Upgrade Notebook HDD or SSD Easier with SATA Wire

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There are a number of hard drive and SSD upgrade kits floating around for notebooks and netbooks. The catch is that many users simply don’t have the understanding needed to transfer all of their files over to the new drive. Apricorn has a new upgrade kit to make the transfer easier called the SATA Wire.

The SATA Wire sells for $19.99 and is a cable that plugs into your SATA SSD or HDD on one end and then plugs into the USB port of your notebook on the other to transfer data. The upgrade kit also includes cloning software that makes it easy to move all your data over. Read more

Posted on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:45:26 CST | by Shane McGlaun

OCZ Unveils 1TB Colossus 3.5-inch SSD

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OCZ has unveiled its latest storage product called the Colossus 3.5-inch SSD with 1TB of storage. The massive capacity SSD is a 3.5-inch device aimed at desktop computer users and enterprise users. Smaller capacity versions of the Colossus are available as well.

The SSD has an internal RAID 0 configuration for better performance. The maximum read speed is 260MB/s, maximum write is 260MB/s and the sustained write speed is 220MB/s. the entire line is also built using lower cost MLC NAND flash. If 1TB is, too much space for you the Colossus is available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. Read more

Posted on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

PhotoFast Unveils G-Monster 1.8'' PATA V4 SSD

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A company called PhotoFast has unveiled a new line of PATA SSDs that claim to be the first SSD in 1.8" size that has a built-in garbage collection function. The new line of SSDs are aimed at netbooks and other PATA using electronic devices.

The Garbage collection function is built-in at the hardware level inside the drive. The feature allows the drive to rearrange itself during idle time. This lets the drive prevent files from being fragmented and slowing the performance. Read more

Posted on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:33:55 CST | by Shane McGlaun

OCZ Technology and SandForce Team Up for New SSDs

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OCZ has announced that it will be working on some new SSDs in conjunction with SandForce for consumer and enterprise users. The new line of SSDs will use the SandForce SSD Processor. OCZ will use the SF-1500 and the SF-1200 processors in the new SSDs.

Along with the processors, the SSDs will also use SLC and MLC flash memory and utilize the 3Gbps SATA and 6Gbps SAS interfaces. Capacities for the new line of SSDs will run from 50GB to 400GB. Read more

Posted on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Active Media Products Unveils Netbook SSD Upgrade

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Netbook users looking to upgrade to a new storage drive with more space and more speed may want to check out the new SaberTooth SSDs from Active Media Products. The new line of SSDs are replacement drives for netbook computers.

The drives use the Jmicron JMF602B controller and MLC flash memory for transfer speeds promised to be two to five times faster than the standard SSD that shipped in many netbooks from ASUS. The drives are aimed at users of the Asus S101, 900, 900A, 901, and 1000 EeePC. Read more

Posted on Mon, 9 Nov 2009 05:31:30 CST | by Shane McGlaun

ADATA Unveils Fastest SSD Called S596

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ADATA has unveiled a new SSD that it claims is the industry's fastest. The drive, called the S596, uses a 2.5-inch form factor, and connects via SATAII. The SSD promises to load apps five times faster than normal HDDs. The drive uses next generation flash technology and a DDR2 SDRAM buffer to provide a boot up time of 20 seconds running Windows 7.

That boot time is a 40% improvement compared to a normal SSD. The drive will come in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities. The SSD is compatible with both PC and Mac computers and it has a miniUSB port built in allowing it to be used as an external storage device. Read more

Posted on Tue, 3 Nov 2009 07:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Kingston Offers new SSD Desktop Upgrade Solution

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Kingston has announced its latest desktop SSD upgrade kit. The new kit is a bargain and is designed to be a boot drive for the OS. The SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is the latest edition to the family of drives and is available for as low as $84.49 after rebates at Newegg.com.

The full retail price of the drive isn't much more than the discounted price after rebates. The 40Gb boot drive sells for $115 and will ship on November 9th. The drive has a sequential read speed of 170MB/sec and 40MB/sec write speeds. The drive uses a 2.5-inch form factor. Read more

Posted on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Kingston Makes 40 GB SSD

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Solid state drive technology is moving forward pretty quickly these days. 16 and 32 GB SSDs are fairly common now, and Kingston's just introduced a new, low cost 40 GB SSD. This drive isn't intended for storage, however. The idea, as Electronista states, is to put your operating system and key apps on the SSD, and have a second, normal hard drive for actual storage.

