Posted 10/29/09 at 07:09:09 PM by Jason Barry

HighPoint Technologies unveiled the Rocket 600 series host adapter. The first of its kind it supports SATA 6Gb/s over PCI-Express 2.0

The Rocket 600 series cards boast 6Gb/s performance for two drives offering 500MB/s throughput. It uses standard SATA cables and connectors and features two types of backwards compatibility. First, it supports PCI-Express 1.0 as well as SATA 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s devices. Driver support was written in compliance with the AHCI standard so driver support is native to most operating systems.

The new series features two cards: the Rocket 620 and Rocket 622. The more expensive ($79.99) Rocket 622 offers eSATA ports instead of the SATA connectors on the $69.99 Rocket 620. The new adapters will be available late October into early November.

Data sheet and specifications can be found on the HighPoint site.

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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.

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Posted 09/21/09 at 05:29:22 PM by Jason Barry

The SATA International Organization (SATA-IO) is planning to introduce the latest SATA connector at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF).  The new platform, named mini-SATA (mSATA), is roughly the size of a business card and is similar in size to the PCI Express Controller.

Primarily aimed at manufacturers, the mSATA connector was designed for smaller storage solutions, such as 32 to 64GB and meant to supplement primary storage.   The folks at SATA-IO anticipate that the new module will allow systems makers to provide more creative storage solutions such as dedicated OS or application drives.

Toshiba and SanDisk also announced they would be debuting mSATA modules in various storage sizes at their booths at IDF.  Overall, the new platform will create smaller netbooks and mobile products and "Smaller is always better,” says Steve Duplessi, tech analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

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Posted 09/15/09 at 04:25:35 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

I am planning on building a new video-editing system and have never configured SATA devices before.

Does the SATA architecture work in a similar fashion as IDE (i.e., master and slave devices per channel) or are the ports single-homed? I was planning on building a system with RAID 1 OS drives, a separate swap file drive, and RAID 1 data drives. That would use up five ports if they are single-homed. Which brings me to my second question: Is there a benefit to having SATA optical drives or should I put them on the IDE channels?

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Posted 05/28/09 at 05:31:05 PM by Andy Salisbury

While the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) introduced the SATA Revision 3.0 specification in August of last year, they’ve just now completed and released it.

SATA 3.0 will double transfer speeds to 6Gbps, and will be fully backwards compatible with earlier versions of SATA. And, for those of you looking forward, you’ll enjoy the new streaming commands for isochronous data transfers between audio and video applications, and the Low Insertion Force (LIF) connector for smaller 1.8-inch drives.

It’s expected that there will be demonstrations of SATA 3.0 at Computex, but there’s no real word on how long it’ll take for this technology to make its way to the masses.

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Posted 04/26/09 at 05:18:30 AM by Justin Kerr

SSD prices have been improving steadily over the past year, but they are still priced out of reach for the average user in any type of practical capacity. That being said, our readers are Maximum right? So for those of you who have been considering SSD’s, you might want to hold out just a bit longer.

The newest entrant into the category comes from OCZ who is preparing to launch their new solid state drive, and the specs are pretty impressive. The new “Z-Drive” will bypass SATA bottlenecks by hooking directly onto a spare PCIe slot. The architecture of the drive has also clearly been tuned for performance with the four Vertex controllers being configured in a four-way RAID 0.

On paper this drive is capable of read speeds up to 510MB/sec, and write speeds to match idling out around 480MB/sec. Of course we won’t be able to verify these speeds until we get one in the lab, but if true, it could be one of the fastest consumer drives to date. The initial launch will see three different capacities made available, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. Pricing hasn’t been released just yet, but as with any new cutting edge SSD, expect it to cost more than most PCs.

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Posted 01/20/09 at 05:24:40 PM by Mark Edward Soper

As our own Paul Lilly's been telling us recently, many Seagate hard disks have been afflicted by firmware woes. Unfortunately, Seagate's first attempt to fix the problem wound up turning working drives into high-tech bricks.

As it turns out, both Seagate and Maxtor-brand SATA drives can be affected by firmware problems. So, how can you find out exactly which models may be on the naughty list and when Seagate has a firmware fix that's ready for prime time? Join us after the jump for details.

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Posted 08/18/08 at 07:39:32 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Confused by terms like SATA II, SATA Gen 2, and SATA 3Gb/s? You're not alone. With today's release  (link in PDF format) of the PHY (physical layer) portion of the forthcoming SATA revision 3.0 specification (details here), SATA-IO, the trade association responsible for defining Serial ATA specifications, is trying hard to stomp out the many misidentifications of SATA specifications and features over the years.

SATA revision 3.0 doubles the speed of the current 3Gb/s version, reaching transfer speeds of 6Gb/s. So, what should you call the newest member of the SATA specifications family? According to the SATA Naming Guidelines, here's what works: 

• The first reference in a document should be: "Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA Revision 3.0." Additional references can be to either "SATA Revision 3.0" or "SATA 6Gb/s."

To find out how SATA-IO is also working to clear up confusion for current technologies, join us after the jump.

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