With USB 3.0 taking off in recent years we have the emergence of devices coming pre-built and pre-configured for the new standard. USB 2.0 is still alive no doubt, but focus has shifted to its much faster successor which has almost become part of mainstream technology. As readily available as USB 2.0 is, its downfalls are readily apparent. When 25MB/s …

On our table today we have the Silicon Power Velox V70 SATA 3 SSD where SP is another to combine the power of the LSI SandForce SF-2281 Flash Storage Processor (FSP) with Intel synchronous MLC memory. If NAND alone makes great partners, the V70 is in good hands as we have seen the same type and capacity in the OCZ …

Some time ago, we sat with David Leong as part of Computex Taipei 2011 and he introduced a new product that Kingston was about to release called the Wi-Drive, an apparent Mac add-on. Being the consummate PC Guy and (at that time) very vocal anti-Mac proponent, I moved on to Kingston’s HyperX SSD news and afforded the Wi-Drive the standard …

Stopping by KingSpec at Computex 2012 uncovered a new and interesting PCIe SSD dubbed the KingSpec Mutticore Series SSD. Housing eight mSATA SSDs, the Multicore answers the obvious question we have had of similar mSATA x 4 PCIe SSDs and this SSD can be configured with 64 to 2TB of available storage. The Multicore is still technically a prototype and …

Understanding SSDs Performance and Implications Today’s SSD close up is going to teach us the most valuable thing we can ever learn about an SSD. This is the fourth paper in a series of articles that explain the benefits, types and components of a solid state drive and will go so far as to make up our SSD Beginners Guide …

Our release yesterday of our Intel 520 SSD Review (Round One) was probably one of the most anticipated events seen yet in the SSD arena and, if sales can be determined by the extreme numbers of readers who visited the site, Intel will do very well. In that review we made a promise, this being that we would follow up …

Today we are evaluating the newest version of CacheCade, a storage caching system developed by LSI for use with their MegaRAID controllers. This system aims to create the perfect fusion between HDD capacity and SSD speed, accelerating new or existing storage subsystems that are already in place. A previous CacheCade v1.0 review of the software illustrated some of the extreme …

Upon receiving the SteelSeries Shift, I wasn’t too excited to tell you the truth. I don’t know why, but I think it just might be the amount of marketing power Logitech have. But it all disappeared once I looked at the box and started playing with it. The SteelSeries Shift box is actually quite attractive. Upon taking the keyboard out, …

Brushed Aluminium chassis, passive cooling, 3.5′ interior drive tray, support for every media file type available and a very attractive price tag are just few of the things that make the RaidSonic IB-MP3011HW-B one of the best entry level network media players in the market. Full story at Real World Labs.

BENCHMARKS Here are a few benchmarks from the OCZ Vertex 3 we reviewed this morning, containing the SF-2281 Processor.  These benchmarks are of a prototype and unreleased drive where there is a great deal more fine tuning to be done before release. Personally, I don’t believe the high sequential read and write access is nearly as surprising as the 4kb …