Western Digital unveils its first SSDs
updated 10:40 am EDT, Tue June 16, 2009
WD SiliconDrive III SSDs
Western Digital this morning entered into the solid-state drive field in earnest and launched its SiliconDrive III range. The result of its buyout of SiliconSystems earlier this year, the drives are targeted at professionals where longevity is more important than sheer speed. Although they don't have read and write speeds faster than 100MB and 80MB per second respectively, they have a unique predictive feature that calculates the remaining lifespan of a drive so that it can be replaced before it fails.
The initial series includes two SATA II drives in 1.8- and 2.5-inch sizes for ultraportables, notebooks and certain servers. Both transfer at the maximum speeds mentioned above but have different storage capacities that start at 30GB and peak at 60GB for the 1.8-inch drive and 120GB for the larger drive. A lone PATA is limited to reads and writes of 85MB and 60MB per second respectively but holds as much as 120GB.
Ship dates and pricing aren't available for the new series. [via Reg Hardware]
