Posted 02/20/09 at 02:30:10 PM by Paul Lilly

According to a report published by review site PCPerspective, Intel's advanced sector remapping and wear-leveling algorithm used in the company's X25-M SSD is causing the drive to suffer serious performance degradation over time. In some cases, the site noted reads had been reduced to a pokey 22MB/s. The only solution PCPerspective could come up with to restore the once speedy SSD back to its original performance level was to use a dated version of HDDErase.

Not so fast, says Intel in response to PCPerspctive's claim that the X25-M had become, well, not so fast. Despite the review site having found a drop in performance in all three of its SSDs, Intel claims it has not seen the same type of degradation in its own labs.

"Our labs currently have not been able to duplicate these results," Intel said. "In our estimation, the synthetic workloads they use to stress the drive are not reflective of real world use. Similarly, the benchmarks they used to evaluate performance do not represent what a PC user experiences."

Intel went on to say that it's completely normal for a PC's drive, whether it be an HDD or SSD, to exhibit reduced performance when filled up, but that PCPerspective's results are higher than what Intel would generally expect. Hence the reason why Intel questions the methodology that was used.

Any SSD owners, Intel-brand or otherwise, notice any performance slowdowns over time? Hit the jump and let us know what your experience has been.

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Posted 01/12/09 at 11:10:00 AM by Paul Lilly

No matter how fast or reliable solid state drives become, there will be some who will continue to scoff at the price per gigabyte ratio, particularly as SSDs breach the 256GB mark. That could change if we start to see significant capacity increases in upcoming SSDs, such as the 1TB SSD Pure Silicon was showing off at CES.

Hold your excitement, however, as there's a major rub. While a 1TB SSD sounds like a tantalizing option, pureSilicon doesn't have you, the consumer, in mind. Instead, when the Nitro drives become available in Q3 2009, they will be used for industrial applications, including military, medical, and other such uses. Drats!

Even still, if pureSilicon paves the way to 1TB, it's likely other manufacturers would soon follow. And when they do, it doesn't appear performance will have to be sacrificed to reach higher capacities. The company rates its entire Nitro line, including the 1TB model, at 240MB/s and 215MB/s sustained read and write speeds, respectively, placing it in line with higher performing consumer SSDs.

No word yet on what the Nitro drives will cost.

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Posted 01/02/09 at 12:55:23 AM by Paul Lilly

Do you ever find yourself wondering what to do with those spare SSDs you have lying around? Neither do we, but A-DATA's new XPG Dual SSD 3.5" RAID Enclosure makes a fairly compelling pitch to go out and buy a pair of the pricey drives. Or at least put to use those spare HDDs cluttering your PC room, which is a far more likely scenario.

Whether you want to roll with a pair of SSDs or HDDs, A-DATA's RAID enclosure will accommodate both. By adjusting the hardware DIP switch on the back, users can opt to run each drive independently or in tandem with seven different RAID modes to choose from, including JPOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, Span, SAFE33, SAFE50, or GUI.

A-DATA's multi-purpose enclosure comes with a one-button backup utility and can be used as either an internal or external unit with support for both SATA and USB. The enclosure will also be offered without the built-in RAID function.

Both versions are expected to ship by the end of Q1 2009, and according to TomsHardware, will run roughly $30 for the non-RAID version and $60 with built-in RAID.

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