It’s no secret that solid state drives are the future. They’re faster, more durable, and they need less power to operate compared to traditional hard drives. Unfortunately, it’s also no secret that gigabyte for gigabyte, they’re also significantly more expensive than platter-based hard drives. If you’re looking for just enough to raise your PC’s performance, Kingston offers a quick fix by releasing the SSDNow V Series Boot Drive with TRIM support, a 30GB solid state drive that promises to accelerate boot up, shutdown, and application load times.
Storage company Seagate has been rather late to the party, but they’ve just entered the solid-state fray with a new line of SSDs called the Pulsar. Designed for enterprise blade and server applications, the Pulsar drive uses single-level cell (SLC) technology, delivers up to 200GB capacity, and is built in a 2.5-inch small form factor with a SATA3Gb/s interface.
OCZ has just introduced the Colossus, a 3.5-inch SATA II solid state drive designed for high-end gaming, enthusiast and performance desktops. Available in capacities that range from 120GB to 1TB, the Colossus sports a 128MB onboard cache and dual controllers for performance, built-in RAID 0, and up to 260MB/s read and write speeds. The 3.5-inch form factor makes it ready for internal desktop mounting without having to pick up an extra mounting kit. Its downside is that this premium kit comes with a similarly heavy price tag that starts out at $609 for the 120GB model.
A-DATA has just come out with the SSD S596, a 2.5-inch SATA II solid state drive that the company is tagging as the world’s fastest. We can’t be sure if that claim is true, but the S596 is certainly built for performance, listed to deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 250 MB/sec and 180 MB/seconds. The S596 is available in 64, 128 and 256GB capacities, and comes with both a SATA interface as well as a mini USB port for external use.
Kingston has just announced a new 2.5-inch solid state drive along their SSDNow V Series line called the 40GB BootDrive. It comes with a relatively small 40GB storage capacity, but it’s designed to serve a specific role as a system drive for faster OS functions and boot-up times, and should be affordable enough for users to pick up a larger drive for main storage.
The BootDrive is set to ship November 9th in two packages: a $115 basic package that comes with only the drive, and a $130 kit that comes with a 3.5-inch mounting kit for desktops.
