Posted 10/07/09 at 08:15:28 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Super Talent and Toshiba today announced a new range of co-branded SSDs called the UltraDrive DX. The official press release was largely dedicated to UltraDrive DX’s twin-layer encryption. It features password encryption as its first line of defense and hardware data randomization technology as the second.

Data randomization occurs with every write to the drive but still fails to prevent the drive from marching at sequential read speeds of up to 230 MB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 180 MB/sec.

“As the first Toshiba co-branded SSD on the market, UltraDrive DX features a Toshiba controller and Toshiba’s MLC NAND flash memories. The DX provides superb security and reliability features combined with cutting edge performance in both read and write speeds,” said Joe James, director of marketing at Super Talent. 

Hit the jump for pricing details.

Read More

Posted 09/17/09 at 12:15:25 PM by Paul Lilly

TGDaily has found out that Super Talent plans to start shipping its first PCI Express RAIDDrive SSDs in early October, so you may want to hang on for a few more weeks if you're currently planning a dream machine build. Why is that? Because these purportedly stupid-fast drives are being designed to thrash the throughput bottleneck in your PC's storage subsystem and leave the SATA bus bandwidth limitation in the dust.

"The PCIe Gen. 2.0 x8 interface used by RAIDDrive SSDs supports 4GB/s bandwidth, more than ten times that of the SATA-II 3Gbps bus, and five times greater than the not yet available SATA-III bus," a Super Talent spokesperson told TGDaily. "Currently, there is no other way to achieve the same performance, except via Fusio-IO - but that costs approximately $10,000 for equivalent speeds."

Super Talent, meanwhile, is targeting a price point below $1,000 in hopes of appealing to both gamers and enterprise users, the spokesperson added. Three versions will be made available, including:

• RAIDDrive GS: Aimed at power users and gamers, supports RAID 0 or 5, uses MLC flash, and available in capacities up to 2TB
• RAIDDrive ES: For enterprise servers, supports RAID 0 or 5, fits in a 3U rack mount chassis, uses SLC flash, and available in capacities up to 1TB
• RAIDDrive WS: Geared towards workstation users, supports RAID 0 or 5, uses SLC flash, available in capacities up to 1TB

Read More

Posted 07/07/09 at 01:55:11 PM by Paul Lilly

You probably can't taste the rainbow by popping one of Super Talent's new Pico Mini USB drives into your mouth like you can with Skittles, but the new drives are every bit as colorful.

Like the Pico drives, the Pico Mini are built using COB technology, which Super Talent says makes it possible to stuff "impressive Flash capacities into extremely small packages." And small they are, measuring just 32 x 15 x3  mm, or 1.3 x 0.6 x 0.1 inches when shunning the metric system.

More than just aesthetic appeal, the color designates the capacity of the new drives:

• 2GB, 150X (Orchid Pink)
• 4GB, 200X (Lime Green)
• 8GB, 200X (Sky Blue)
• 16GB, 200X (Classic Black)

Read More

Posted 06/19/09 at 02:24:30 PM by Paul Lilly

SSD technology continues to mature, both in price per gigabyte and performance. On the latter front, Super Talent's new MasterDrive SX SSDs come equipped with 128MB DRAM of cache, which the company claims delivers "exceptional" write speeds.

"We developed the MasterDrive SX series to offer extreme reliability at an aggressive price point that makes sense for mobile professionals and enthusiasts. Moreover, these drives boast power efficiency and write speeds that few SSDs can match," said Super Talent Director of Marketing Joe James.

Available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities, the latter two sport 220MB/s and 200MB/s read and sequential write speeds, respectively (the 64GB checks in with 200MB/s and 120MB/s read and write speeds), while all three models sip just half a watt of power in read mode and 0.15W while idle.

No MSRP information has yet been made available, but street pricing for the 64GB and 128GB have currently settled in at around $173 and $336, respectively. No word yet on availability for the 256GB model.

Read More

Posted 04/09/09 at 05:25:34 PM by Andy Salisbury

While several companies have announced 512GB SSDs, Super Talent is living up to their name and shipping out the first of their massive SSDs starting today.

Super Talent is now offering a new series of MasterDrive RX SSDs, three of the models featuring Multi-Level Cell (MLC) chips, and two models with faster, and more reliable Single-Level Cell (SLC) chips. The one we’re worried about (the 512GB) comes with the MLC chips, and sports a sequential read speed of 230 MB/sec and a sequential write speed of 160MB/sec.

If you’ve got some money to spend on storage, you can pick up one of these drives now for a cool $1,500! Just be ready to explain to your wife why you sold her car.

Read More

Posted 04/01/09 at 06:34:37 PM by Andy Salisbury

Super Talent recently announced their latest SSD development with a new patented product called the RAIDDrive. This fancy new piece of tech promises to increase the performance and capacity that slot based storage solutions currently offer, by boosting the ceiling up to 2TB.

The RAIDDrive is currently in three different flavors: the RAIDDrive ES, the RAIDDrive WS and the RAIDDrive GS. The ES is aimed at enterprise servers that will perform intensive applications, such as database transaction processing, business intelligence and virtualization. The WS is directed at workstation use for animation, video editing, oil/gas exploration and CAD. The GS is meant for gamers looking for a (much) faster IO subsystem.

All of these drives connect through PCI-E 2.0 x8, and deliver read speeds of up to 1.2GB/s, and sequential write speeds of up to 1.3GB/s. No word yet on pricing or availability, but as with the last drive of this caliber, chances are good that it’ll cost about as much as a car. No joke.

Read More

Posted 01/29/09 at 10:20:46 AM by Paul Lilly

Super Talent this week released an SSD upgrade intended for the Asus S101 Eee PC. The flash storage comes embedded on a SATA mini-PCIe board and served up in 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB capacities. All three models share the same read and write speeds -- up to 90MB/s and 55MB/s respectively -- offering modest performance.

"You can never have enough storage space," noted Joe James, Super Talent's director of marketing. "This is sure to be a popular upgrade for the S101."

And it probably will be, given that the interface should work with any netbok offering mini-PCIe storage expansion. Super Talent says all three models are shipping now, with the 64GB model retailing for approximately $169.

Read More

Posted 10/08/08 at 03:25:47 PM by Paul Lilly

Despite all the recent buzz surrounding solid state storage (SSD), it's the clear the technology still has a ways to go before challenging mechanical hard drives in performance superiority. The latest issue of Maximum PC (November 2008, pg. 40) pits several different SSDs against Western Digital's Velociraptor and Samsung's 1TB HD103UJ, and for the most part, the represented SSDs showed they're more suitable for notebooks than a desktop environment. And that's exactly the sector Super Talent is targeting with its newest batch of flash media.

Super Talent announced three new mini PCI-E SSDs it says have been designed specifically for the Asus Eee PC. The three drives - 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB - each boast maximum read and write speeds of 40MB/s and 15MB/s.

"It's a natural extension of our SSD product range to offer SSDs for popular netbook brands," said Super Talent director of marketing Joe James in a press release. "Solid state storage is ideal for entry level mobile PCs."

Super Talent says the new lineup will go in mass product next month with expected street pricing for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models at $53, $79, and $149 respectively.

Read More