Our SSD Reviews

So I am a few thousand miles above beautiful California and the 2013 LSI Accelerating Innovations Summit. I can’t help but reflect on the confusion that still exists concerning the standardization of M.2 SSDs, regardless of how many times we try to explain this in our reports (1, 2, 3).  If you are confused and not an industry professional, don’t …

A few weeks ago we received an e-mail asking our opinion on the VisionTek mSATA SSD as the writer had found an amazing deal on that SSD, yet there wasn’t a review in site.  Admittedly, even I wasn’t all that familiar with VisionTek and didn’t even know they were marketing SSDs. In conducting a quick search, I had to laugh …

ADATA recently announced availability of their new DashDrive Elite SE720 External SSD and sent one along to us for analysis.  Without stealing the thunder of this entire report, the SE720 is ultrathin, extremely well-built, has LSI SandForce speeds and we were floored at the Amazon pricing we found that brought this external SSD below that of many similar bare 128GB …

When we started receiving 12Gbps SAS products in the summer of 2013, we were met with typical products such as the Adaptec ASR-8885 RAID Adapter, the LSI SAS 9300-8e HBA and the HGST SSD800MM SSD.  Each of these products delivered excellent performance that far outpaced the 6Gbps versions that they were built on.  But, in order to have a full …

Perhaps one of the best mindsets I have seen in my six years in the SSD industry is the ambition to not only improve SSD technology, but to also take them to the next level.  Selling a consumer SSD as an enterprise one will always be a shot in the dark, but the appetite of SSD manufacturers to push their …

Nearly a year ago, we reviewed the Kingston SSDNow E100 200GB and found it to be “exquisite”.  “It could even be one of the finest MLC-based second-gen LSI LSI SandForce drives” we raved.  That’s pretty high praise for an enterprise SSD.  Since that time, a lot has changed in the enterprise market.  As we have discussed in previous reviews, a …

The importance of Toshiba in the flash industry cannot be overstated.  Toshiba is not only one of the world’s largest flash suppliers, but also, they are often recognized as the prime choice when SSD manufacturers are making quality SSDs.  Some SSD manufacturers refuse to use anything nut Toshiba NAND flash memory in their SSDs. So where has Toshiba been as …

The importance of SSD controllers often gets overlooked in the world of SSDs.  Memory itself is front and center in the minds of most, simply because it is the most prominent component in any SSD.  Most recently, we are even seeing Apple using the term ‘flash’ in its product literature , rather than ‘SSD’.  Not only is the controller capable …

The practice of using unbranded peripherals in computers is common.  Apple does this and carries things a step further by demanding that components, such as the SSDs, are proprietary to a specific build only. Not only can the SSD in Apple’s new Mac products not be upgraded with third-party SSDs, but also, they can’t even be switched off with SSDs …

Since the release and exclusive posting of our report on the Mushkin Scorpion PCIe SSD, it has sold out worldwide for the second month in a row.  This is something not seen in the SSD industry these days but we have been saying for some time that there was a definite demand for PCIe SSDs; Mushkin listened and then some. …