VR-Zone

Even though SSDs are a relatively new technology and market penetration is not yet extensive, demand from performance-crazed enthusiasts has led several of the major manufacturers to release products designed for maximum performance regardless of their high cost. Today we will examine OCZ’s currently fastest 2.5” SSD offering, the Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB drive. As the name suggests, this disk has been designed and tuned to deliver the best possible IOPS performance which current controllers and flash memory technologies allow. How well it can perform in both synthetic benchmarks and real-world applications? We will find out in this review.

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The SSD market is continuously growing, yet high capacity devices will most likely not be affordable by the bulk of consumers for several years to come. Even after the Thailand catastrophe which increased mechanical drive prices by as much as 300%, high capacity SSDs were far too expensive to be competitive. Many manufacturers are working on solutions to improve hard disk drive performance without having to use a large capacity SSD; Intel introduced the SRT (Smart Response Technology) n their Z68 chipset, Seagate designed hybrid mechanical drives with a small SSD cache installed and OCZ introduced various solutions, the most popular being a hybrid PCI-E 1TB drive. OCZ however also introduced another very interesting product, an SSD baptized “Synapse”, which has been designed to be used as a plug & play caching solution. OCZ promises SSD speeds while using virtually any mechanical HDD of up to 2TB capacity as a primary system disk. Sounds too good to be true? We will find out in this review.

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Kingston showed off some of its latest creations alongside the ongoing International CES event, in Las Vegas. Visiting journalists were shown a variety of products from Kingston's PC memory and SSD portfolios.

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As notebooks and even more so Ultrabooks are getting slimmer, so are the needs for slimmer storage drives and Memoright has announced that it has launched a slimmed down version of its FTM Plus series of SSDs called the FTM Plus Slim. Ok, so the name doesn't exactly make sense, but its new 7mm thick SSD will allow for a wide range of notebooks and at least some Ultrabooks to be upgraded after purchase.

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With Intel's Ivy Bridge based Ultrabooks and a fair few other Ivy Bridge notebooks and desktops expected to offer Thunderbolt connectivity – the first time for computers no from Apple – it looks like several companies are getting interested in the still relatively new, high-speed interface. OCZ has shown off its upcoming external SSD with Thunderbolt interface at CES, as well as its new Indilinx Everest 2 SSD controller.

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SSD sales are expected to reach a record high this year, following on from a phenomenal year of growth in 2011, according to a study by the International Data Corporation (IDC).

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OCZ is yet another company which started off as a computer RAM manufacturer and later diversified into other areas of the market. Nowadays OCZ is a renowned manufacturer of computer RAM, power supply units, solid state disk drives and more. OCZ however is one of the very few companies which offer mSATA SSD drives for high end notebooks and embedded systems. Today we are going to have a look at the Nocti 60GB SSD, a mSATA device designed mostly for high end notebooks and desktop systems, the motherboards of which come with an available mSATA slot.

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After the Thailand catastrophe which tripled the prices of mechanical drives, solid state drives became a much more appealing option for many users; especially for performance-crazed enthusiasts. It also increased the sales of high performance and capacity drives, even though the bulk of the sales still rely on low capacity, cost effective products. Power users require not only a very fast device but sometimes also a device large enough to store their data and with proven reliability, with storage becoming a critical issue particularly when using notebook computers which are limited to a single internal 2.5” drive. This is where Corsair came in with the release of the Performance Pro series 256GB drive, a product designed to offer high performance, adequate capacity and maximum reliability to power and professional users.

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Is it just us or are we seeing nearly a new SSD for hard drive caching on a daily basis now? Well, no matter, Crucial has announced its entry into the SSD caching business with a new drive that the company calls the Adrenaline which in essence is a Crucial m4 SSD, a bracket and some caching software, of which the latter makes this an interesting offer.

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We seem to be living in the age of power frugality when it comes to mobile computing devices and although this is by no means a bad thing in most cases, we're starting to wonder if the technology companies aren't looking in the wrong direction sometimes. Now the SATA-IO is the latest organization to join with a new power saving feature called DevSleep which is meant to help reduce the power of SATA devices.

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Being in the retail SSD market isn't a money maker and OCZ has been trying to work its way into the OEM market space for some time. Now the company has announced a new mSATA SSD under its Deneva 2 brand that the company is targeting towards Ultrabooks for some Intel Smart Response caching action.

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Corsair started off as one of the biggest RAM manufacturers but today the company has diversified into several other critical segments of the market. Lately the company has been a very big player in the SSD segment of the technology market, offering a very wide range of products and with ever increasing sales; especially after the Thailand catastrophe which tripled the prices of mechanical drives. A month ago we reviewed the fastest consumer SSD drive Corsair currently produces, the Force GT 180GB drive. Today we are going to thoroughly test and review the 90GB version of the considerably cheaper Force 3 mainstream series the company offers, the Force 3 90GB SSD, a product primarily designed to be used as a stand-alone very fast OS/boot drive.

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Solid state drives (SSDs) are dropping in price much faster than hard disk drives (HDD), according to figures released by website uptime monitoring firm Pingdom.

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If all goes well, then we can look forward to much larger SSDs come the second half of next year as Intel and Micron has announced that their joint venture IM Flash Technologies will be launching 128Gbit NAND flash sometime in the second half of next year. In the meantime, we'll have to make do with IMFT's 20nm 64Gbit NAND flash which the two companies announced has gone into mass production.

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Samsung has been a long time OEM/ODM of notebook SSD's, least not to Apple, but not the company has announced that it's about to break into the Ultrabook market with its new PM830 series of mSATA SSD's. The company also has a model for hard drive caching, suitable for Ultrabooks, notebooks and desktops.

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