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Kingston HyperX 240 GB SSD Review @ Hardware Secrets
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 Presently, competition is very fierce in the performance solid state drive market as there are so many new models from which to choose. Today we will be looking at the latest performance SSD from Kingston, the HyperX 240 GB, which boasts some impressive performance figures."
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OCZ shakes the market up with the RevoDrive
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"The continuing growth of the SSD market has led to more advanced technologies, and innovation with each new drive. Perhaps none showcase this more readily than the OCZ RevoDrive series."
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MB668U3-1SB USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure Review
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"The Icy Dock MB668U3-1SB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure arrived Technic3D. We will check the MB668U3-1SB Storage enclosure with connectivity Speed USB 3.0 -1 Channel - SATA-300 - 300 MBps - SuperSpeed USB- and a Intel 2,5" X-25M 80GB SSD. More in the following Review."
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ioSafe SoloPRO 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive
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"IoSafe has targeted those home and small business users who need a sizable amount of backup space, and can't afford to lose their data to disasters such as fire or flood. Last year Shawn torture-tested their Solo 500GB USB 2.0 product which passed with flying colors. The only complaint he had was the relatively slow USB 2.0 access speeds. For this year IoSafe releases their SoloPRO version offering the same robust fire and flood protection, with higher capacities and new USB 3.0 interface."
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Thermaltake BlacX Duet HDD Docking Station
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"Over the last couple months we took on the mission of finding the perfect HDD desktop docking station. The first two products we looked at were low cost units that were only limited by the amount of bandwidth our motherboard was able to provide. After that we moved on to the Thermaltake BlacX 5G, another USB 3.0 docking station that included some great accessories, an extra long cable that made moving our test system from under the desk less painful and was also able to deliver amazing performance. Now that we've seen the best USB 3.0 has to offer, a new docking station has taken over our test bench. The Thermaltake BlacX Duet forgoes USB 3.0 entirely and sticks to a tried and true eSATA / USB 2.0 combination, but that's not what the duo in Duet is about.
Using eSATA's port replicator feature, Thermaltake managed to add another HDD dock to their standard USB 2.0 / eSATA docking station. This allows users to quickly add two raw hard drives to their system without cracking open the system's side panel. If you are a user who would like to swap one drive in and out of the system with ease, then most likely you have more than one drive to swap around. The best thing about the Duet, though, is that it still offers enough bandwidth to run the fastest SATA platter drives at full speed, just like USB 3.0 does."
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OCZ Technology Vertex 2 3.5-inch 120GB Solid State Drive
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OCZ Technology is the Swiss Army of solid state drives. The company has a product in their line-up for every occasion. Until now desktop users have been forced to pay a premium for smaller 2.5" notebook drives that need a desktop adapter bracket. Notebook drives require larger flash modules and need an adapter to fit in desktops. These premium parts raise the cost of the SSD whether you need them or not.
Keeping with the overall strategy of a product for every use (like a Swiss Army Knife), OCZ now has a desktop specific SSD that uses less dense flash and a native 3.5" form factor enclosure. The new 3.5" design is available in both Agility 2 and Vertex 2 programming with the latter having a higher IOPS. At the time of writing the 3.5" models cost the same as their notebook cousins, but this should change over time since the 3.5" drives should cost less to produce."
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Intel X25-M 120GB Retail Solid State Drive
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"Until Marvell and SandForce released their first solid state drives Intel had a performance lead on all of their competitors. Unfortunately in our testing we found the 80GB Postville SSD lacked capacity and at the time the 160GB version cost substantially more than most consumers were willing to spend. Intel’s ten channel controller was revolutionary, but forced Intel to release drives in odd capacity sizes.
A lot has changed since we last looked at the X25-M Series products. SandForce has released odd capacity sizes, 80GB being one of them. In order to do this each channel uses less flash and it has an effect on performance. Other manufacturers have also gone as far as reducing the number of active channels to achieve smaller drives, Intel being one of them. When this happens performance is lost due to the number of parallel reads and writes being reduced. At first we thought Intel had used this method to deliver a 120GB SSD, making it from a reduced channel 160GB drive, but that was not the case."
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: Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive
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" Intel, well known for its CPUs also makes Solid State Drives and their X-25M drive is regarded as one of the most reliable and economical SSD’s on the market. This model has gone through a few revisions and the current one is aimed at the mainstream market. This version of the X25-M Mainstream is based on 34-nanometer (nm), multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash technology and is aimed at mobile and desktop clients. It has advertised speeds of up to 250 MB/s on reads and up to 70 MB/s on writes. "
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Vantec Nexstar NST-D400S3 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Dual Bay Hard Drive Dock Review
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"Vantec has been on a roll lately with their NexStar line of storage products, and their USB 3.0 dual bay HDD dock is no exception. What stands out with this unit is the ability to access two hard drives simultaneously - something that is handy for all types of buyers ranging from the casual home PC user to network admins who need a quick way to access data on a hard drive."
