Solid State Disks Ltd (SSDL) has announced a storage device with SCSI, a standard that has been replaced by technologies such as SATA and PCI Express. It’s amazing that a product based on such an old interface would be released in 2024, but there’s a reason for that: there are still companies that use SCSI hard drives.
SCSIFlash-Fast, as the device is called, follows the popular 3.5-inch form factor and can rely on a 68-pin or 80-pin SCSI interface. It was developed to replace old hard drives based on these standards, but without the operating system “realizing” that this is a different product.
Different because SCSIFlash-Fast has customizable features. The buyer can choose between the Compact Flash and M.2 SSD standards as storage technology, for example. Note that SCSIFlash-Fast is an SSD that works as a SCSI HDD “emulator”.
The storage capacity is variable, ranging from 2 GB to 1 TB. There is also the option to add an Ethernet port to SCSIFlash-Fast, which is useful for backups, testing, or making the drive accessible via the network.
Made to replace old hard drives
Many companies have computers that are 20 years old or more in operation, either to maintain legacy systems or to avoid replacement costs. SCSIFlash-Fast was developed to meet these devices.
It makes sense. Hard drives don’t last forever, and SCSI drives have been manufactured for decades. SCSIFlash-Fast can replace these hard drives, having the advantage of using Flash memory, a faster, quieter technology that consumes less energy.
The device’s data transfer rate reaches 80 MB/s (megabytes per second), a slow speed by today’s standards, but quite acceptable on older computers.
Prices were not disclosed, however. That’s because SSDL produces SCSIFlash-Fast to order.
What is this SCSI interface?
SCSI is a communication interface between computing devices that came to the market in the 1980s. The technology was used in equipment such as printers and scanners, but it was more successful in hard drives, being directed to high-performance models.
The ability to transfer data at rates that could reach 80 MB/s, depending on the version (even more advanced versions could reach 640 MB/s), made SCSI hard drives expensive, which is why they were employed more frequently in corporate servers and computers.
Over time, SCSI technology has been replaced by more advanced or affordable technologies, such as SATA, PCI Express, and Thunderbolt standards.
Servers also have storage units based on the SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) standard, a modern variation of SCSI technology that can reach data transfer rates of 22.5 gigabits per second.
Despite this, there are still applications that benefit from SCSI. It is no coincidence that the STA Forum, an association created in 1996 to promote technology, is still active today.