Solid state drives are much, much faster than traditional spindle HDs. The Kingston 40 GB has a 170 MB/s read speed and a 40 MB/s write speed. That's around four times faster than a traditional hard drive. Loading your OS and major apps onto an SSD will speed your machine up substantially.

Posted on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:15:34 CDT | by Robert Evans

Super Talent Offers New Toshiba Branded UltraDrive SSD

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Super Talent has announced that it is now offering branded Toshiba SSDs in a line known as the UltraDrive DX. The new line of SSDs offers two levels of security to prevent unauthorized data theft or loss. The drives will be sold via Super Talent starting this week.

The first level of security that the SSDs offer is password protection with an encrypted password. The password keeps hackers from accessing the data on the drive. The second level of protection is a new hardware randomizing technology. Read more

Posted on Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Active Media Products Introduces Aviator 312 External USB 3.0 SSD

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A company called Active Media Products has unveiled a new SSD that uses the USB 3.0 interface called the Aviator 312. The SSD is an external storage solution designed to operate at 4.8Gbits/sec making it about ten times faster than USB 2.0. The drive is very small measuring about 3" long x 0.2" thick.

The company says with the massive speed of USB 3.0 a full 25GB HD film can be saved in about two minutes. The drive comes with a carry pouch and a USB 3.0 micro-B cable for connectivity to any port. The drive will work with any USB 2.0 or 1.1 port as well, just at lower speeds. Read more

Posted on Mon, 5 Oct 2009 05:32:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Transcend Ultra Series 120GB 2.5-inch SSD Review

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Tweaktown published a review of the Transcend Ultra Series 120GB 2.5-inch Solid State Drive.
Quote from the review: "Transcend has their hands in several consumer markets these days. The company is known mainly for their memory products like compact flash and thumb drives. The company has been branching out into different market segments and now has a line of consumer electronics like digital photo frames and MP3 players. Transcend has also ventured into solid state drives and has an impressive lineup started. Read more

Posted on Mon, 5 Oct 2009 03:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

HDD Compared To SSD On Acer Aspire One D250 Netbook

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If you are still not convinced that an SSD upgrade is really beneficial in terms of overall performance like I am already, here is another comparison. I have upgraded an old but still sexy Thinkpad X40 with an SSD and the result is awesome. Also just recently I replaced the boot HDD on my Windows XP Desktop with an SSD and the resulting performance gains are dramatic.

iGadgetLive compared the overall performance of an Acer Aspire One D250 netbook between HDD and SSD.
Quote: "My Acer Aspire One D250 came with a standard mechanical hard drive, and recently I acquired another SSD drive so I figured why not swap the HDD out for the SSD as that seems the popular way to go these days. Now I knew the read and write speeds of the SSD would be much faster than the lowly 5400RPM hard drive, but I was curious as to how much of an actual affect it had on the system as a whole though. I wanted to know just how much an SSD affects everything in the system and not just the transfer rates or read/writes. Read more

Posted on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:46:09 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

New Pretec Self-Destruction SSD Deletes All Data In 0.1s

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Pretec announces a new SSD with ultra-fast self destruction mechanism for military and secret service use.

The patented Pretec self-destruction technology is invented to fully safeguard confidential data from being tampered through unauthorized access. When the flash storage device is requested to quickly erase all of its contents in an urgent situation, it typically takes more than 20 seconds to complete for the fastest flash disk available today. In military operation, many times there won’t be 20 seconds time for solders to erase all data inside the SSD, which allow enemies to potentially retrieve the confidential data easily once the SSD falls into hostile hands. Pretec’s self-destruction SSD takes only 0.1 second.
Read more

Posted on Tue, 8 Sep 2009 02:50:50 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Upgrading Windows XP PC with Super Talent UltraDrive GX SSD Well Worth The Money

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I was waiting for the longest time for an SSD large enough to replace my Windows XP boot drive to become reasonably priced. Last week was the time. I bought a 128GB SSD from Super Talent: The UltraDrive ME SSD (UltraDrive GX Series FTM28GX25H) based on MLC.
This 128GB SSD sells on NewEgg for only $355 (Compare Prices on other stores).

