SanDisk, well known for flash data storage products has released a 32GB flash drive targeted at business laptops, according to c|net. Like USB pen drives and flash memory cards commonly used in digital cameras, the flash drive has no moving parts and thus is more reliable and consumes less power than common magnetic storage based hard drives. As a result, they can survive drops that would destroy most hard disk drives and increase battery life by around 10%. The drive package is available in the common 2.5" size, 1.8" for ultra slim laptops and if needed other form factors also.
As Flash drives lack the seek time that would be involved with moving heads on traditional hard disk drives, data can be accessed much quicker. According to SanDisk, in their tests involving a system tested with a flash drive and a conventional hard disk, the Windows Vista operating system took just 35 seconds to boot-up on the Flash drive, compared with 55 seconds on the hard disk.
So far, Military and aerospace customers have been using flash hard drives for about a decade, some with 256GB of storage. But with these drives topping at $70,000 a few years ago, it is not until now that the pricing of flash has come down enough for flash hard drives to be even be considered in high end corporate laptops.
SanDisk has only released its flash drive to manufacturers and has not provided any info on pricing or manufacturers that will use its drives, however SanDisk mentioned that the first flash drive based laptops are due to hit the market in the first half of 2007. An analyst expects the drive to add $600 to the cost of a laptop over regular hard disk drives.
As NAND flash memory makers have managed to double the capacity of its chips each year over the past few years, at this rate we may see 128GB flash drives in two years, along with more reasonable prices for lower capacity versions. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for flash drives to reach the point where they can replace traditional hard disks in desktops and possibly even servers, assuming some other competitor to flash does not become available in the meantime.
