Samsung Develops Flash-Based Hard Drive

By ExtremeTech Staff | Posted 2005-05-24

Samsung Electronics Co. said Monday that it had developed a solid-state hard disk based on flash memory.

The new drives will be available in capacities up to 16 gigabytes in total, although the prices of the drives were not announced. All of the drives will house Samsungs NAND flash memory, the same memory used to store images in digital cameras. The drives will ship in a 1.8-inch form factor to notebook PC manufacturers beginning in August.

Samsungs PC drive is the first of its kind to be manufactured using flash memory, although similar flash disks have been designed in other form factors. Drives using conventional volatile RAM by Texas Memory Systems, among others. Such drives must be continually powered to maintain their data, however.

Samsung has developed a full line of SSDs, the company said, including 2.5-inch models that will house up to 16 NAND devices for a total of 16 Gbytes, or the 1.8-inch drives which will house up to 8 Gbytes of flash.