solid-state

Get a 90GB internal SSD for $79.99

This is an update of a post from a few months ago.

For a long time I was a solid-state-drive naysayer. I'd heard mixed things about their performance and longevity, and I certainly wasn't a fan of their sky-high prices.

But SSDs have improved considerably over the years, to the point where they're now a highly desirable alternative to traditional hard drives.

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

Marvell intros low-cost, high-performance SATA controller for SSDs

Marvell announced today the deployment of its 88SS9187 SATA controller designed for solid-state drives (SSDs).

The company says the new controller is powered by high-performance embedded processor technology and features the latest 6Gbps SATA 3.1 host interface optimized specifically for SSDs. The 88SS9187 also has Marvell's Adaptive Read and Write Scheme and on-chip RAID functionality. This means it can be used with the latest generation of NAND flash memory.

According to Marvell, the new controller will deliver lower costs, high performance, and better power efficiency, making it also a great choice for the ultrabook computer market. Most of all, the new controller might also lead to the further reduction of SSD prices.… Read more

Elgato Thunderbolt SSD review: The crazy price of the magic

Bus-powered portable drives, those that don't need a separate power adapter to work, are not new and have been in the market for years. But the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is the first made specifically for Macs and for now can only work with Macs.

For this reason, like many thing Apple-made, it changes everything all over, again.

For one, it's by far the fastest bus-powered portable drive on the market, though not at all the fastest among Thunderbolt storage devices. Secondly, it's super-expensive at $700 for 240GB (or $450 for 120GB).

While souped-up pricing and performance of … Read more

Migrating to SSD: Get yourself a new computer without getting one

You've had your computer for a few years. Recently things have started to get slow, and you're thinking of getting a new one. I have nothing against a new computer, but what if you could greatly improve your current machine's performance without much hassle?

You actually can with a standard SATA solid-state drive (SSD).

(An SSD looks very much like a traditional 2.5-inch laptop hard drive, but it's much faster. You can find out more about the difference between these two types of storage devices here.)

In this post, I'll walk you through how … Read more

Plextor M3 SSD review: A decent side step from the M2

The Plextor M3 is the second solid-state drive (SSD) from Plextor I've reviewed, and it's quite different from the previous M2 drive.

While the two drives look essentially the same, share the support for the SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard and have a 2.5-inch, 9.5mm standard design, the M3 is not really the next straight step from the M2, but rather a totally different step.

This is because the new drive is actually slightly slower than the previous model, which, by the way, is still one of the fastest on the market. To make up for this, … Read more

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