SanDisk flashes its way into 2011 with launch of new flash storage devices

According to Peter Mah, Regional Director for North & South East Asia and ANZ, SanDisk’ssuccess can be attributed solely to the fact that the company recognized the potential of flash-based storage devices and pushed hard to get it accepted by mainstream consumers.

“SanDisk is the company behind the flash revolution. We are the inventors of flash memory cards, and it was us who brought this product into the industry in the days of analog film. We have created large markets for our products, especially in areas such as digital film and storage for mobile phones. Likewise, in the PC industry, USB drives are now the choice of removable media, and it is also an area where we intend to focus on,” he said.

Mah revealed that it was SanDisk which created the CF and MicroSD form factors, and that the company also had a huge role to play in the development of Sony’s Memory Stick, while describing what users can expect with the company’s latest products.

“Today, we are announcing a new CF card that has a capacity of 128GB which feature speeds of up to 100 megabytes per second (MB/s) and  is the fastest high-capacity CF card available in the market right now. Last but not least, we also have two USB drives which will come with preloaded SecureAccess software,” he said.

SanDisk Product Manager Edwin Cheng was also present at the launch, where he explained some of the features present in SanDisk’s latest products which set them apart from the competition.

According to Cheng, the typical photo enthusiast of today is one enjoys racking up shutter counts through their camera’s burst mode, records full HD videos of just about anything under the sun and expect their storage media to be built like a tank. To meet such needs, SanDisk has launched the new SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card which the company claims is as reliable as the sunrise.

Additional features implemented in SanDisk’s Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card include the use of an intelligent quad-core Power Core controller which functions like a typical quad-core computer processor, wear leveling and ECC technology. However, it was the intelligent controller Cheng claimed was responsible for ensuring the card’s reliability and performance.

Last but not least, Cheng whipped up a SanDisk Extreme Pro martini for everyone present to demonstrate the reliability and durability of the card even under the harshest environmental conditions. Needless to say, ours was prepared “shaken, and not stirred”.

After everyone has had their ‘martinis’, Cheng proceeded to describe the features on SanDisk’s new Extreme Pro Compact Flash card, which sports a whopping 128GB of flash storage.

Like its SDHC counterpart, the Extreme Pro Compact Flash card is a highly rugged flash storage device that is designed to be capable fo weathering all kinds of environmental hazzards and sports the same Power Core controller, but what sets it apart from SanDisk’s older CF cards are its storage capacity and speed. While the previous Extreme Pro Compact Flash cards were only capable of transfer speeds up to 90MB/s, the new card launched by SanDisk bumps that speed up to 100MB/s.