We were a bit concerned that 2008 wasn’t going to be the year of the SSD, but fortunately the boffins over at Super Talent are on the case and have unleashed a new SSD called the MasterDrive LX. What’s so special about their latest offering? The incredibly affordable pricetag of US$300 for the 128 GB unit. OK, we know that 300 bucks doesn’t necessarily equate to cheap but it’s a lot better then the $1000 options we were looking at last year. Needless to say the MasterDrive LX range offers all the usual benefits associated with SSDs, namely less-juice-sucking, reduced volume and better performance. Here are a few more bits and pieces on the two models on offer

* 64 GB / 128 GB options
* Sequential Read Rate 100 MB/sec (max)
* Sequential Write Rate 40 MB/sec (max)
* Access Time 0.1 ms
* 2.5’’ Form Factor
* 69.85mm x 100.00mm x 9.50mm
* SATA Interface Serial ATA-II

Obviously neither of these suckers beat the $100 SSD from OCZ, but of course you can stuff a few more zeroes and ones on Super Talent’s MasterDrive LXs. Anyway it’s good to see the price and spec wars on SSDs begin at last.

Source: Super Talent

Featured tags: masterdrive lx SSD super talent

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Less than a month ago we were concerned that this wasn’t going to be the year of cheap SSDs but yet again OCZ are trying to allay our fears. Their 32 GB Core SATA II SSD is currently available for US$99 after a US$60 rebate and is the first SSD available for under the US$100 mark. Here’s a few bits and pieces on this ground breaking unit

* 32 GB capacity
* 83 MB/sec write speed
* 120 MB/sec write speed

There seems to be a few people out there with some reservations about the actual performance of the OCZ unit indicating that larger capacity spinning drives may actually perform better in terms of I/O speed and power consumption. But there’s nothing conclusive so it may be worth giving one of these puppies a spin, but of course they don’t actually ;-)

Featured tags: OCZ SSD

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2008 was supposed to be the year of the SSD with prices tumbling enough to challenge HDD units. Whilst during the first half of the year we’ve not seen much movement, may be now OCZ are trying to get things going with their latest offering the Core Series V2 SATA II SSD range. There are four units available with 30, 60, 120 and 250 GB capacities but no price tags yet. The previous 128 GB Core Series SSD unit shipped at US$480. Here are some more details on the V2s

* Read speed of 170 MB/sec
* Write speed of 98 MB/sec
* mini USB port to allow users to apply firmware updates to potentially further speed up the units

Not much else detail is available including those pesky price tags, but at least we can see OCZ leading the way by increasing capacity and speeds. May be this the year of the SSD after all.

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The boffins over at SuperTalent have cranked out a 12.5 mm thick 2.5 inch form factor SSD with a capacity of 256 GB. With its SATA-I interface this little sucker will neatly slip into laptops sporting a HD chamber 12.5 mm wide - for those of us with a 9.5 mm wide slot, tough cookies. The drive intriguingly called FSD56GC25H sports the following bits and pieces

* 8 GB to 256 GB capacity options
* Sequential Read Rate of 65 MBps
* Sequential Write Rate of 50 MBps
* Handles shocks up to 1500G and vibrations at 16G
* Plays nicely with all OS

In another twist to this announcement the read and write speeds are nothing to write (forgive the pun) home about being outclassed by the InnoDisk SSD drive we mentioned recently which handles zeros and ones at 110 MBps and 90 MBps respectively. But of course the InnoDisk won’t slot into your laptop without the use of a large hammer.

Overall though we do take our hats off to SuperTalent, but with reservations - we’ll get really excited when they spit out a 2.5 inch drive that will fit all laptops, has super fast read/write speeds and oh yes won’t cost an arm and leg. This little sucker will set you back around US$6K - ouch! Just as well it’s only available to OEM manufacturers so the average Joe won’t be tempted.

Source: PRNewsWire

Featured tags: laptop hard drives SSD supertalent

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Apparently this is the largest capacity SLC NAND Flash drive at 128 GB, however the InnoDisk FiD SATA 10000 certainly looks like one of the most rugged surrounded by a tough metal case. Here are a few more specs on the tough little sucker

* Sustained read rate of 110 Mbps
* Sustained write rate of 90 Mbps
* SATA 2.0 connectivity at 3.0 Gbps
* Capacities ranging from 32 to 128 GB

2008 certainly seems like the year of the SSD and although the average user may not be interested in this specific drive, there is obviously a big market out there. Unfortunately we have no price tag on this sucker at the moment, we don’t expect it to be small, but this year we should start to see those prices tumble.

Featured tags: InnoDisk SSD

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It seems that never a day goes by without a storage manufacturer claiming a new larger storage unit. Today’s manufacturer is Buffalo with the 100 GB SHD-UHR100GS SSD, along with two lesser siblings, 32 and 64 GB models.

The claims, as usual for SSD manufacturers, is a physical space saving, a power sucking reduction and size. Although we couldn’t get our hands on any specific dimensions, it’s alleged that this little puppy is the size of a business card and unless USB ports have leapt in size over night, that estimation is about right given the photo above. Buffalo are also claiming a 70% power saving over their HD-PHGU2 HDD series, a bonus for all of us laptop users aching for a portable drive. As for weight this baby weighs in at a mere 60g, a mere nothing even in world of portable hardware.

The downside? Ah well, to become the proud owner of a super-slim SHD-UHR100GS, your wallet needs to be weighed down with US$952. The 32 GB version rocks in at $312, whilst the 64 GB has a price tag of $665. So these suckers aren’t cheap, but 100 GB the size of business card, what price can you put on that!

Source: engadget

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Toshiba announced their entry into the NAND flash-based SSD market with a selection of units, the most notable of which is 1.8 inch form factor SATA 128 GB unit which unfortunately won’t be in mass production until May next year. The units have a max read speed of 100 MB/s and max write of 40 MB/s with a SATA-2 interface (3 Gbps).

Now that SSDs are becoming a bit more mainstream hopefully the price tags will follow that trend too, but we’ll have to wait and see until May what these suckers from Toshiba will set you back.

And if you want an early sneak preview of these units then get yourself on down to the CES in Las Vegas on Jan 7th as apparently Tosh will be showing them off at the show.

Source: Toshiba

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