SanDisk’s Modular Solid State Drive Adopted by Sony’s Ultra-Thin VAIO X Laptop

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced that the 64-gigabyte (GB)¹ SanDisk^® pSSD^TM Gen2 solid state drive was selected by Sony as the SSD of choice for its new VAIO X ultra-thin laptop.

“The selection of SanDisk pSSD drives by tier-1 OEMs for the newest small, thin and light-weight laptop designs is a vote of confidence for not only SanDisk solutions, but also for the potential of SSDs to move the computing market light years forward”

Solid State Drives (SSD) use no moving parts, enabling improved durability that helps prevent data loss resulting from drive failure. Computers with SSD run quieter and cooler, and use less power than conventional hard disk drives (HDD). The SanDisk pSSD drive’s small size complements ultra-thin laptops with small form factor requirements.

The SanDisk pSSD offers several features that contribute to the extreme thinness and long battery life of this lightweight Windows 7 notebook. The pSSD’s compact size (weighing only 7.1 grams and measuring 54mm x 32mm x 4.4mm) and LIF PATA interface are well-suited to Sony's particular form factor requirement. In addition, the drive’s power consumption (average power of 0.15W²) is significantly lower than that of a traditional hard disk drive.

SanDisk’s modular solid state drive, SanDisk pSSD, offers 9,000 vRPM³ of performance and has the added benefit of employing nCache™ technology, a large non-volatile write cache technology that boosts burst random write performance up to three times over steady state performance and up to 20 times faster than pSSD Gen1 to further enhance the user experience⁴. nCache technology improves user responsiveness and helps prevent incidence of drive "stalling".

“The release of Sony's VAIO X symbolizes a market shift towards pioneering flash-based laptop designs, eliminating the weight and size constraints of the legacy hard disk drive,” said Doreet Oren, director product marketing, solid state drives, SanDisk. “The SanDisk pSSD drive enables laptops to be thinner and lighter, while eliminating the mechanical slow downs and malfunctions most commonly attributed to the hard disk drive.”

“The selection of SanDisk pSSD drives by tier-1 OEMs for the newest small, thin and light-weight laptop designs is a vote of confidence for not only SanDisk solutions, but also for the potential of SSDs to move the computing market light years forward,” said Jim McGregor, analyst at In-Stat, a Reed Business independent industry research firm. “PC OEMs understand the performance and power consumption benefits of SSDs and are working hard to bring these solutions quickly and affordably to the end user.”

SanDisk pSSD Gen2 drives support Windows XP, Linux, and Windows 7, the OS of choice for the Sony VAIO X laptop. SanDisk pSSD Gen 2 comes in a variety of PATA and SATA interfaces and is available to OEMs in capacities that range from 8GB to 64GB. More information about SanDisk pSSD products is available at: www.sandisk.com/pssd

About SanDisk

SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in flash memory cards, from research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail distribution. SanDisk’s product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. SanDisk is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales outside the United States.

¹ 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes

² While running MobileMark and average (typical) power

³ vRPM (virtual Revolutions Per Minute) - a metric to compare SSD performance in client PCs with the HDD and with other SSDs. vRPM = 50 / ((0.5 / 4kB random read IOPS) + 0.5 / 4kB random write IOPS))

⁴ Performance based on internal testing and projections may vary depending on host device.

SanDisk’s product and executive images can be downloaded from:

http://www.sandisk.com/corporate/media.asp

SanDisk’s web site/home page address: http://www.sandisk.com

© 2009 SanDisk Corporation. SanDisk and the SanDisk logo are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. SanDisk pSDD is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder (s).

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including expectations for new product introductions, specifications, applications, markets, and customers that are based on our current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include among others: market demand for our products may grow more slowly than our expectations or there may be a slower adoption rate for these products in new markets that we are targeting, our products may not perform as expected or may not be available at the prices, in the regions, in the capacities or at the time expected and the other risks detailed from time-to-time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We do not intend to update the information contained in this press release.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6089865&lang=en