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OCZ Vertex 2 60GB Solid State Drive review
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I still distinctively recall myself saying this out loud back in the early 2000s. "60GB? What can I do with that!?" As we approach the end of 2010, I caught myself saying the same thing -- albeit in an entirely different context. "60GB? What can I do with that!?" In the days where 1000GB hard drives are a dime a dozen, the rise of solid state drives in recent years among enthusiasts and high end computer users has always been focused on one thing: Performance. Sure, you can fill up a 60GB drive with a couple movies and a few songs, but that's not the point. Because the cost-per-gigabyte of an SSD is probably more than thirty times higher than a traditional mechanical hard drive at the time of writing this review, most users probably can't afford to use them for mass storage -- and at the same time, it is not a practical solution at the time being, either. After all, you probably don't go through everything in your hard drive every single day, right? Therefore, here is a popular solution for people trying to squeeze more performance out of their system: Buy a modest capacity SSD for your operating system and all your programs, and a big fat hard drive to store everything else. The OCZ Vertex 2 60GB solid state drive we are reviewing today is designed for this very purpose. Powered by the popular SandForce SF-1200 controller, promising up to 285MB/s and 275MB/s read and write speed respectively, 0.1ms access latency, and up to 50,000 IOPS, how well does this high performance storage device improve your computing experience? Read on to find out!
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A-DATA S599 128 GB SSD
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A-DATA's S599 128 GB SSD uses the well-established SandForce SF-1222 controller. This results in a high-performance solution - actually it is the fastest SandForce drive we tested so far. Excellent performance and an outstanding price of $225 make this one of the best SSDs available on the market at this time.
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Seagate BlackArmor NAS 420
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"We all know Seagate's consumer and enterprise products, but Seagate also has a growing list of end user storage products. For the last couple of years we've pretty much ignored these consumer and entry level enterprise products, since we tend to focus on raw hard drives; but that is about to change.
Today we are looking at Seagate's BlackArmor 400 Series of network storage products. On paper the BlackArmor 400, 420 and 440 look like solid contenders to the Thecus and QNAP NAS servers we write about on a regular basis. The one area on paper that has us excited is pricing; the BlackArmor 400 Series has a total cost that is less than what the two giants in the NAS server market deliver."
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Mach Xtreme MX-DS 40GB SSD Review
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The SSD Review has recently taken the time to evaluate solid state drives from around the world with reviews on products from Memoright in Taiwan and Renice in China. We are going to finish off our tour with another peak at the offerings in Taiwan as we review the Mach Xtreme Technology MX-DS 40GB solid state drive.
The unique similarity of all 3 SSDs is that their distribution in North America, at least up until our reviews, has been pretty much extinct since Memorights entry in 2007.
Mach Xtreme Technology is a Taiwan based company which was established just this year and a quick look at the drive and their website tells us, “This brand has flare!”. They are not only joining up with world class artists to ensure that their branding is very unique, but also, they have invested in SandForce processors for their top end product to guarantee quality and success. Their design is sure to hit a home run with the younger generation through graphic representation from artists such as Does and Worm. Admittedly, we were so fascinated by the eye candy of their site and packaging that we almost forgot what we were here for. Lets get to it shall we?
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RAID0 & the SSD - Simple To Build and Lightning Fast
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You truly know that your a computer geek when you hollar "Woot" to your first RAID results and have to call up the wife and kids to see. Quite frankly I don't think I will ever forget the look of confusion on her face as much as she won't forget the look of amazement on mine. She felt a bit out of place when my son started telling me how amazing the speed was.
I locked myself in my office this past weekend in order to finally tackle something I have always been curious about, performance in a RAID environment and how easy it would be to construct such a thing.
After spending endless hours locked in the room, building, testing and ripping apart only to rebuild again, I have put together an article that I believe will show, not only the benefits and absolute amazing performance increase possible, but also how really simple it is to build.
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For New SSDs - Great News For The Consumer!
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SandForce has released a new firmware update to client level manufacturers that significantly improves the performance of ’SandForce Driven’ drives. As far as we can tell, the firmware is only available in new SSD purchases and we haven’t see the same firmware available to present owners of SSDs using SandForce technology.
We believe this update has yet to be recognized within the SSD community because because legal agreements are in place between SandForce and manufacturers which prevent them from discussing it. The SSD community also relies so heavily on rating solid state drives by their advertised performance specifications that we have overlooked the simple truth that these advertised specs are not a realistic indicator of the typical users SSD performance.
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| The best Guides by the best writers on the internet; PCstats Beginners Guides explain computers, software, and all those other wonderful things that cause you frustration.
Learn how to use your computer better, master the internet while protecting yourself, and know what to do when your hard drive kicks the bucket.
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"Get the 'Stats and Stay Informed!"
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Beginners Guides
