Samsung Unveils 4GB Vista Flash Disk

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So Hybrid Hard Drives and increasingly affordable Solid State HDDs are all the rage right now but how about if you want a little extra juice without going the whole hog? Try this…

Designed for use in conjunction with the (supposedly) impending Windows Vista operating system, the Samsung 4GB solid state disk (SSD) will serve as a high speed NAND flash cache for notebooks and PCs. It works using ‘Windows ReadyBoost’ a new Vista feature which works intelligently with the SSD to populate it with the data a user needs before they ask for it. It readies favourite applications and data in the background, accelerating everyday actions such as starting programmes and switching users.

Consequently when a user requests that data, rather than being limited to servicing 100-200 requests per second (as with a traditional HDD), Samsung claims its SSD can service up to 5000 requests per second which should virtually eliminate data seek delays. In addition, the 4GB SSD can work in tandem with a hybrid hard drive, coming into play as a secondary source of cached data.

Handily, the little performance booster can also be located virtually anywhere on the motherboard and is connected through a standard ATA port. It should also be noted that since Vista automatically compresses all data stored on a ReadyBoost device the 4GB drive should, in theory, act as far more than that. Samsung quotes up to 8GB but I’d say that was a little optimistic.

As for real world availability Samsung didn’t get into a facts or figures but since it is Vista dependent (an OS that was last seen slipping into late Q1) there’s little need to hold our breath is there…?

Link:
Samsung UK

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