SSD News

In 2010, Other World Computing was one of the first to start shipping SSDs with a SandForce controller.  Like those first SF drives, OWC’s new Enterprise Pro 6Gbps uses a SF processor and 28% over-provisioning. After that, the similarities end. The Enterprise Pro SSD utilizes eMLC, as is becoming popular in enterprise-style drives. Unlike many other eMLC drives, the Enterprise Pro is …

LSI CEO Abhi Taklwarkar announced that EMC will be leveraging their WarpDrive PCIe line of SSDs for their Project Lightning during their recent earnings call. This is a huge design win for LSI and its WarpDrive PCIe solid state drives. This is certainly welcome news as LSI begins to ramp up for production of the WarpDrive 2 family. EMC is …

Apple’s OSX operating system has supported TRIM for some time now, however, users of non-Apple SSDs don’t get official support. Trim Enabler 2.0 has just been released and finds it’s way around that unfortunate decision by fooling OSX into thinking that an aftermarket drive is, in reality, a Apple-branded SSD.  Mac owners, unsatisfied with the price and/or performance of Apple’s …

The NVM Express working group has announced the release of Windows and Linux PCIe SSD drivers based on the NVM Express standard. The Windows driver was a collaborative effort of IDT, Intel, and LSI Sandforce and will be available under a BSD license. It will support all the mandatory features of the new spec. The Linux driver will be released …

Western Digital has really taken a hit lately, with the flooding in Thailand wreaking havoc on their HDD production. Working as fast as they can to regain their pre-flood levels of production, they still expect the supply and demand repercussions to last until at least September of this year. The cost of recovery has come in at a staggering $119 …

Two days ago, we issued a release with respect to difficulties observed through installation of Samsung 830 Series SSD firmware numbered CXM02B1Q.  Samsung has since removed that version and replaced it with new firmware numbered CXM03B1Q which can be found here.  The release date is January 19, 2012. In an extremely rare step forward, Samsung today contacted The SSD Review …

OCZ today announced a new release of Octane firmware that should bolster performance. Released late last year, the Octane is the first to contain OCZ’ proprietary Indilinx controller since their purchase of the Korean company in 2011. The Octane possesses high sequential performance with random performance a bit lower, much to be expected from a companies first entry into the …

Samsung’s 830 SSD, highly regarded for its excellent performance and reliability, has just received a firmware update which is causing some real problems with Series 830 SSD owners. The update, which was intended to enhance several key aspects of stability in the SSD, can reportedly cause a BSOD after the flashing process is complete. The article has been updated through …

The PCIe SSD based storage market is getting quite popular these days. Micron already has a PCIe SSD on the market, but their acquisition of U.K. company Virtensys on Friday should help them keep up with other PCIe SSD rivals like Fusion-io and OCZ. Virtensys Ltd. specializes in PCIe I/O sharing appliances for large server and owns intellectual property to help share …

Kingston’s SSD family has always been somewhat complicated, but the V/V+ SSDs have always been about value. The V Series  was JMicron controlled and modestly priced, while the V+ units were Toshiba controlled and slightly more expensive.  Kingston has gone another direction in their V+200 SATA 3 SSDs. Using async 25nm Intel memory paired with the SF-2281, the V+200 is …