solid-state drives

Top 5 internal drives of 2012: Your system deserves a worthy upgrade

No matter how big or small your computer is, there is at least one internal drive to host its operating system and programs. This drive is almost always a standard internal drive, which comes in the form of a regular hard drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The former is affordable and offers lots of storage space, while the latter is generally more expensive but superfast. The good news is, 2012 marked the time SSDs became more and more popular, thanks to the reduced costs and the increased number of vendors joining the storage market of this type.

That … Read more

SanDisk Extreme SSD review: Standard and affordable

There's not much that's extreme about the SanDisk Extreme solid-state drive.

In fact, it's very standard, with a 9.5mm 2.5-inch design like most laptop hard drives. In my testing, the drive boosted the test machine's overall performance a great deal.… Read more

Intel 520 Series SSD review: SandForce on steroids, kinda

It wouldn't be a huge stretch to call the new Intel 520 Series solid-state drive (SSD) SandForce on steroids.

The new drive uses the popular SandForce SSD controller but now with a little tweak: Intel's special 400i firmware.

And that makes a big difference. The new drive offered great performance in my testing, faster than most all other SSDs I've seen that use the same controller.

However, that's not the most special thing about the drive. It's the first I've seen that comes in the new 7mm thickness, meaning that it will fit in … Read more

Silicon Power Armor A80 review: Double A(lpha) male

Unlike most external drives I've seen, the Silicon Power Armor A80 portable hard drive uses A-male-to-A-male USB 3.0 cable.

This means the drive will not work with the more popular type of USB cable, which has an A male port on one end and a (Micro) B male port on the other. More than making up for this, the new drive offers alpha male performance all the way.… Read more

SanDisk ships Extreme solid-state drive

SanDisk announced today its latest solid-state drive, the SanDisk Extreme.

The company says the new drive offers up to 10 times the speed of a 7,200rpm hard drive and will greatly improve the boot and shutdown time as well as overall performance of a computer.

According to SanDisk, the new SanDisk Extreme SSD delivers up to 83,000 maximum random write input/output operations per second (IOPS) and up to 44,000 random read IOPS. The drive also offers fast sequential read and write performance up to 550MBps and 520MBps, respectively. This means apart from improving a computer's … Read more

RunCore Pro V Max review: If only the price were right

RunCore introduced the Pro V Max solid-state drive (SSD) at CES 2012 as one of its first standard SSDs for the U.S. market.

However, the company is not a new SSD vendor. In fact it describes itself as a major vendor that has been offering SSD storage products for other OEM hardware vendors.

This might be the reason why it's priced the Pro V Max at about $2 per gigabyte, comparatively high, to avoid immediate competition with its partners.… Read more

Intel 520 Series drive to set new SSD benchmark

Intel announced today its latest consumer-grade solid-state drive, the Intel SSD 520 Series.

The new drive supports the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard, uses Intel's 25-nanometer (nm) NAND memory process technology, and is powered by an LSI SandForce Flash Storage Processor with firmware that Intel co-defined and validated. Intel says the 520 Series will set new industry performance benchmarks for SSDs. … Read more

Get a 64GB internal SSD for $54.99 shipped

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have improved considerably over the years, to the point where they're now a highly preferable alternative to traditional hard drives.

Indeed, a good SSD is usually significantly faster, and it consumes less power--a big consideration for laptop users. Also, because it has no moving parts, it's much less susceptible to damage.

Alas, SSDs still cost quite a bit more than hard drives. But they're getting a bit cheaper all the time, and here's a prime example: Newegg has the Patriot Torqx 2 64GB internal SSD for $54.99 shipped. That's after redeeming … Read more

Top small internal drives to usher in the new year in a big way

New year, new resolutions.

If one of your resolutions is to get a better computer so you can be happier with your life, I'd suggest you double down on exercising, or better yet add eating healthy to the list, because chances are your computer is working just fine.

What you need might just be a new internal storage device and your computer will be as good as new, or maybe even better. This is especially true if you have a system (be it a laptop or desktop, running Macs or Windows) that's 3 or 4 years old and uses an SATA hard drive as its main internal storage device. Most existing computers fit this category, by the way.… Read more

OCZ Octane review: On in 12 seconds

OCZ's latest solid-state drive, the Octane, is a new breed among its peers.

The drive is the first to be powered by OCZ's new Indilinx Everest controller, designed to optimize boot time and application performance. And the Octane offered just that in my testing, helping the test machine take just 12 seconds to boot up.… Read more