Western Digital unveils its first consumer SSD
Western Digital announced the SiliconEdge Blue 2.5-inch SSD family on Wednesday, as its first entry into the consumer SSD market. The SiliconEdge Blue drives come in 64, 128, and 256 GB sizes, with MSRPs of $279.00, $529.00 and $999.00 USD, respectively.
The SiliconEdge Blue have a native SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, with 250MB per second peak read speeds and 170MB for writes. While not revealing the exact controller in their press release, AnandTech determined that the controller is JMicron’s JMF612 (which is the same same as Crucial’s Reactor series). The drive will support TRIM in Windows 7, but WD is not going to offer a standalone TRIM application for prior OSes.
TRIM is necessary to ensure that performance of an SSD does not degrade with use.
Prices seem a little high, actually. For example, Intel’s 160GB X25-M drive, which many consider the “gold stadard” of MLC drives, runs $429.99 at Newegg.com. Meanwhile, these drives can be found at $249.99, $449.99, and $799.99, respectively.
Still, it’s good to see one of the hard-drive manufacturing leaders, who had pretty much eschewed SSDs finally entering the market. While still priced at a premium, SSDs are coming down in price, and may soon be a required feature (certainly, they are already an option) on most new PCs.
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