ssd

SuperTalent shows lower-cost PCIe-based flash storage

HANOVER, Germany--SuperTalent showed off a forthcoming product at CeBIT, a PCI Express flash storage system that beats out conventional SSDs in performance but that doesn't cost as much as the company's existing PCIe products.

The RAIDDrive UpStream uses a SandForce controller to handle data-transfer speeds of 1GBps. That's roughly twice the speed of SSDs that, like the pokier but cheaper hard drives they typically replace, use the SATA interface.

The product should go on sale in weeks, said product marketing director Peter Carcione in an interview here. "I'm hoping the end of April," he … Read more

OCZ debuts faster SSD, previews Thunderbolt-based Lightfoot

HANOVER, Germany--OCZ unveiled a new solid-state drive here, its higher-performance Vertex 4, and said it'll ship an SSD called the Lightfoot using the Thunderbolt interface later this year that'll be even faster.

Many SSD makers use a controller chip from Sandforce, but OCZ acquired a competitor called Indilinx, and its Vertex 4 uses the Indilinx Everest 2 controller. Where Sandforce gets a performance boost by compressing data, the Indilinx technology uses faster uncompressed links, said marketing director Joost van Leeuwen, speaking here at the CeBIT tech show where it unveiled the products.

The Sandforce-based Vertex 3 products can … 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

Synology DS1812+ NAS server: More TBs than you can count with your digits

Synology announced today its first eight-bay DiskStation NAS server, the DS1812+.

This is one of the first, if not the first, consumer-friendly NAS server on the market that offers eight native hard drive bays. This means that when populated with all 4TB hard drives, the server can offer up to 32TB of storage space.

Most computers have just about 1TB of storage space, which is enough (and then some) for most users. The DS1812+, by itself, can host 32 times that much, more TBs than you can count with your fingers and toes.… 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

Why it's time for the 13-inch MacBook Pro to go away

October 2008. I remember eagerly buying Apple's newly designed and sleekly beautiful unibody MacBook. My son, now 3 1/2, was just born. The last presidential election was just wrapping up. "Avatar" hadn't even come out yet. The iPhone was in its second iteration. The iPad was still a year and a half away.

A long time has passed since, yet the 13-inch MacBook Pro, in terms of just sheer design, has barely changed at all. Sure, under the hood it's a completely different computer: fast Intel processor, Thunderbolt, integrated long-life battery, better screen. Yet, I can line up that 2008 13-incher (then just known as the MacBook) next to the latest 13-inch Pro and most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. … Read more