BitMicro: Hard Drives From Flash Memory

To ensure better protection against mechanical effects and the aging of hard drive components, BitMicro constructs its drives entirely from flash storage.

Storage capacities from 512 MB to 155 GB are produced. Since flash memory is considerably more expensive than magnetic mass storage, prices for the really high-capacity drives can breach the $10,000 mark.

Flash drives in 2.5" and 3.5" formats.

DRAM cache systems of up to 128 MB are deployed to conserve the flash memory chips from frequent read and write operations.

Data to be written is processed by a controller and only actually written to the flash chips if necessary.

If the power supply to the hard drive is suddenly cut, a backup battery takes over to provide enough power to complete the backup. The drives can withstand extreme conditions, functioning problem-free in temperatures from -60°C to +125°C. Access times down to 35 microseconds and a data transfer rate of up to 180 MB/s are possible. Both IDE and SCSI interface versions are available, and BitMicro says SATA is next. For even more storage space, you can turn to a RAID system, called the E-Disk SCAN S2F-J or -R. These offer storage capacities of up 688 GB and a 2 GB cache system out of the box.

BitMicro is currently refusing to name a price for its RAID systems.