TechThisOut!

Several manufacturers are showing large capacity hard drives based on Flash memory technology at the Computex trade show in Taipei.
The drives are lighter, less power-hungry and far more durable than traditional hard disk drives based on a rotating magnetic platter.The largest on display were PQI’s 64GB drives, and another company has a 32GB drive.

The PQI drives are working engineering samples with mass production scheduled for August, Bob Chiu, a sales manager with PQI told Techcentral. Apacer was showing a similar 32GB flash drive.

While Flash hard drives have many potential benefits, they also have some drawbacks and are expensive.

Apacer’s 32GB drive, which is available now, sells for about $1,700, said Vincent Hsu of the company’s development and marketing department.

The drive prices depend on Flash memory chip prices, which are falling rapidly as demand for the chips grows from products like Apple’s iPod and manufacturers increase production.

“Samsung told us that they expect prices to fall 40% every year, if demand continues to grow,” said Hsu.

The high prices restrict these large Flash drives to specialist markets, such as military and industrial use, where the durability and resistance to adverse environmental conditions is critical.

Samsung has been strongly promoting the concept of Flash as a replacement for old-style hard drives, and has demonstrated large Flash drives and a hybrid Flash/magnetic drive.

The other significant problem with the drives is their relatively slow data transfer speed compared to traditional hard drives.

PQI has attempted to boost speed by adding a faster dual-channel SATA interface to its 64GB drive, but competitors are not impressed. “It doesn’t really increase speed that much, according to our engineering test department,” said Hsu.

The main limitation on speed is the read and write speed of the Flash chips themselves, which is out of the hands of drive makers. “We think we’ll see big improvements by Q3 or Q4 2007,” said Hsu.

Prices will come down quickly, as competition is likely to be hot in the large Flash disk drive market.

“These things are not very difficult to make,” said an engineer with manufacturer Transcend Information who asked that his name not be used.

As a result, there are likely to be far more companies competing in the Flash disk market than there are in the traditional hard disk market.

While manufacturers are making their largest capacity Flash drives in a form factor identical to a 2.5in notebook hard disk drive at the moment, they are all experimenting with much smaller sizes.

Other than the chip volume, the only limitation is the width of the traditional IDE disk connector, they say, and this will disappear as the smaller SATA connector becomes the market standard.