Tancap Blog
Posts Tagged SSD
Seagate Reveals Hybrid SSD / HDD
AnandTech has a post about Seagate’s new Momentus XT hybrid drive. It is a notebook hard drive combined with a small 4 GB SSD used for read caching. The results overall are pretty good especially for notebooks that often don’t have more than one drive bay available to do a separate SSD and HDD combination. It won’t beat a decent pure SSD, but for normal day to day use it will still be generally faster than any single hard disk drive.
For more information, see AnandTech’s article here.
AnandTech Reviews OCZ’s Vertex 2
AnandTech has reviewed the OCZ Vertex 2. As expected, it performs better at small writes with the uncapped firmware it runs when compared to the Agility 2, but if you don’t need the best possible small file random write performance the Agility 2 is probably the better deal. In either case, SandForce based drives appear to be the SSDs of choice for now assuming you aren’t planning on using some kind of whole disk encryption software or planning on using it to store compressed video.
For the full article, click here.
Corsair’s Force SSD Reviewed
On the higher capacity and performance front, AnandTech has reviewed the Corsair Force SSD. It is another SandForce based SSD and its performance is pretty much the same as the other SandForce SSDs (very good).
OCZ’s $99 Onyx SSD Now Available
The low end SSD drive market continues to heat up as OCZ’s Onyx can be found at many online retailers now. 32 GB is still a bit small for a Windows OS drive, but hopefully by the end of the year we’ll see some good 64 GB SSDs hit the mark.
AnandTech Post Value SSD Head-to-Head Review
AnandTech has posted a review of the two main value SSDs on the market right now. The Intel X25-V (40 GB) and Kingston 30 GB SSDNOW V. Both are priced at under $130.
SilverStone Announces Hybrid SSD / Hard Drive Device
SilverStone has announced a device that caches frequently used files on a hard drive to an SSD. Depending on how good the software is on the device this could be a good way to get near SSD performance from your 1+ TB hard drive.
Click here for more.
CES News
AnandTech has a preview of Micron’s RealSSD C300. Even when not used with one of the new SATA 6G controllers the performance of this SSD is quite impressive.
Sony seems to be fully embracing 3D TV. In addition to announcing the PS3 will be upgradable to be compatible. They showed off their new TV lineup (I4U) and announced a dedicated 3DTV Network (PCMag)
AnandTech previews OCZ Vertex 2 Pro
AnandTech has previewed OCZ’s new Vertex 2 Pro SSD drive that promises to be significantly better than almost any other consumer drive on the market.
PC Perspective Reviews OCZ Colossus
PC Perspective takes a look at the OCZ Colossus. The first 3.5″ 1 TB capable SSD that will be sold to “normal” consumers that I’m aware of. Of course at over $3300 each for the 1 TB model, I don’t think they’ll be selling too many of these anytime soon.
Former Seagate CTO Dooms Future of Hard Drives
Will these people ever learn not to release studies like this?
In addition, flash memory technology will reach technical limits that will prevent its continued scaling before 2020, keeping them from replacing HDDs.
We are already seeing SSDs being adopted by a number of major manufacturers in the laptop and netbook markets. Sizes of SSDs are increasing rapidly. Costs are decreasing even with only 2 real controller players in the consumer market currently (Intel and Indilinx). There isn’t a conventional magnetic hard drive on the market that can touch SSDs from a performance standpoint. Maybe hard drives will be the cheapest on a per TB basis in 2020, but nobody is going to care. Note, I am not saying that hard drives will disappear by 2020. When you need a lot of storage, good old hard drives are likely going to be the way to go. However for primary storage, there is no way you should be using a hard drive in 2020. Right now, buying a good SSD is the best upgrade you can buy for your PC. If you don’t believe me, look at this fine article on AnandTech. If SSDs aren’t the answer, it will be something else that isn’t a hard drive.