A-Data Announces Big 500 GB SSD

By Kevin Parrish
published

A-DATA unveiled its new consumer solid-state drive, packing in a whopping 500 GB in an itty-bitty 2.5-inch space.

A-DATA Technology revealed it all today at CeBIT 2009, whipping out its little 2.5-inch wonder and dazzling onlookers with its impressive storage capacity. A-DATA's 512 GB XPG 2.5-inch SSD offers notebooks and PC enthusiasts half a terabyte of storage with excellent read and write speeds. Although the company did not offer a price range, it did boast about its miniature hog, calling it "dashing" as it gleams with its lightweight Aluminum casing. There's no word if this card is even available yet but we're betting that's a big no.

As for the read and write speeds, the 512 GB XPG 2.5-inch SDD offers top read speeds of 230 MB/sec. and top write speeds of 160MB/sec. and utilizes SATA II. Additionally, the SSD features a shock resistance of 1500G/0.5ms and a MTBF (mean time between failures) of 1,500,000 hours.

"Continuing to leading in the industry, A-DATA is committed to provide the highest performance, capacity, and best quality products to satisfy the needs of PC enthusiasts," the company said. "Through the launch of the highest capacity of SSD in the industry, the 512 GB XPG 2.5-inch SSD is committed to satisfy the needs of notebook and PC enthusiasts on fast transfer rate and high capacity SSD."

A-DATA is the world’s second largest vendor of memory modules. The company’s main product lines include memory modules, flash memory drives/cards, and multimedia application products.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • skine
    Forgive my ignorance, but do they make 3.5" SSDs? If not, what are the restrictions on SSDs which make 2.5" drives (and PCIe) more desirable other than the proliferation of notebooks/netbooks?

    On a less serious note, did the author have to write "A-DATA Technology revealed it all today at CeBIT 2009, whipping out its little 2.5-inch wonder and dazzling onlookers" ?
    Reply
  • haze4peace
    This is good news, SSDs are advancing very quickly. I'm willing to bet that by 2011 SSDs will become the standard storage medium. Competitive in price and size.
    Reply
  • Tindytim
    haze4peaceThis is good news, SSDs are advancing very quickly. I'm willing to bet that by 2011 SSDs will become the standard storage medium. Competitive in price and size.I really excited about these higher density SSDs because I was never interested in them. Now this means the prices on the lower capacity drivers will have to go down.
    Reply
  • magicandy
    Well-written.

    I wonder if this will be cheaper than OCZ's new 1 TB PCIe SSD. I'm even surprised OCZ is selling that for such a low price compared to Fusion IO's current ridiculously priced monsters which can't even hold a candle to this in size.
    Reply
  • Tindytim
    magicandyWell-written.Was that a joke?

    magicandyI wonder if this will be cheaper than OCZ's new 1 TB PCIe SSD. I'm even surprised OCZ is selling that for such a low price compared to Fusion IO's current ridiculously priced monsters which can't even hold a candle to this in size.This is an actual drive. The OCZ setup is just four 256GB drives in a RAID configuration.
    Reply
  • jacobdrj
    skineForgive my ignorance, but do they make 3.5" SSDs? If not, what are the restrictions on SSDs which make 2.5" drives (and PCIe) more desirable other than the proliferation of notebooks/netbooks? On a less serious note, did the author have to write "A-DATA Technology revealed it all today at CeBIT 2009, whipping out its little 2.5-inch wonder and dazzling onlookers" ?

    I am looking at it from the other side: Why not make 1.8" (pocket size) the 1 and only standard?

    Had CD's been smaller, and been the main standard, (i.e. Sony MiniDisk) we would all be better off with smaller CD players, and eventually smaller DVD players, and all the way into bluray disks. Instead, because people didn't have any forsight in the 80's, instead of getting good quality on a large medium (Laser Disk) we got a medeocre quality on disks that are not big enough for home use, and too big for mobile use.

    SSDs will keep having higher capacity, and die shrinks (more data density). So why not go with the 1.8" mobile standard, instead of the oversized 2.5", which are just too power hungry.

    I mean, if they want to go big, so that we can share in larger capacity SSDs, why not just have a 5.25" SSD for home users?

    I do belive that the 2.5" standard does offer the best compramise for now, and there are enclosures that allow for RAID arrays to be built inside 5.25" bays.

    Reply
  • skine
    jacobdrj: In general, I feel that the people who are most interested in the performance enhancement provided by SSDs are those who don't care as much about component size.

    I know there are people out there who would rather buy a high performance but relatively large device than a low performance device with small dimensions, as long as the larger device will fit in their case.

    For example, people routinely buy video cards that cover two slots, and some even have multiples within a single machine.

    I know it's an exaggeration, but I think it is plausible that there is a market for a 5.25" HDD/SSD if it effected price or performance, though it may be technically impractical (as I said before, excuse my ignorance).
    Reply
  • jacobdrj
    If it reduced cost, and didn't compramise performance, yeah, I think the 5.25" SSDs would have a real niche. Ironically, with mechanical drives, the smaller the better, so the old Quantum Big Foot drives of the late 90's never caught on.
    Reply
  • Shnur
    I believe that a big 5.25" tray would be perfect, if they could manage to put 2 2.5" Making like a raid array like the one that OCZ made that plugs into a PCIe, but making this one go into a SATA2, maybe even plug 2 or 3 SATA2 cables into that 5.25" tray so there's more available bandwidth...
    Just a though...
    Reply
  • Shnur
    I believe that a big 5.25" tray would be perfect, if they could manage to put 2 2.5" Making like a raid array like the one that OCZ made that plugs into a PCIe, but making this one go into a SATA2, maybe even plug 2 or 3 SATA2 cables into that 5.25" tray so there's more available bandwidth...
    Just a though...
    Reply