Solid State Drives Compared

Tom's Hardware rounds up 14 Solid State Drives (SSDs). The drives tested were:

• 2.5" Crucial 32 GB
• 3.5" Hama High-Speed 64 GB
• 1.8" Hama 32 GB
• 2.5" Hama High-Speed 32 GB SATA
• 2.5" Hama 32 GB SATA
• 2.5" MemoRight MR25.2-032S 32 GB SATA
• 2.5" MemoRight MR25.2-064S 64 GB SATA
• 3.5" Mtron Pro 7500 32 GB SATA
• 2.5" OCZ 64 GB SATAII
• 2.5" Samsung 64 GB SATA 2
• 2.5" Silicon Power 128 GB SATA
• 2.5" Super Talent Masterdrive MX 60 GB SATA

"... the Samsung 64 GB SSD SATA-2, which is also available from OCZ as the 64 GB SATAII SSD. For those who want it all-high performance and high efficiency-this product is it. No other SATA-based flash SSD shows such low power requirements in idle and when active, and no other flash SSD provides balanced performance across all benchmarks. We hope that more flash SSD products will follow in this category, because only these drives are worth the cost. Samsung's 64 GB SSD SATA-2 and the OCZ 64 GB SATAII SSD receive the Best of Tom's award in the hard drive." [Tom's Hardware | 14-Way SSD Hard Drive Roundup : Flash SSDs Compared]

While the Samsung 64 GB SSD SATA-2 (or OCZ 64 GB SATAII SSD) were the highly recommended drives, those lusting for high performance in an SSD should consider the Single-Level Cell (SLC) drives from MemoRight and Mtron.

Technorati : drive, review, sata, solid, ssd, state, test

Samsung 64GB SATA-2 Solid State Drive Reviewed

The Samsung 64GB SATA-2 FlashSSD (US$790) is a Solid State Drive (SSD) that features:

• 64GB capacity
• NAND Flash
• 100MB/sec Rated Sequential Read
• 80M/sec Rated Sequential Write
• 1W Operational Power requirement

"Samsung has clearly tried to optimize its new SSD drive for better streaming performance, both read and write. The results show up in the benchmarks. This is one of the most balanced performers we've seen in the still far-from-mature SSD market. ... The new Samsung FlashSSD catches up with the competition in both price and performance-but it's still not mainstream yet. " [ExtremeTech | Samsung 64GB SATA-2 SSD Drives Review]

Maybe when SSDs are already priced more "competitively" against the HDDs, it will gain more popularity among manufacturers, resulting to more users opting for an SSD. Until then, I still prefer hard drives, mainly due to their "more bytes per buck" prices.

Technorati : 64gb, drive, flash, flashssd, samsung, sata, sata-2, solid, ssd, state

1TB Hard Disk Drives Tested

Looking to put a TByte hard drive in your system? X-bit Labs tested 6 TByte HDDs from Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital. The drives tested were:

• Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000
• Hitachi Ultrastar A7K1000
• Samsung SpinPoint F1
• Seagate Barracuda 7100.11
• Seagate Barracuda ES.2
• Western Digital Caviar GP

"So, these are the highs and lows of the tested drives but the most important point about them is the price factor. The price of a 1-terabyte drive has lowered by a half since the moment they hit the market - all thanks to the competition. With four manufacturers elbowing each other aside in this market sector, we are up to more price cuts!" [X-bit labs | 1TB Hard Disk Drives Roundup]

Any of the above-mentioned HDDs will do, especially if you just need one for honest-to-goodness large capacity storage.

Technorati : drive, hard, storage, tb

Solid State, DDR i-RAM, and Hard Disk Drives Compared

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are data storage devices much like Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), but uses solid-state flash memory to store data. The Gigabyte i-RAM is sort of like SSD, but instead uses RAM; more specifically, DDR RAM.

X-bit Labs tested the following:

• 32GB Samsung (MCAQE32G5APP-0XA) SSD with UDMA66 interface
• 64GB Samsung (MCAQE32G5APP-0XA) SSD with SATA interface
• Gigabyte i-RAM with SATA interface
• 200GB 2.5" Hitachi 7K200 HDD with SATA interface
• 1000GB 3.5" Samsung SpinPoint F1 HDD with SATA interface
• 300GB 3.5" Fujitsu MBA3300RC HDD with SCSI interface

"In real-life applications SSDs are going to be faster than 2.5" HDDs with a spindle rotation speed of 5400rpm unless the manufacturer installs very slow chips of flash memory into them. ... SSDs are also considerably faster than 3.5" HDDs in terms of random reading but slower at sequential reading. ... So, hard disk drives still remain the best choice in terms of price, capacity and speed combined when it comes to the disk subsystem of a workstation, file server and write operations-oriented server." [X-bit Labs | SSD, i-RAM and Traditional Hard Disk Drives]

The i-RAM does perform well, but its limited capacity (4GB), and its temporary retention of data (data is lost when its battery backup gets depleted) is not yet a legitimate contender against the hard disk drive.

As it turns out, SSDs are fast drives, and require less power than conventional hard drives. And users will definitely appreciate the silent operation of SSDs. The somewhat high price of SSDs is probably the real reason why it is not (yet) the mainstream storage device.

Technorati : HDD, SSD, ddr, drive, flash, hard disk, iRAM, ram, solid-state