SSD News

You know a company is considered established when change is made and talked about worldwide.  Such is the case with recent news that Seagate is dropping its 7200RPM line and rumors grow rampid.  Of interest to us is Seagate’s stance on SSD development and we couldn’t count the discussions and emails we have received regarding rumored purchases or beliefs that …

It is always interesting bumping into new SSD companies that we hadn’t heard of prior and we happened upon TakeMS during our rounds of ceBIT this morning. TakeMS produces solid state drives in capacities ranging from 60-480GB and, as you can guess, each are SATA 3 and ‘LSI SandForce Driven’, which speaks to performance of 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write …

Our visit to the Samsung display at ceBIT 2013 this morning resulted in the discovery of a new release of their SM843 SSD in a ‘T’ version with four times the endurance. An associate at the booth credited the endurance boost to a new eMLC version of their 21nm 64Gb memory along with specific firmware enhancements. The present SM843 is …

Things got off to a great start at ceBIT 2013 in Hanover, Germany, this morning with a visit to the OCZ booth and meet with an old friend and former contributor of the SSD Review.  Our escape from the cold Canadian climate was definitely looking up with highs of 13Deg Celsius already this morning. Our first look goes to OCZ’s …

TeleCommunications Systems (TCS) is announcing availability of its ultra-compact BGADrive solid-state drive (SSD).  TCS is a world-leading specialist in ultra-rugged solid-state drives utilized in the harshest environments.  TCS offers both industry-standard and customized versions of its SSDs for military, aerospace, and industrial uses.  The BGADrive is now available in both serial ATA (SATA) and parallel ATA (PATA) interfaces.  These new …

Micron Technology is announcing the release of its new P410m SAS SSD for enterprise and datacenter applications.  This 6 Gbps SSD is available in 2.5″ x 7mm form factor and features SAS connectivity to interface with mission-critical datacenter storage arrays.  This will be the first SAS SSD to implement Micron’s XPERT architecture, which extends performance and enhances the drive’s life …

The question of whether TRIM is working, and working correctly, remains to be one of the most active SSD discussions to date. What started out as a Forum thread identifying a free new software that allows the SSD user to determine if TRIM is working, has grown to a full fledged working group where new members and our ‘in house …

Typically we don’t post articles on SSD firmware updates but the uproar received over PNY’s being ‘late to the game’ with their SF 5.04 firmware update was something we never expected. This was obvious in our review of the PNY Prevail Elite SSD where we praised it’s build and performance with our Editor’s Choice Award and commended PNY for being …

Well it seems SMART is at it once again piling on yet another great SSD to add to their rapidly growing collection, this time in the form factor of a 1.8″ SAS Enterprise Grade Optimus SSD. The SAS Optimus is capable of 500MB/s SATA 3 transfer speeds, up to 100,000 IOPS, comes with a five year warranty, and is available …

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. is announcing a new 20nm NAND flash version of its award-winning Vertex 3 series of SSDs.  This new Vertex “3.20” is a SATA III (6 GB/s) multi-level cell (MLC) drive in the now standard 2.5″ form factor.  The Vertex 3 series will now be built around smaller, state-of-the-art NAND flash process geometry at 20nm. Utilizing the …