SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), well known in the IT industry for their flash memory cards has announced the shipping of their SanDisk G3 SSD (solid state drives) to both North American and European markets. The drives are considered to be a viable alternative to the traditional 7200 RPM (revolutions per minute) hard disk drives and are available in two drive sizes, 60GB and 120GB.
The drives have been developed for with long term reliability in mind, the 120GB drive estimated to be capable of having 80 terabytes (TB) of data written to it over a lifetime of regular use. The drives make use of ExtremeFFSTM technology, a flash management system that improves the endurance of the drive in personal computers powered by the Microsoft operating systems of Windows 7 and Windows XP. The new drives also support a read/write speed of 220MB/sec and 120MB/sec respectively.
It’s expected that in the coming years, solid state drives will replace hard disk drives as the absence of moving parts reduces support costs by making the drives less susceptible to shock damage and mechanical failure.
The SanDisk G3 60GB drive retail for $229.99 while the 120GB drive is $399.99. The drives will also come with SanDisk’s 10 year limited warranty and are Windows 7 certified and compatible with Linux , Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard as well as Windows XP and Vista.
