SSDs
Lexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar SL500 Portable SSD is one of the moderately priced 20 Gbps PSSDs in that set. The SL500 is able to achieve its price point thanks to the use of a native USB flash controller - the Silicon Motion SM2320. The unique aspect is the use of YMTC 3D TLC NAND (compared to the usual Micron or BiCS NAND that we have...
A Look at Enterprise Performance of Intel SSDs
For the majority of the history of AnandTech we've hosted our own server infrastructure. A benefit of running our own infrastructure is that we're able to gain a lot...
56 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/8/2012Hitachi Releases Ultrastar SSD400S.B: 25nm SLC NAND Is Here
25nm MLC NAND has been in the market for roughly a year now and it is very common in today's consumer SSDs—there are only a few models using 3Xnm...
14 by Kristian Vättö on 2/8/2012Intel SSD 520 Review: Cherryville Brings Reliability to SandForce
Intel was rumored to be working on a SandForce based drive for several months now, but even the rumors couldn't encapsulate just how long Intel and SF has worked...
139 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/6/2012Micron CEO Steve Appleton Dies in a Plane Crash
Micron's long time CEO, Steve Appleton, has died in a plane crash at the age of 51 at the Boise Airport on Friday morning. He was reportedly flying a...
10 by Kristian Vättö on 2/4/2012Samsung Updates the Firmware of SSD 830 Series, Fixes BSOD Issue
This seems to be a month of SSD firmware updates. Less than two weeks ago, Crucial released a firmware update to fix the issue that caused BSODs after 5184...
24 by Kristian Vättö on 1/23/2012OCZ Releases Firmware Update for Octane, Increases Random Write Performance
OCZ released a firmware update for its Octane SSD series. The update carries a version number 1.13 and OCZ claims substantial random write improvements. To refresh everyone's memory on...
7 by Kristian Vättö on 1/23/2012TRIM Enabler 2.0 for OS X Lion Released
People are often concerned with the performance of their SSD; is it running as fast as advertised. TRIM is an essential part of keeping your SSD performance up (see...
32 by Kristian Vättö on 1/22/2012Kingston's SSDNow V+200: More Affordable SandForce
Last year Kingston introduced its HyperX line of SF-2281 based SSDs. HyperX marked the first time SandForce and Kingston ever worked together but the relationship continued. Kingston quietly introduced...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/19/2012Crucial Provides a Firmware Update for M4 to Fix The BSOD Issue
Last week, we wrote about the BSOD issue that Crucial's M4 SSDs were experiencing. After 5184 hours (yes, that's the specific number) of active use, the SSD started to...
15 by Kristian Vättö on 1/14/2012Super Talent: Demos PCIe-based RAIDDrive upStream and RAIDDrive II SSDs
It’s a bit sad, really: SATA 6Gbps ony a couple years old and already we’re seeing SSDs push the limits of the interface. While the SATA spec will eventually...
5 by Jarred Walton on 1/12/2012Some Thoughts on SandForce's 3rd Generation SSD Controller
I spent a few minutes talking to SandForce in between meetings today and got a general idea of what a third generation SF controller might look like. The SandForce...
14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/12/2012Corsair Continues to Expand
Corsair has been making a tremendous number of waves over the past year, as announcements made at last year's CES are beginning to come to fruition. They continue to...
9 by Dustin Sklavos on 1/12/2012Crucial 50GB Adrenaline SSD Cache, Available in Q1
Earlier this week Crucial announced its first SSD caching solution: the Adrenaline SSD. The drive will be available in a single capacity: 50GB with 64GB of 25nm MLC NAND...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/11/2012Mushkin's 1.8", mSATA & PCIe SF-2281 SSDs at CES
The SSD market is continuing to grow and we're seeing no slowdown in the number of players trying to get in on the action. Mushkin, one of the first...
4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2012Patriot SSDs, Flash, and Large Memory Applications
Patriot has been supplying memory products for some time now, and they had the usual assortment of SSDs, RAM, USB, and other Flash products on display in their suite...
4 by Jarred Walton on 1/10/2012OCZ Scores an Ultrabook Design Win for Everest: LG Super Ultrabook Z300
OCZ is on a roll at CES this year. It just announced LG's Super Ultrabook Z300 will ship with a 256GB mSATA Indilinx Everest based SSD. I'm still trying...
4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/9/2012OCZ Z-Drive R4 CloudServ (RM1616) Features Sixteen SandForce Controllers
The Z-Drive R4 is a PCIe SSD available in 4 and 8-controller versions targeted squarely at the enterprise. Apparently some of OCZ's customers wanted an even beefier version, which...
6 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/9/2012OCZ's 4TB 3.5" Chiron SSD
Take four Indilinx Everest controllers, put them behind custom OCZ FPGAs that implement its own VCA (RAID-like) architecture and you've got the Chiron. The complete enclosure provides support for...
9 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/9/2012OCZ's Portable Thunderbolt SSD: Lightfoot
I mentioned earlier that we'll be seeing more Thunderbolt devices at CES this year, but what I wasn't expecting was for one of those devices to be made by...
12 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/9/2012OCZ's Indilinx Everest 2 Launching in June 2012, Features Vastly Improved Random Performance
OCZ has a lot to show off this year at CES/Storage Visions, but the most exciting product from a client standpoint is its new Everest 2 controller. While the...
11 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/9/2012