SanDisk has announced Vaulter, an 8GB to 6GB capacity flash memory solid state disk (SSD) from which to boot a PC’s operating system. It is in PCI Express mini-card format and works in parallel with a PC’s hard drive.
Vaulter is not a pass-through cache for the hard drive (HDD). A PC and notebook OEM will pre-control the placement of the OS and any applications on it. It works in conjunction with a PC’s hard drive to store and launch the computer’s OS and selected applications. Such systems should start up in a fraction of the time taken by HDD-only systems and should not be restricted to Vista use only.
OS and application performance in general should increase in speed. This is because fewer disk accesses will be needed, for example, when paging occurs between memory and the hard drive nowadays (but in the future the Vaulter SSD).
Vaulter will be on sale to PC and notebook OEMs early in 2008. Customers could see Vaulter-enabled PCs in the second half of next year. Although the company said Vaulter would be “affordable,” no price indications have been announced.