August 12, 2008, 3:53 PM — Solid state drives (SSDs) are not getting much faster or cheaper, but they are at least becoming more numerous with the announcement by Imation of two new models, the Pro 7500 and Pro 7000.
The SATA-based Pro 7500 is being pitched by the company as the high-end SSD choice, featuring 130Mbytes/s read performance, and writes up to 120Mbytes/s. Countering reports that some SSD drives have failed to match the reliability claims made for them, Imation claims the Pro 7500 has a quoted mean time between failure (MTBF) or one million hours, ideal for its intended use in data center arrays, and inside workstations and web servers.
The Pro 7000, by contrast, is designed for the storage upgrade market, and uses a Parallel ATA interface. The quoted read/write performance figures are identical, but real-world I/O performance (IOPS) will be slightly lower thanks to interface limitations. This is quoted as 27,000 sequential reads and 18,000 random reads for the Pro 7000, as against figures of 83,000 reads and 19,000 random reads for the Pro 7500.
Available in 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch formats in the U.S., capacities will range from the 16GB to 128GB increments now established in the wider SSD market.
Imation entered the SSD market as recently as March , launching the MOBI 3000 and Pro 7000. The new drives increase capacities and, in the case of the new Pro 7000, upgrade the SATA interface to version 3.0. Performance has also been given a boost, though only to levels that are roughly on par with the performance levels being claimed by rivals for similar capacities.
As with Imation's debut drives, the new models are based around controllers from Korean startup, Mtron.
The issue of the real-world performance boost on offer from SSDs under Windows reared its head against last week, with Samsung announcing plans to better optimize the technology for Microsoft's OS.