The performance gains are well worth the money especially if you don't have to spend a day reinstalling Windows XP and all the apps. That's right, I dared to use Linux DD command to copy Windows XP from my old HDD to the new SSD. See instructions below on how to do that. The process is not straight forward, but it works great and takes less than 30 minutes.
My Windows XP system is 4 years old and still has an Asus P5AD2 motherboard with SATA and not SATA II. So I am reaching only 140MB/s on the ATTO Disk Benchmark tool. If you have SATA II you should reach read and write speeds of about 260MB/s with the UltraDrive ME SSD FTM28GX25H.
Read more

Posted on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Kingston SSDNow V+ SSD Unveiled

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Kingston has unveiled its latest SSD called the SSDNow V+. The new SSD is shipping already and has capacities up to 256GB. The main improvement in the new SSD is faster performance with more IOPS per second.

Kingston promises that the drive has 4K file size read speeds of up to 6300 IOPS and random 4K writes of up to 291 IOPS. The sequential read speed is up to 220MB/sec and write speeds are up to 180MB/sec. Read more

Posted on Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

PhotoFast G-Monster V5 256GB SSD Review

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Tweaktown published a review of the PhotoFast G-Monster V5 256GB Solid State Disk.
Quote from the review: "When Jason at DVNation told me that the new PhotoFast G-Monster V5 was approaching the limits of the SATA 3.0 spec, I really didn’t know what to think. PhotoFast has made a big marketing push over the last couple of months and there was a time when it seemed that every other day a new press release hit my inbox. Hitting my email inbox is quite a bit different than hitting my door step and over the years I have pretty much come to the realization that press releases aren’t worth much more than the paper they could be printed on. Three days ago my initial thoughts of PhotoFast changed. This was the day I finally put one of the companies solid state drives in my test system.
Read more

Posted on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:27:44 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Intel Delivers First 34nm SSDs

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Intel has introduced the industry's first 34nm SSD. The new 34nm manufacturing process is also allowing the price of SSDs using the technology to be reduced by up to 60% for PC and laptop makers. The NAND inside the SSDs is built on MLC technology.

The X25-M SATA SSD is intended for use inside laptop and desktop PCs and is offered in 80GB and 160GB versions. Intel says that the new 34nm SSDs are drop in compatible with SSDs using older manufacturing processes and HDDs. Read more

Posted on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Crucial Offers New SSDs with 200MB/sec Write Speed

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Lexar Media has announced a new line of Crucial SSDs called the M225 line. The SSDs are among the fastest storage products on the market with read and write times of 250MB/sec and 200MB/sec respectively.

The SSDs are available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities, use industry standard 2.5-inch form factor, and the SATA 2.0 3Gb.s interface. The drive uses MLC NAND flash components inside the 2.5-inch enclosure. Read more

Posted on Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Samsung Develops SSD with SATA Mini-card Design

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Samsung has announced that it has developed a new SSD for netbooks that uses a mini-card SATA design. The design allows the SSD to be used as a mini storage drive and to go into computers with the capability of a second drive to boost performance.

The SSD uses the SATA 3.0GB/s interface and is about 80% smaller than a conventional 2.5-inch SSD. Samsung says that it is working to standardize the new form factor and its pin layout. The SSD will be offered in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB densities. Read more

Posted on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

InnoDisk Brings 128GB nanoSSD to Computex

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Data storage takes another step forward today with newcomer InnoDisk's latest offering to the Computex convention. Last year InnoDisk brought out a 2.5 inch 128GB SATA 10000 SSD card. Now they've outdone themselves with the unbelievably tiny 128 GB nanoSSD card. As you can see from the picture, it's drastically tinier than its predecessors while maintaining the same data storage capacity.

Looking at their SSD evolution display is like watching technology move forward right before your eyes. It's a little bit mind-boggling how fast things are moving these days. It won't be too long before you'll be seeing an even smaller version of this card in stores, ready to be stuck into all manner of netbooks, mobile phones, and cameras.

Posted on Thu, 4 Jun 2009 15:00:00 CDT | by Robert Evans

Super Talent Launches Eee SSD Upgrades

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Super Talent has announced a new line of Eee SSD upgrades that it claims to be the world's fastest SSDs for the Eee netbook platform. The SSDs are designed specifically to fit the Eee 900, 901, 901A, 901 Go, and S101 netbooks.

The little SSDs are called the SATA Mini 2 PCIs SSDs and use the SATA II interface. Versions of the SSDs are available using both MLC and SLC technology. The MLC version has read speeds up to 150MB/s and write speeds up to 100MB/s with capacities of 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. Read more

Posted on Fri, 29 May 2009 07:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun