The Memoright FTM Plus SATA 3 240GB SSD Review

Our review today is going to examine the Memoright FTM Plus 6Gbps 240GB SSD; a ‘SandForce Driven’ SSD capable of read/write performance in excess of 500MB/s.

Memoright focuses primarily on enterprise sales, however, they were one of the first to release a consumer SSD back in 2007.  Submission of their MR25.1 128GB SLC SSD for review was our first introduction and we were floored at its MSRP, at that time, of $3500. Solid state drives have come down just a bit since then.

INTRODUCTION

Failing to mention our ‘one on one’ with Charles Chou and Memoright at Computex this past May would be a bit careless as Memoright did a great job of showing that ‘they mean business’ when it comes to SSDs.  Not only did it give us a birds eye view of some of their ideas, but also, it provided first mention of the FTM Plus family of SSDs. In fact, here is a quick shot of the FTM Plus as it is subject to some amazing vibration testing:

The Memoright FTM Plus has listed specifications of 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write with 50,000 IOPS at 4k aligned random disk access.  Right off, we will bet this to be a bit conservative as similar ‘SandForce Driven’ SSDs are capable of over 80,000 IOPS.  The FTM Plus is available in capacities of 60, 120, 240 and 480G and it’s estimated data retention is that of ten years.  As this SSD has been envisioned as meeting both consumer and enterprise needs, we should  mention that the FTM Plus is capable of operating through temperatures of -20 to +70 degrees Celsius and withstanding shock of up to 1500G.

EXTERIOR PACKAGING AND PHYSICAL COMPONENTS

Considering that Memoright’s main focus has traditionally catered to enterprise needs, its exterior packaging is a bit unexpected and something that we have we often try to explain the need for within the consumer consumer space.  They have a very attractive exterior design and their packaging hits just about every point that we feel important for the buyer to know.

blankblankThere is a picture of the product front and center along with information relating to it’s form factor and the fact that it is a SATA 3 SSD capable of ‘extreme performance’.  On the reverse, we see that it is capable of TRIM, has a three year limited warranty, has low power consumption, 256 Bit encryption and can be used in laptops, desktops, workstations, as well as enterprise storage systems. In fact, the only thing that we don’t see on the external package is the capacity of the SSD.  We are going to guess that, in sales, the external package probably contains an identification sticker and product code of the hardware inside. Inside we also find the SSD and a desktop adapter bracket which has become standard with most manufacturers of late.

blankblankThe FTM Plus is comprised of a printed circuit board (PCB) which is encased by a two piece smooth silver aluminum casing that is held together by four screws.  Although this picture does not display such, the SSD originally contained a security seal over one of the screws which could not be removed without damage.  Removal of this immediately voids any SSD warranty.

blankblankThe PCB itself contains a SATA III interface, SandForce SF-2281 processor and eight modules of Micron 25nm synchronous  MLC NAND flash memory, each module being 32GB in capacity.  The PCB also contains OVP (over-voltage protection) and OVC (over current protection) chips for additional peace of mind in enterprise use.

blankSandForce holds proprietary 16GB of storage capacity for firmware and over provisioning needs which is why this SSD is advertised at 240GB.  Formatting then reduces the final available user capacity to  224GB.

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