Solid-State Disks Invading Storage World

All the major storage companies are jumping into the enterprise and consumer solid-state disk waters in 2009. The latest news: Western Digital, the world's second-largest HDD maker behind Seagate Technology, announced on March 30 that it had acquired SiliconSystems for $65 million in cash. That will help put WD back in the SSD world market race. SiliconSystems is a major supplier of embedded SSDs to the network-communications, industrial, embedded computing, medical, military and aerospace markets. On March 25, Dell launched its second generation of EqualLogic storage arrays, including optional SSDs. EMC was the first of the large systems companies to start using optional SSDs in its Symmetrix arrays in early 2008; now SSDs are available in all three of the company's product lines: Symmetrix, Clariion and Celerra. Seagate and Iomega are expected to be marketing SSDs products later in 2009. Fusion-io, SanDisk and Kingston Technology with Migo Software also have interesting new products coming out. eWEEK has gathered the latest information on solid state drives to give you a better understanding of what's out there right now.