All the 64GB and 128GB solid-state drives making waves these days may look pretty in catalogs, but with prices sometimes upwards of $1,000, you can’t help but wonder if the whole SSD industry has pressed its technology a little too far past the point of practicality. On Monday, SanDisk rolled out a more cost-effective alternative destined for ultra-low-cost PCs with its pSSD solid-state drives.
Unlike your basic SSD that takes on the bulky form factor of a 2.5-inch hard drive for the sake of standardization, the pSSD drive is just a flat module, and it weighs one tenth what even a 1.8-inch drive would weigh. It also comes in capacities of 4GB, 8GB and 16GB, smaller sizes ideal for ultra-light Internet machines that won’t be carrying much software or data.
The “P” in the pSSD name stands for parallel ATA, an interface that allows the pSSD drives to reach sustained write speeds of 17 MB/s and sustained read speeds of 39 MB/s.
SanDisk didn’t reveal what the drives would actually cost, but the company intends them to make it into notebooks that run between $250 and $350, so you can bet they’re a heck of lot less than $1,000. The drives will be on display at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, which begins today.
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