Looking for an affordable way of speeding up your system? Check out Intel’s newly announced X25-V Value SATA solid state drive priced at $125. With a storage capacity of 40GB, the X25-V is designed to be a cost-effective upgrade for low-cost netbooks or dual-drive/boot-drive desktop setups.

Features of the X25-V include:

• 2.5 inch form factor
• 40GB of 34nm NAND flash memory
• Sustained sequential read speeds of up to 170MB/s
• Sustained sequential write speeds of up to 35MB/s
• Features Intel SSD Toolbox, Intel SSD Optimizer, Intel Matrix Storage Manager
• SATA Revision 2.6 compliant and compatible with SATA 1.5Gb/s and 3Gb/s interface
• The X25-V also supports the Microsoft Windows 7 Trim function via the Intel SSD Optimizer

BTW, for those of you not familiar with the boot-drive option for SSDs, it’s the idea of placing the OS and your favorite applications on the SSD. Since SSDs are faster than standard hard disk drives, system boot times will speed up and application launch times will also start-up accordingly. Of course, a 40GB SSD will only get you so far so we’d probably just stick the OS and maybe one or two favorite apps on the SSD.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Intel X25-V Value SATA SSD, Solid State Drive, 40GB SSD, Intel

Plextor finally enters the solid state drive business with today’s introduction of two new SSDs – the PX-64M1S 64GB SSD and PX-128M1S 128GB SSD.

Plextor’s first generation solid state drives use non-volatile NAND flash memory and feature Marvell controller chipsets. Features of the 2.5 inch drives are as follows:

• Integrated SATA II interface
• PX-64M1S delivers 110MB/s sequential read rate, 65MB/s sequential write rate, up to 4200 random read IOPS, and 1200 random write IOPS
• PX-128M1S delivers 130MB/s sequential read rate, 70MB/s sequential write rate, up to 4300 random read IOPS, and 1800 random write IOPS
• High shock and vibration resistance
• Comes with Plextor’s Wear Leveling algorithm to maintain reliability over extended period of usage
• S.M.A.R.T. support to analyze and report errors

The drives are available now with the PX-64M1S available for $225 and the PX-128M1S available for $400.

Technorati Tags: Plextor PX-64M1S, Plextor PX-128M1S, Solid State Drive

[Reprinted from NetbookTech.com]

Corsair announced on Friday two new solid state drive product lines – the Reactor Series and the Nova Series.

The Reactor Series is available in 60GB and 120GB capacities and features the new JMicron JMF612 controller which incorporates 128MB of DDR2 cache memory for fast performance. The 60GB drive has read speeds up to 250MB/sec and write speeds up to 110MB/sec while the 120GB drive has read speeds up to 250MB/sec and write speeds up to 170MB/sec.

The Nova Series uses the Indilinx Barefoot controller which comes with 64MB of cache memory and is available in 64GB and 128GB storage capacities. The 64GB drive has read speeds up to 270MB/sec and write speeds up to 130MB/sec while the 128GB drive has read speeds up to 270MB/sec and write speeds up to 190MB/sec.

Amazon has the 60GB Reactor SSD for $187.65 while the 120GB Reactor SSD is available for $363.09.

They also have the 64GB Nova Series SSD for $193.99 and the 128GB Nova Series SSD for $373.29.

[Check out the Reactor Series product page]

[Check out the Nova Series product page]

Technorati Tags: Corsair, Corsair Reactor Solid State Drives, Corsair Nova Solid State Drives

SanDisk announces that the new G3 Solid State Drive has begun shipping to retailers in North America and Europe. The G3 SSD is available in two capacities – a 60GB drive for $229.99 and a 120GB drive for $399.99.

Features of the drive include:

• High durability – designed to withstand shocks and vibrations
• Open, close, or boot-up files up to 2x as fast as 7200RPM HDD
• Read speeds up to 220MB/sec
• Write speeds up to 120MB/sec
• ExtremeFFS technology which can accelerate random write performance thereby extending the endurance of drives inside PCs running Windows
• Lower power consumption

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: SanDisk G3 Solid State Drive

Seagate introduces its first product in its new enterprise class solid state drive family – the Seagate Pulsar. Using single-level cell (SLC) technology, the Pulsar delivers up to 200GB of storage capacity in a 2.5 inch form factor with a SATA interface.

