drive fits the 2.5-inch form factor and measures 9.5mm high, which is the same as a typical 2.5-inch platter-based drive. Running Windows Vista Ultimate, reviewers connected the MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB as a second drive in a desktop system and ran it through some speed tests.

Read and write speeds were assessed by timing the transfer of two folders, one containing 1.2 GB of files and the other 3.2 GB, between the MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB and a storage device on our network. Since there are many factors that could affect the overall copy speeds, our tests were not meant to define the capability of the drive, as much as put it to use in a real-world setting. In addition, we've tested other drives, in the exact same system and manner, giving us a reliable basis for comparison.

Writing the 1.2-GB folder to the Samsung solid state drive took 1 minute, 48 seconds, while the larger 3.2-GB folder took 7 minutes, 37 seconds. This is in the same ballpark as other solid state drives we've tested, such as the Imation M Class and Intel's X25-E (which is actually an enterprise-level drive). Those drives respectively took 1 minute, 58 seconds, and 1 minute, 57 seconds to write the 1.2-GB folder; and 7 minutes, 16 seconds, and 6 minutes, 59 seconds for the 3.2-GB folder.

Read times from the drive were also comparable, with the 1.2-GB folder taking 2 minutes, 4 seconds and the 3.2-GB folder taking 7 minutes, 49 seconds. The Imation drive took 2 minutes, 8 seconds, and 7 minutes, 53 seconds; while Intel's drive took 2 minutes, 3 seconds, and 7 minutes, 45 seconds, respectively.

While it appears that Samsung's drive is pretty much identical to these others, what is worth noting is its price. Although the company is apparently focusing on getting the drive into OEMs' products, there have been reports of it being sold at retail for $799. Even at this most likely inflated price, it works out to just more than $3 per gigabyte. Considering that less than a year ago drives of one-eighth the capacity were selling for approximately six times the price per gigabyte, the MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB is truly a noteworthy product.

With the recent announcement that Intel will start manufacturing its solid state drives using 34-nanometer architecture (up until now it was using 50 nm), lower prices and higher-capacity solid state drives are finally in the foreseeable future. Due to the current economic state, Intel has chosen to focus first on lowering the price of current capacities but has acknowledged that larger drives will be produced next year.

In addition, the imminent release of Microsoft's Windows 7 will likely give a boost to solid state drive demand, as the operating system is designed with features to specifically take advantage of solid state drives' unique aspects.

The Samsung MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB offers a glimpse into the future of solid state drives. It is large enough for most users to install a collection of necessary applications and store a respectable amount of media files, at a price that is relatively inexpensive compared to what solid state drive prices used to be.

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