In May of 2011, OCZ announced a new type of firmware for Indilinx-controlled drives. That firmware, named for a type of carnivorous fish, carried the name Arowana Flash Translation Layer. The Arowana FTL eventually made its way into the Vertex Plus family, however, enthusiasts with the original Barefoot-controlled drives would have to wait until now, ten months later, to get a chance to …

Marvell was the first to enter the SATA 3 SSD market by several months.  The Crucial C300 used the first SATA III Marvell processor as early as mid-2010. Since that time, there several manufacturers have used the Marvell controller, and with great success. No stranger to enterprise needs, Marvell controllers have also been used to equal success in enterprise flash …

OCZ’s Talos 2 SAS SSDs are getting a new gig courtesy of Drobo. Drobo, manufacturer of professional and business oriented storage solutions is making use of OCZ’s Talos 2 enterprise SAS SSDs in their B1200i SAN offering. Drobo currently offers products with HDDs, but this will mark the first use of SSDs in a tiered solution by the company. The …

Have you ever wondered what you could do with all of your high bandwidth, low latency RAM?  Romex Software’s FancyCache has a suggestion for you: cache your drives. Caching has been all the rage lately in the SSD world.  If there isn’t a caching solution to your liking now, chances are their will be soon enough although such options are …

Good things often come in small packages. SSDs are one of the finest examples of said axiom, but even they aren’t small enough for the task at times. STEC is adding a new enterprise-grade SSD for embedded systems, which should put enterprise SSD features in a diminutive form-factor.  ATM machines, GPS units, and those DVD rental kiosks are all embedded …

ADATA, Taiwanese purveyor of SSDs and memory products, today announced a new range of SandForce powered offerings. Consisting of three new lines, the XPG SX900, the Premier Pro SP900, and the Premier SP800, each is powered by the SandForce-2281 controller. The XPG SX900 is designed for higher performance, boasting typical SF-2281 speeds of 550MB/s reads and 530MB/s writes. The XPG moniker refers to …

Rosewill has had a renaissance of sorts in the case market.  Trying to provide the right mix of features at the right price is always going to be a challenge “ its a moving target. Lately though, Rosewill has been getting it right and some of their recent offerings have been very well received by enthusiasts. The Ranger-M Chassis seeks …

Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors are only a few months away and it appears that they may have some company when they launch with Intels anticipated release of the 313 series SLC caching SSDs. The 313 series will be available in 20GB and a 24GB capacities and, although the reasoning behind the 24GB capacity seems a bit unclear, they were …

Everyone is getting in on the SSD caching action these days. Through software, or a combination of software and hardware, using fast SSDs to speed up slower mechanical storage seems like a catchy idea. Enter the HighPoint 3420X8 RocketCache which enables you to mix up to 4 devices for your caching pleasure.  Would you like to mix three SSDs and …

It’s no surprise that SSD- based caching solutions are popular. Both for consumers and enterprise customers, flash based caching offers the ability to accelerate storage performance at lower price points. Needless to say, companies specializing in caching are hot commodities in the storage world. Today, SanDisk announced the purchase of FlashSoft, a provider of flash caching software for Windows, Linux, and VMWare. …