1.8-inch SSD with PATA interface targets mini Notebooks, Netbooks, good for embedded apps too

With all of the recent SSD announcements, you might think that the only form factor and interface for an SSD would be 2.5 inches and SATA. This blog has covered some other SSD advances such as SSDs with PCIe interfaces at the high end, but there’s another end to consider. Many Netbooks and mini Notebooks still have IDE/PATA interfaces and employ 1.8-inch HDDs. Further, many, many embedded systems have the older IDE/PATA disk interfaces as well. These “sockets” provide a welcome home for the the 1.8-inch IDE/PATA ZIF 5mm SSD from Active Media Products. The 1.8-inch SSD is offered in capacities of 64 and 128 Gbytes for $199.95 and $369.95 respectively. These drives are not speed demons with sequential read and write speeds of 80 and 38 Mbytes/sec. However, for the targeted applications, those speeds may well suffice. Unsurprisingly, these SSDs employ MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash to achieve the capacity in the tiny volume available within the existing 1.8-inch HDD envelope.