OCZ Plans On Offering Low Cost TLC Solid State Drives Just In Time For The HDD Shortage
OCZ Plans On Offering Low Cost TLC Solid State Drives Just In Time For The HDD Shortage
Posted 11/04/2011 at 11:42am
| by Brad Chacos
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Just when all seems bleak on the storage front, a possible savior has emerged: OCZ. No, the company doesn’t have plans to open an HDD facility in a dry location and start pumping out traditional drives. Instead, the solid-state-focused OCZ plans on rolling out a new, cheaper type of SSD early in 2012, in exactly the same time period that experts think traditional HDD reserves will be drying up.
OCZ told attendees of the Needham 5th Annual HDD & Memory Conference that the company plans on shipping triple-level-cell (TLC) NAND SSD drives in the first quarter of next year, Storage Review reports. That would make it the first TLC-based SSD product to hit the streets. Current SSDs use multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND. There are pluses and minuses to TLC NAND as it exists currently; it is approximately 30 percent cheaper than MLC NAND – which could make it an attractive alternative during the upcoming HDD dry spell – but current TLC SSDs could have shelf lives as low as four years, making it a temporary Band-aid at best. OCZ hopes to offset that negative down the line with the second generation of its SSD-life-enhancing Indilinx nDurance technology, which is expected to become available fall of next year.
Image credit: StorageReview.com
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Big Geek Daddy
November 05, 2011 at 9:23am
OCZ also said they would release their Octane SSD on November 1st. Where is it? I called the compnay and nobody would answer the phone in sales or marketing. I sent two emails and they haven't been answered. If you're going to issue a Press Release and annouce a product availablity date then it would be nice to actually be able to find the product after that date has passed.
Gezzer
November 05, 2011 at 4:15am
Man I have so many HDDs kicking about I wonder what I could get on ebay. Then again I guess PATA aren't in big demand any more. To be honest I find the whole the sky is falling in because of a HDD shortage kind of funny. Other then OEMs how many people have to buy a HDD in the next year? I mean not would like to, but absolutely have to buy one and can't wait a bit till the supply rebounds?
Conal_keaney
November 05, 2011 at 12:25am
This HDD shortage sucks so much butt. I couple days ago on newegg a WD Caviar 1TB Black was like $180. Now it shot up to $220! Sweet lord! I remember they were on sale months ago for $100!
Kinetic
November 06, 2011 at 8:46am
Tell me about it... I use Seagate Barracuda 500GB drives quite extenisively for system building, mainly because they're reasonably fast, reliable, and were dirt cheap at $40 a pop. Now they're about $120.... Good thing I don't need one right now (knock on wood).
wolfing
November 04, 2011 at 2:02pm
definitely getting one. I have an old 64GB SSD that I don't even think supports TRIM, but OCZ seemed to be concentrated on 'super-ultra-fast' drives. What about those of us who want a hard drive that's much faster than a standard HDD but don't want to spend $2/GB or more? Hopefully that's what they'll introduce.
AETAaAS
November 04, 2011 at 1:36pm
I don't know much about SSDs, but the idea of SLC is that it stores one bit per charge space, and MLC stores 2. If TLC goes further along the trend, does that mean a similar loss of speed as that seen between SLC and MLC?
They already say that lifespan will drop, so I am assuming that speed is similarly hit.
rawrnomnom
November 04, 2011 at 1:19pm
if it's cheap enough, and you get at least a little warning. i think i can deal with it. it would be faster than a traditional mechanical drive. maybe my laptop will get a little upgrade.
dgrmouse
November 04, 2011 at 12:36pm
"current TLC SSDs could have shelf lives as low as four years"
You keep using that word. ... I do not think it means what you think it means.
Brad Chacos
November 04, 2011 at 12:53pm
What, shelf life? I know it isn't quite the right fit, since you don't drink or eat SSDs, but I think it gets the point across. (In a past life, I was a QA inspector at a manufacturing facility that manufactured, amongst other things, high-end disposable FDA products, so I definitely know the term.)
kris79
November 04, 2011 at 12:32pm
WoooHooo! My current hard drives seem to last about as long as that anyway. Built in obsolescence - just like a Ford or Chevy! Gimmeee two of those bad boys...
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