SSDs
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
Samsung's PM830 Coming To Ultrabooks in 2012
We've seen what Samsungs latest SSD controller can do in notebooks, and now they're ready to share the love with Ultrabooks. The latest PM830 variants come in the mSATA...
4 by Jason Inofuentes on 12/2/2011The OCZ Octane Review (512GB)
I have to hand it to OCZ's CEO, Ryan Petersen, I never thought he'd turn the company around in the way that he did. When I first met Ryan...
75 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/23/2011OCZ's Octane: Initial Performance Results
Last month OCZ finally unveiled the fruits of its Indilinx acquisition: the OCZ Octane SSD. Based on the Indilinx Everest platform, the Octane was to be OCZ's more affordable...
50 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/22/2011Intel to Add TRIM Support for RAID 0
Intel's release notes for Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 11.5 Alpha version reveal that they have plans to add TRIM support for RAID 0 arrays in the next version of...
31 by Kristian Vättö on 11/21/2011Newegg Giving A 15% Discount on Any OCZ SSD
Update: Apparently, the sale was only valid for one day (November 16th), meaning that the coupon code no longer works. Newegg is having a sale and they are giving a...
37 by Kristian Vättö on 11/16/2011Kingston Releases SSDNow V200 Series
Kingston has released a new SSD lineup named as SSDNow V200. This series comes in 2.5" form factor and is the successor of V100 series, which was released a...
12 by Kristian Vättö on 11/10/2011Corsair Gives Marvell Another Try With Performance Pro SSD
Corsair is no stranger to Marvell based SSDs. Prior to its current flagship Force 3 and Force GT (SF-2281 based) SSDs, Corsair released the Performance 3 Series using Marvell...
10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/10/2011OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G Review: A Fast MacBook Air SSD Upgrade
I've written previously about the SSD lottery you play when you buy a new MacBook Air. As with many commodity components, Apple sources its SSDs from two sources. For...
40 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011LaCie Little Big Disk (240GB SSD) Review
A week ago we published our review of the first sub-$1000 Thunderbolt drive enclosure: LaCie's Little Big Disk. Armed with a pair of 2.5" hard drives, the Little Big...
24 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/8/2011The LSI SandForce Acquisition: Anand's Thoughts
I'd almost given up hope that someone would acquire SandForce. After taking so long to fix the infamous BSOD issue and our own interests beginning to shift away to...
22 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/2/2011LSI Announces Agreement to Acquire SandForce
For much of the past year I've been hearing SandForce wanted to be bought. The price? $300M - $400M. A bit too rich for OCZ's blood, but a figure...
27 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/26/2011OCZ's Octane SSD: Indilinx Everest, Up to 1TB in a Consumer Drive
In March, OCZ signed a definitive agreement to acquire Indilinx, the SSD controller company that pretty much dominated the value segment in 2009 before Intel got aggressive on pricing...
58 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/20/2011SandForce Identifies Firmware Bug Causing BSOD Issue, Fix Available Today
After months of end user complaints, SandForce has finally duplicated, verified and provided a fix for the infamous BSOD/disconnect issue that affected SF-2200 based SSDs. The root cause is...
31 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/17/2011The Intel SSD 710 (200GB) Review
When Intel entered the SSD market one of its declared goals was to bring the technology into the mainstream. The goal was so important to Intel that its consumer...
69 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/30/2011OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88 (1.6TB PCIe SSD) Review
In our last SandForce SSD roundup I talked about how undesirable the consumer SSD market is, at least for those companies who don't produce their own controllers and/or NAND...
58 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/27/2011The Samsung SSD 830 Review
Samsung is a dangerous competitor in the SSD space. Not only does it make its own controller, DRAM and NAND, but it also has an incredible track record in...
100 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/24/2011OCZ Releases Synapse SSD for Caching
OCZ has released a new series of SSDs called Synapse Cache today. This announcement is a bit different from normal SSD announcements since OCZ will be bundling Dataplex caching...
37 by Kristian Vättö on 9/21/2011OWC Releases 6Gb/s SSD Upgrades for 2011 MacBook Air
OWC has released SSD upgrades suitable for Apple's MacBook Air (our 2011 review). The SSDs are branded as Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G and come in capacities of 120GB...
8 by Kristian Vättö on 9/16/2011Intel Discloses Cherryville & Hawley Creek SSDs: Intel's Fastest SSD in Q4
In addition to the SSD 710 series, Intel also disclosed two more SSDs codenamed: Cherryville and Hawley Creek. Cherryville is Intel's next 6Gbps SATA drive, replacing the SSD 510...
11 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/14/2011Intel Officially Announces SSD 710 Series for the Enterprise
Intel just announced its latest SSD: the enterprise focused Intel SSD 710 series. The specs don't deviate very far from what we published a couple of months ago. The...
5 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/14/2011