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Kingston HyperX 240GB SATA III SSD
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 Kingston's latest HyperX series 240GB 2.5' SATA III 6Gbps Solid State Drive is one of the drives designed to meet the highest performance standards designed for the SandForce SF-2281 controller. It uses Intel's 25nm Compute NAND flash memory, which has 5K programmable/erasable cycles as compared to 3K for standard NAND. While the box to the left is labeled with performance numbers of 525MB/sec. read and 480MB/sec. write, according to Kingston, the drive was able to reach 555MB/sec. read and 510MB/sec. write in ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.41.
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Review: Kingston HyperX 240 GByte SSD
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The HyperX SSD with 240 Gigabyte is Kingstons Flagship regarding their SSD-Lineup. Therefore this model awaits users with a higher IOPS performance especially concerning the random reads. 40'000 IOPS should be possible in this case. Regarding random writes the manufacturer claims up to 95'000 IOPS.
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Battle of the SATA 3.0 Controllers
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With newer SSDs now coming well within 10% of maxing out a SATA 3.0 port, it's important to make sure that your motherboard is properly equipped to handle such drives if planning to buy one. In our testing, while AMD's and Intel's solutions offered superb performance, Marvell's leaved a bit (or a lot) to be desired.
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Patriot Wildfire 120GB
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"Patriot has come to market with a drive that delivers excellent performance characteristics with its combination of Sandforce 2281 controller and 32nm MLC NAND in place of the 25nm delivered on the other 22XX-controlled comparison drives. In much of the testing, the lower-capacity Wildfire delivered performance on par with the 240GB Vertex 3 from OCZ. On paper, the specifications include 555Mb/s read speeds and writes of 520MB/s, along with 4k aligned random write performance of 85,000 IOPs — marks the Wildfire easily delivered. This makes the drive, at times, more than twice as fast as many previous-generation drives controlled by Sandforce 1222 and INDILINX Barefoot controllers — numbers it took previous-generation drives in RAID to achieve."
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Apacer AC430 USB 3.0 External HDD Review
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The new AC430 USB 3.0 External hard drive from Apacer comes with good read/write performances and has some striking looks thanks to the aluminium enclosure; the product is also shipped with a carry bag, to avoid scratches and dust accumulation during travels.
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Zalman ZM-VE200 External HDD Case + Virtual Drive Review
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USB 3.0 compatible External HDD Enclosures may hold the top spot in terms of raw data transfer speeds but the latest offering by Zalman called the ZM-VE200 offers very good performance via eSATA, excellent build quality, VFW display screen, software-free ISO image mounting and all that at a killer price.
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WD Scorpio Blue 1TB Notebook Hard Drive Review
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"Today, we'll be looking at a the WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT 1TB 5400 RPM 2.5" SATA II notebook hard drive. With a 5400 RPM drive speed, 8MB cache, and 3 GB/s SATA interface speed, the 1TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue hard drive is the largest capacity drive offered by Western Digital in the 2.5" SATA notebook standard. If you want to massive amounts of storage space in a laptop this is the drive for you!"
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Thermaltake Max 5G Active Cooling 3.5' External HDD Enclosure
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Inside the Max 5G Active Cooling 3.5' USB 3.0 External HDD Enclosure from Thermaltake, we can install in a matter of seconds our drive and start transferring data at high speeds. The dual 80mm fans help cooling the HDD while it is on, so we can obtain similar temperatures as we would have installed the drive inside a well ventilated computer case.
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Corsair Force GT SATA III 120GB SSD Review
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"The fiery red shell of the Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD is indicative of the high performance nature of the drive and enthusiasts who like to color match and show off their components will find this to be one of the more ornate SSDs on the market. With max read performance listed as 555MB/s and 515MB/s for max writes, it doesn't boast the best specifications of any SandForce drive on the market but it's right up there. More importantly, it's a tad faster than the non-GT version of the Force 3 drives which specs out at 550MB/s and 510MB/s..."
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Patriot Pyro 120GB SandForce SF-2281 SSD Review
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"Patriot hasn't been as active in the SSD realm as some other companies, focusing instead on their memory products and USB flash media. Recently they released their Wildfire line of SSDs and they follow that up with another flame related theme in the Pyro line. Each features the popular SandForce SF-2281 controller and a SATA III interface but differ in the NAND flash employed. The Pyro line is the more value oriented drive as opposed to the Wildfire line which sports slightly better max performance specifications in terms of MB/s and IOPS..."
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Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD Review
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Patriot are well known for their memory and USB flash products but perhaps lack awareness in the SSD department. Under the SATA 2 interface they have provided the market with the Inferno and Torqx but now they are tackling the SATA 3 interface with some more flame filled models such as the Wildfire and our review subject – Pyro. Like the Pyro the Wildfire takes advantage of a SandForce SF-2281 Controller the difference between these two models is that the Wildfire caters for the performance market whilst the Pyro hopes to offer a better value for money alternative whilst still endorsing good transfer rates from SATA 3 - 6Gbs.
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Flash Drives and Controllers: USB 3.0 vs. USB 2.0
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The today’s most popular way of moving data around and transferring it from one computer system to another is definitely USB flash drives. However, now that we have gigabytes of data the USB 2.0 speed may become a bottleneck. Will the transition to faster USB 3.0 interface help flash drives resolve this issue and is it justified at this time?
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Ineo I-NA215U Plus USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure
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To introduce us to their hardware, Ineo Technology sent over one of their 2.5" hard drive enclosures. The I-NA215U Plus is a lightweight and compact enclosure that features USB 3.0 connectivity. We will be covering the bare enclosure, but it is worth mentioning that they also offer the enclosure bundled with a 750GB hard drive.
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Hitachi UltraStar 7K3000 3TB SATA 3 HDD Review
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The latest enterprise class UltraStar 7K3000 3TB SATA 3 HDD by Hitachi GST may not be worlds apart in terms of raw performance when compared to its smaller brother the DeskStar 7K3000 3TB SATA 3 HDD but that's just about the only thing that these two drives have in common.
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Kingston HyperX 240GB SATA 3 SSD Review
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Our review today examines the Kingston HyperX 240GB SATA 3 SSD. The HyperX is Kingstons first offering of a SATA 3 SSD and their first partnership with SandForce through use of their SF-2281 6Gbps processor, a processor which has taken the SSD community by storm. With full intention of their HyperX line being the absolute best, Kingston has included all the bells and whistles and taken their time in producing a very attractive total package. The performance lies at the heart of the beast, however, and performance would tell the tale of the tape.
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Samsung 470 128GB SSD
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"Samsung, memory makers and court room opponents of Apple. Today they stand charged with producing a good quality SSD of the 128GB variety. In the docket is this brushed aluminium drive from the 470 range. Let’s put it through it’s paces and see what the verdict is."
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Beginners Guides
