Advanced Media, Inc., manufacturer and marketer of the RIDATA brand of media, and storage products is ready to add a Flash SSD storage medium to its RIDATA line. It is available in 16GB and 32GB capacities.

“Based on flash-memory technology, our new RIDATA Flash SSD offers highly reliable data storage and rugged, high-performance,” remarked Harvey Liu, Advanced Media president. “When compared to a traditional HDD, the RIDATA SSD requires less power, weighs less than half as much, offers faster boot and access times, and operates at a lower temperature and no mechanical movement part. It is the perfect HDD replacement for any notebook, sub-notebook, or tablet PC.”

It meets bus interface industry standard ATA/IDE and SATA, also supports up to PIO Mode-4 and up to Multiword DMA Mode-2. It has a flash media interface of 8- or 16-bit access and can support up to eight flash-media devices directly and 32 such devices through external decoding logic. A built-in ECC corrects up to three-random 12-bit symbols per 512-byte sector. RIDATA offers 1.8” and 2.5” module-type Flash SSD for an ATA/IDE interface and 2.5” for a SATA interface.

The RIDATA Flash Solid State Disk (SSD) has an MSRP of $169.00/pc and will be available around middle of Dec., 2006. As with most other RIDATA products, it will be available through selected retailers, RIDATA distributors, and at various online outlets. A complete listing of locations may be found on the Advanced Media website, http://www.ritekusa.com/.

This is good news for the UMPC and Zune platforms which use 1.8" HDDs. Flash based disks should be faster and have less power requirements. Recently Samsung entered this space by providing flash based IDE drives, with Advanced Media's entry into the market this will be only good for the consumer with increased competition.