This post was published 2 years 7 months 16 days ago. This info might have changed or might have become outdated.

One of the biggest failure items for laptop owners is the hard drive. Let’s face it, less moving parts is better! Dell is banking on the fact that their laptops will be "better" with a flash drive. I certainly like the idea. The part that I am concerned with it recovery though. With a conventional hard drive, you could recover data from the platter even if the drive is not functional anymore. I still think a flash based hard drive is definately the way of the future. This has become evident in recent devices.

Dell today announced that it is offering a 1.8-inch 32GB solid state drive (SSD) from SanDisk on Latitude D420 ultra-mobile and D620 ATG semi-rugged notebooks. The company is one of the first to offer a flash-based drive as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDD) on corporate notebooks.

Dell sees potential for flash-based drives and is committing to offer them across next generation Latitude notebooks because they enable better reliability, increased performance and noise reduction.

A SSD is a hard drive alternative based on flash memory.  Unlike a traditional HDD which uses spinning discs and read/write heads, a SSD is designed with flash memory with no moving parts.  The new drive has the same shape and size as a HDD and uses the same connectors for integration into existing systems.

“A solid state drive is an excellent storage technology for our mobile users,” said Kevin Kettler, chief technology officer at Dell. “We are committed to leading the industry in delivering these new drives and will offer them across Dell’s next generation of Latitude products.”

Reduced cost through reliability, increased performance

        Engineering tests show that the SSD has an operating shock tolerance of up to 1,300 Gs, which is twice the rating of mechanical drives.  In fact, during extreme impact testing the surrounding notebook hardware breaks before the drive. In addition, the drives are predicted to reduce the probability of failure by three-and-one-half times compared to standard mechanical drives. This will help reduce costs associated with hard drive failures, which analyst firm Gartner reports is one of two top sources of system malfunctions in notebooks and accounts for up to 45 percent of total hardware failures.

“This represents an important milestone in the evolution of personal computers with the arrival of solid state flash memory as a durable, efficient alternative to the hard drive,” said Eli Harari, SanDisk’s founder and CEO. “For those enterprise road warriors who rely on their notebook PCs, hard drive crashes with attendant loss of critical data will soon be a thing of the past. We’re delighted that Dell has chosen the SanDisk SSD to launch this technology into their line of mobile PCs.”

The new drives can also increase system performance by up to 23 percent and decreases boot time by up to 34 percent compared to traditional HDDs available with the Latitude D420 and D620 ATG.

Pricing and availability

The SSD drives are available today at a list price of $549 in the Americas Availability will soon follow in Europe and Asia.