Sandisk announces 64 GB solid state disk drive

Taipei (Taiwan) - Sandisk today announced a 64 GB version of its previously introduced 1.8" solid state disk (SSD) drive.

The drive offers twice the capacity of 32 GB units, which are shipping in volume at this time and are sold through system vendors such as Dell. Scheduled for volume availability by the end of this year, the 64 GB version offers the same specifications as its smaller sister unit, which include a sustained data read rate of 67 MB/s and 7000 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second ) for a 512 byte transfer.

Sandisk claims that notebooks equipped with these NAND flash-based SSDs can boot Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise in as little as 30 seconds and access files at an average speed of 0.11 milliseconds. A comparable notebook using a hard disk requires an average 48 seconds to boot and an average 17 milliseconds to access files, Sandisk said.

The reliability of the SSDs is rated at 2 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF).

According to the manufacturer, 64 GB SSD engineering samples are scheduled to ship in third quarter, with mass production planned to begin prior to the end of the year. Pricing has not been announced.

Sandisk is currently shipping 2.5" and 1.8" versions of its 32 GB SSDs for a reported $350 to system vendors. Consumers, however, pay more to be able to enjoy these drives : Dell, for example, sells the drive as an option for some of its notebooks and charges an extra $450 for the 1.8" drive.