SanDisk ships G3 solid-state drives, drops 240GB model
updated 11:15 am EST, Tue February 23, 2010
SanDisk G3 helps SSDs go mainstream
SanDisk today finally began shipping its G3 solid-state drive to retail. The drives, teased over a year ago, are meant to give both home and business users a faster alternative to a rotating hard disk. Speeds top out at 220MB per second in reads and 120MB per second in writes; the low latency of flash helps it load some files twice as quickly.
The 2.5-inch SATA drives are explicitly listed as working with both Linux and Mac OS X systems in addition to Windows, although Windows 7 owners can take advantage of the OS' native TRIM support to cut down on wasted space and avoid performance decay.
Two models are on sale at first and include a $230 60GB model as well as a $400 120GB drive, both significant hikes from the $150 and $250 mentioned in early 2009. SanDisk has also dropped any mention of the 240GB model and hasn't explained why it's no longer part of the G3 line.
