WD Begins Shipping New SATA/PATA Solid-State Drives

[malware]

WD today announced that it has begun shipping its new SiliconDrive III SSD product family based on technology from its March 2009 acquisition of SiliconSystems. The company's new SiliconDrive III products feature faster read/write speeds and increased capacities, and offer mechanical scalability, making them a perfect storage solution for embedded system and data streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data center media appliances.




SiliconDrive III SSDs include 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) and Parallel ATA (PATA) and 1.8-inch Micro SATA products featuring native SATA 3.0 gigabits per second (Gbps) or ATA-7 interfaces with target read speeds up to 100 megabytes per second (MBps) and write speeds to 80 MBps in capacities up to 120 gigabytes (GB).

"SiliconDrive III is the first example of how WD plans to productize solid state technology developed by SiliconSystems. The launch of SiliconDrive III will also enable WD to leverage its global sales and distribution channels to accelerate the adoption of SSD technology beyond SiliconSystems' traditional embedded systems OEM customer base into data streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data center media appliances," said Michael Hajeck, senior vice president and general manager of WD's solid state storage business unit. "SiliconDrive III is an ideal solution for OEMs that require increased performance, capacity, reliability and data throughput in their applications."

SiliconDrive III has been designed and optimized for high performance and high reliability in demanding 24x7 applications in the embedded systems, media appliance and data streaming markets. Performance and reliability is achieved through the integration of the company's patented and patent-pending advanced storage technologies in every SiliconDrive III product. The company's patented and patent-pending PowerArmor, SiSMART and SolidStor technologies address critical OEM design considerations such as the elimination of drive corruption due to power anomalies, the ability to monitor a SiliconDrive's useable life in real-time and integrated advanced storage technologies that ensure data integrity and SSD life for multi-year product deployments. Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=21.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Weer]

WD is making SSD's now?

Why does it seem like all Hard Drive manufacturers are focusing almost only on SSD's and leaving HDD's behind?

 

[buburuza]

it was about time we see SSD from WD. they need to embrace the future, the old HDD will die little by little

 

[Mussels]

they probably waited til a decent controller was out - remember that WD will be selling these things everywhere, and they wouldnt want a bad reputation from their first SSD's with the stutter bugs and long-term performance issues.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Wow. Being late to market you really need to do better than:

"with target read speeds up to 100 megabytes per second (MBps) and write speeds to 80 MBps"

which in real-speak means they dont come anywhere close in anything other than optimal block read/write mode.

And you certainly dont need to boast SATA 3GB/s when the performance is operating a fraction of those speeds.

On second thoughts, if they maintain the advertised performance for PATA interface, then there is a market for these: cheap upgrades of older machines.

Price accordingly.

 

[Mussels]

lemonade: even if they only do 100MB/s, if they dont have the stutter bug they'd make awesome laptop drives. Compare them to 2.5" hard drives, not 3.5"

I'd be more than welcome for one of these as an OS drive in either of my machines, for the access times.

 

[lemonadesoda]

I'm comparing their speeds against OTHER 2.5" SSDs not against 3.5" HDDs!

 

[Mussels]

I'm comparing their speeds against OTHER 2.5" SSDs not against 3.5" HDDs!

true.... but what about price?

Those drives with fast speeds are merely two of these with internal RAID anyway.

 

[lemonadesoda]

OK, I call you on price. What is it?

Price accordingly.

 

[Mussels]

OK, I call you on price. What is it?

so far, we dunno

lets just stay happily optimistic, that WD will release these as the first SSD's with a decent price. if not, hey, another reason to not buy WD drives.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

another reason to not buy WD drives.

There was a first reason?

 

[araditus]

I hereby dub the the lemonsoda and mussels chatroom news thread
you guys should exchange numbers seems like a progressive relationship (no intent to flame here )

 

[Mussels]

There was a first reason?

you ever used one? the reasons pile up. slow drives, prone to faults, noisy, hot. absolutely TERRIBLE external enclosures.

 

[mk_ln]

based on the specs, I would think that that they use the same controller as the kingston ssd-now v series drives. I'm pretty sure that i saw a reviewer somewhere showing that the kingstons use a toshiba controller (rebranded jMicron i think)

 

[freaksavior]

wd? ha it will die

 

[lemonadesoda]

I hereby dub the the lemonsoda and mussels chatroom news thread
you guys should exchange numbers seems like a progressive relationship (no intent to flame here )

OK, let me talk with you instead. Got anything to say about the WD SSDs? No? STFU.

 

[Disparia]

you ever used one? the reasons pile up. slow drives, prone to faults, noisy, hot. absolutely TERRIBLE external enclosures.

I certainly give you that last reason! Ugh.

Otherwise, I like my Blacks

 

[Fx]

There was a first reason?

no, there isnt. WD is awesome. they are all I buy. having been a sysadmin for just 5 years I have clearly seen a difference between manufacturers

you cant just compare reliability. you should take into consideration how prominent of a market leader they are. they have been the first to many different storage capacities. they have excellent performing products for each market not to mention how well it is simplified

but the one fact that really tuned me to them was cause they introduced raptors to us gamers/performance enthusiasts

 

[lemonadesoda]

Just to balance your gushing recommentations

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=90510&highlight=clunk

 

[Fx]

Just to balance your gushing recommentations

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=90510&highlight=clunk

companies arent going to get every product right... especially for every user due to different configs. I own the WD10EACS before that model and it runs quietly for me so I dont know wtf is up with that

I never owned the seagate 1.5tb either but sure read a lot bad about it. having said that I still think highly of seagate. I like them a lot but prefer WD over them

many users experience problems with hardrives due to bad shipping handling and have no clue

 

[hat]

Just to balance your gushing recommentations

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=90510&highlight=clunk

Just because you had a problem with one drive doesn't mean the whole company is bad. WD has thier problems just like everyone else in this world.

 

[freaksavior]

Just because you had a problem with one drive doesn't mean the whole company is bad. WD has thier problems just like everyone else in this world.

I totally agree, except when it's been 3 in 6 months

 

[Mussels]

i lost three 640GB's within 24 hours of owning each, they'd die if the PC went into sleep mode.

As much as everyone loves blaming other things, samsungs and seagates dont die on the same machine, on the same power and sata cables.

 

[jaredudu]

Weird, the only company Ive ever bought drives from was WD and Ive never had one fail.

 

[Mussels]

Weird, the only company Ive ever bought drives from was WD and Ive never had one fail.

dotn forget there are different factories for different regions. its one of my main complaints with suggestions for hardware online - a hard drive in the USA is not made in the same place as a WD hard drive in europe or australia, and often that means some components change too.