SuperTalent is one of the first companies to actually launch a flash-based harddrive and as most of you know by now we’re quite in to SSD harddrives (Solid State Disk) here at NH. At least being able to exchange the system disk for a quieter or more or less completely silent and fast memory-based harddrive is something many are fanatsizing about. Even if the prices have been a serious problem with SSD harddrives that’s not the only problem making us long for more and better SSD drives. This is something they’ve had to experience over at Tech Report where they’ve tested one of the first flash-based harddrives on the retail market, SuperTalent’s 2.5″ ATA model. Equipped with 8GB of memory and without moving parts it is looking mighty promising.
Unfortunately things are not as positive when they start testing the drive. Still, it is more or less completely silent and has incredibly fast access times. But, and it is a pretty big but, the transfer rates anything but good. The write speeds for SuperTalents 2.5″ flash harddrives are not even close to those of a relatively slow 4200 RPM hardrive, which says it all really.
Flash harddrives have great potential but they need to fix those transfer rates. The prices is at least on the right path as SuperTalent’s 16GB 2.5″ flash harddrive costs about $700. Hardly good value, but considerably mroe humane than the previous prices of flash harddrives.