Features and specs to the Pulsar include:

• Achieves peak performance of up to 30,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS, 240MB/s sequential read and 200MB/s sequential write
• 0.44% AFR rating with 5 year limited warranty
• Power loss data protection
• SATA 3Gb/s interface

Pulsar units have already begun shipping to select OEMs for revenue as of Sept of this year.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Seagate Pulsar, Solid State Drive

Micron Technology announces the RealSSD C300 Solid State Drive (SSD) which they’re labeling as the “industry’s fastest for notebook and desktop PCs.”  Helping to achieve these speeds is the fact that the new C300 natively supports both the current SATA 3Gb/s interface as well as the next generation SATA 6Gb/s interface.

Supporting SATA 6Gb/s means the C300 will be able to achieve read throughput speeds up to 355MB/s and write throughput speeds up to 215MB/s.

On the inside, the C300 utilizes Micron’s 34nm MLC NAND flash memory allowing it to support large capacities while remaining cost-competitive. The MLC’s also support the high-speed ONFI 2.1 standard which ensures NAND performance keeps up with the upcoming SATA 6 Gb/s interface.

The new drives will be available in both 1.8 inch and 2.5 inch form factors with both drives coming in 128GB and 256GB storage capacities. Expect the new C300 to enter production during the first quarter of 2010.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Micron Technology, RealSSD C300 Solid State Drive

OCZ Technology and Symwave have announced a new partnership to deliver USB 3.0 solutions, some of which will be introduced at the upcoming CES 2010. One of the first fruits of their labor will be a new external solid state drive which OCZ promises to be the industry’s fastest external SSD yet.

According to the OCZ press release, the new external SSD (yet to be named) “delivers 10x the transfer rate of USB 2.0 at 5Gb/s, as well as several ‘green’ improvements including superior power management and lower CPU utilization”.

We’ll make sure to drop by the OCZ Technology booth at CES 2010 to find out more information on this partnership and this new drive.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: OCZ Technology, Symwave, External Solid State Drives

Looking for a high speed replacement for that 3.5 inch internal hard drive of yours? You might want to check out OCZ Technology’s new announced Colossus 3.5 inch Solid State Drive (SSD) with storage capacities up to a whopping 1 terabyte. Yup.. 1 terabyte of fast solid state storage.

The Colossus delivers high performance made possible by using an internal RAID 0 architecture. You’ll get read and write speeds up to 260 MB/second with sustained write speeds up to 220 MB/s. Colossus is built using cost-effective multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory which keeps these drives somewhat reasonably priced (at least for enterprises).

The OCZ Colossus will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities and has a 1.5 million hour mean time between failures. Other specs include:

• 128MB cache
• < 1 ms seek time
• lightweight aluminum casing

Amazon has the 500GB model available for $1766.99 and the 250GB model available for $1122.99

[Check it out]

[Check out the product page]

Technorati Tags: OCZ Technology Colossus Solid State Drive

Corsair adds a new 256GB model to their Extreme Series Solid State Drive family of products today. The Extreme Series SSDs come with the Indilinx Barefoot controller as well as Samsung MLC NAND flash memory resulting in read speeds of up to 240MB/s and write speeds up to 170 MB/s. The drive also comes with 64MB of cache memory.

All Extreme Series SSDs come with user-upgradeable firmware to allow for new features to be added over time (e.g. the upcoming TRIM command for Windows 7). The product line is also available in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB storage capacities.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Corsair 256GB Extreme Series SSD, Solid State Drive

Lexar Media expands their solid state drive lineup with the introduction of the Crucial M225 SSDs. Available in three storage capacities (64GB, 128GB, 256GB), the M225 features:

• Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash memory
• 64MB DRAM internal cache
• SATA 3.0 Gb/s interface
• 2.5 inch form factor
• 200 – 250 MB/s read speed, 150 – 200 MB/s write speed

The 64GB M225 is available now for $169.99, the 128GB SSD for $329.99, and the 256GB model for $599.99.

[Check it out via Crave]

Technorati Tags: Crucial M225 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive