Buffalo nixes plans for first external SSD drive
The only drawback with this drive looked to be its price -- $800
February 15, 2008 12:00 PM ETTechWorld.com - Buffalo Technology Inc. has said that it has no plans to sell the world's first external drive based on solid-state technology, the MiniStation SHD-UHRS, in the U.K.
It now looks likely that the 2.5 inch form factor 100GB SSD drive, trailed by Japanese websites in December, was only a taster for future product directions and will never be sold outside the company's home market of Japan.
The drive would have been ideal for laptop users for whom the improved performance and lower power consumption of SSD technology would have scored well. As the first such drive based on USB 2.0, it is also slightly smaller than an equivalent drive based on conventional 2.5 inch HDD designs.
The only drawback with this drive looked to be its price -- over $800 based on a currency conversion from Yen -- giving it an uncomfortably high price per megabyte.
The company has at least super-sized its range of conventional 2.5 inch HDDs, announcing the "half a terabyte in your pocket" 500GB MiniStation . The drive comes with limited two-year warranty and costs $400 for the 500GB version.
SSD drives started appearing in laptops some months ago, with a price premium to reflect their specialist nature. High-end drive systems based on SDD have even as reached as high 1.6TB, but the latest news confirms that mainstream SSD drives are only slowly emerging as direct competitors for conventional HDDs.
Reprinted with permission from
Buffalo
Additional Resources



White Papers & Webcasts
Enabling Enterprise Class Features for the Mid-Range
Learn how BlueArc's new storage platform, BlueArc Mercury™, scales in fixed increments that make it easy to install and deploy, scales up to...
Customer Video: Cardinal Health
Download Now
IDC Technology Spotlight: Storage Tiering
Learn how using storage tiers translates into savings in storage costs, datacenter floor space, and power consumption, all of which are key challenges...
Data in Action: Making the Planet Smarter
Register Now
Oracle Accelerate - Not Just Smart but Timely
Download Now!
Why BI is Ripe - Now! - For Businesses of Any Size
Download Now!
The Workday User Experience Video
Watch Workday's Creative Director, Scott Lietzke, discuss the business-centered design philosophy at Workday.
Business Process Framework Demo
Learn about Configurable Business Processes and Calculated Fields. Watch Now!
Computerworld Reports
Business Continuity ZoneAn organization's business continuity plan helps keep critical functions running during an emergencythe power fails, a virus is unleashed on your network, a natural disaster has occurred. Even the slightest downtime or loss of data can cripple your operation. CDW can help you prevent disaster by implementing a well-planned recovery strategy. Click here to visit the Zone See All Zones
|





