VR-Zone

Solid State Disks (SSDs) are all the rage these days. The robust flash based hard drives offer many advantages to typical magnetic storage solutions. Silent operation, minimal electricity requirements, almost no heat build-up and fast read/write rates. Because of their high resistance to shock and impact damage, SSDs are especially suited for mobile computers. Disadvantages include their high price and relatively low capacity--at this time capacities greater than 128GB are hard to find.

Sharkoon is now introducing an alternative that allows users to build a Notebook SSD themselves. The Sharkoon Flexi-Drive S2S is an SSD adaptor with the size and connections of a 2.5 inch SATA hard drive. The necessary flash memory is provided by the up to six SDHC cards that can be installed in the enclosure. Users can select the manufacturer, number, chip type (SLC or MLC) and capacity of the memory cards according to their needs. As the installed memory cards use Raid-0, the performance and capacity of all installed cards should be the same. At this time the maximum available SDHC capacity is 32GB, allowing for a maximum of 192GB to be installed in the Flexi-Drive S2S. Testing with HD-Tune, six 8GB SDHC memory cards with Class 6 speed ratings had a read speed of 140 MB/s and a write speed of 115 MB/s.

End customers will find the Sharkoon Flexi-Drive S2S available immediately from authorized retailers for the suggested retail price of 79 euros.