Guest post by On September 30, 2008 Fudzilla reported that memory manufacturer Corsair did not think the time was right to enter the SSD market, but they were watching the market closely. A little under four months later, Corsair feels the time is right to enter the SSD market. Hexus.net reports the 128GB drive will be named the S128, and it will feature Samsung flash memory and a Samsung controller. Corsair decided to use the Samsung controller over a JMicron controller due to problems with the latter. Even though the drive has not been announced by Corsair, Scan.co.uk has it listed as well as NCIX.
This is awesome. Being restricted to the BIG Four: Seagate, WD, Samsung, and Hitachi for hard drives really sucks. With SSD now, the barriers between storage and memory are finally overlapping, thus allowing [previously dedicated to solid state] manufacturers to enter the market. New players can now get into the game and create competition. OCZ, Samsung, Intel, Toshiba, Sandisk, Super Talent, etc.. Though I’m sure some of these companies will eventually merge (like Hitachi, IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, etc), for now it will be kick ass.
I see Scan is listing it at just over £325. Sandisk has announced a similar line of products, with their 120GB device penciled in at around $250. Even with the pound so low, that’s still roughly £180 today. If that pricing is accurate, Corsair don’t stand a chance.
EDIT
OK, now that I look, I see NCIX are listing it at $333. I guess speculation about pricing, this far from release, is a mug’s game. Still, it will be crucial (small c). These prices are all way over what you’ll pay for HDDs. I’d love to have that speed but I’m not paying more for my disk that I did for my computer.
Edited 2009-01-21 20:54 UTC
The first signs of memory and hard drive storage merging.
The more competition the better. I’m still waiting for prices to decrease and performance to increase to the point where it’s actually worth switching over to ssd. From some of the reviews I’ve read the whole market is pretty much hit and miss with read/write performance, reliability, and lifespan. Unless someone has some good experiences with any specific brands with amazing numbers to back that up and a reasonable price tag it will still be a while before before I make that initial purchase.