Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced a new value solid state drive (SSD) product line dubbed Super Talent VSSD that brings performance and solid-state technology together at an incredible price.

Super Talent VSSD offers shorter OS bootup time, faster application loading, less system power consumption and a brand new experience the customer can never get from traditional hard-disks. VSSD takes full advantage of the 3Gbps SATA-II bandwidth. The VSSD is capable of sequential read speeds up to 150 MB/sec and sequential write speeds up to 100 MB/sec.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today unveiled the Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD) Series. These are new enthusiast-class SSDs designed for consumers who are seeking unprecedented speed and reliability with the goal of enhancing both their daily computing experience and long-term productivity.

"OCZ's original Vertex Series of solid state drives have become a top seller due to the product's exceptional performance and reliability," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "The new Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SSD lines continue that tradition by incorporating the latest controller and firmware technology. They are an excellent solution for customers who are looking for improved transfer rates and best-in-class input/output per second (IOPS) for a wide range of uses, ranging from entertainment to workstation and tier 2 storage applications. Additionally, this new product line highlights our continuing determination to be the market leader in the high reliability memory and flash-based storage market."

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), announces the Company's plan to enter mass production of the Z-Drive R2 Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the second rendition of the original Z-Drive family. The Z-Drive R2 builds on the existing solution but provides greater performance and design flexibility due to the implementation of a series of optimized NAND modules.

"Our 4th generation PCIe SSD, the Z-Drive R2, tackles the performance challenges facing enterprise IT professionals head-on" said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The Z-Drive R2 is a total solution that delivers exceptional performance over a wide of range of applications due to its superior sequential performance, making it a winner in both high IOP and high-throughput environments. In addition, it is the only bootable and field serviceable PCIe SSD option on the market today, and due to an innovative interchangeable module design, it enables low cost field upgradability and capacity increases giving storage architects unprecedented flexibility."

Corsair, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer and flash memory products, today announced that it has set a new world record score in PC Mark Vantage, using a performance PC powered by eleven Corsair Force Series F200 SSDs in a high bandwidth RAID configuration.

The World Record score of 32,947 was achieved by a Corsair-built system based around the Intel Core i7-980X six-core processor, cooled to sub-zero temperatures. The system was powered by a Corsair HX1000W PSU, 6GB of Corsair Dominator GTX2 memory, and eleven 200GB Force Series F200 SSDs. The recently-announced Force Series SSDs utilize the sophisticated SandForce SF-1200 SSD Processor to deliver unparalleled sequential and random read/write performance.

The TRIM feature introduced by the newest generation of operating systems makes solid state drives more efficient with write performance. However, it does not work when RAID arrays are built with SSDs, until now. The latest version (9.6.0.1014) of Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver enables TRIM for each of the SSDs that are part of a RAID volume, of all RAID types, with the exception for RAID 5. The software can be downloaded from here.

Introduced with Microsoft's Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and with Linux 2.6.33, TRIM is a feature which uses system idle time to physically erase deleted data, since unlike with magnetic hard drives, data can't be simply overwritten on areas with deleted data. Deleted data must be erased before a NAND flash device can store fresh data in its place, and this causes additional write-cycles on setups without TRIM support. TRIM erases deleted data whenever feasible so that lesser number of write cycles are spent when there's data to be actually written in its place, increasing performance.

Active Media Products, a leading manufacturer of SSDs and USB drives, today launched eSATA (external SATA) Flash drives that boast sequential read and write speeds up to 100 and 55 MB/sec respectively, about three times faster than the fastest USB 2.0 flash drives. "There are millions of laptops out there with eSATA ports that can take advantage of this performance." commented Jerry Thomson, VP of Sales at Active Media Products.

Active Media Products builds these drives with either 16GB or 32GB of MLC NAND flash. With no moving parts, they offer the same outstanding reliability as SSDs. "eSATA flash drives are a great storage solution for people who need faster transfer speeds than USB 2.0 can offer, yet still need the portability of a USB flash drive." Mr. Thomson added. Because many computers don't have an eSATA port, these drives also feature a Mini USB 2.0 port, so they can be used in virtually any PC or desktop.

Active Media Products, a leading manufacturer of SSDs and USB drives, today announced a new line of SATA DOM (Disk on Module) drives that deliver substantially faster performance than PATA DOMs in embedded computing applications. They support sequential read and write speeds up to 100MB/sec and 42MB/sec respectively. "We didn't design these as a performance storage solution, yet our SATA DOMs appear to be the fastest DOMs on the market by a long shot. So any embedded applications that need a little more pep from the drive would benefit from these." said Active Media Products VP of Sales, Jerry Thomson.

A DOM, also referred to as an FDM (Flash Disk Module), is a small flash based storage drive that plugs directly into an industry standard port on most motherboards. These nine new SATA DOM products include three different mounting options: two 7-pin tall DOMs and a 22-pin low profile DOM, each offered in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities. Because they are SATA compliant, they can be easily adapted to virtually any application including embedded computers, industrial computers, and networking and military applications. Their industry standard Serial ATA interface and very small dimensions make them easy to design in.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today unveiled the OCZ Onyx SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, an ultra-affordable MultiLevel Cell (MLC)-based solid state storage solution designed for consumers looking to take advantage of flash-based storage technology. Offering a faster and more durable alternative to traditional hard drives in a cost-efficient SSD, the Onyx delivers reliable performance without the high price normally associated with SSD drives.

"As new technologies become available, OCZ continues to expand both our enterprise and consumer SSD lines, and one of our goals is to make SSDs more affordable to end-users. Our new Onyx series SSD does exactly that and is a perfect solution for netbooks, laptops, or home desktop PCs," commented Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "Designed to offer the best of both worlds, the new OCZ Onyx SSD delivers the speed and reliability of solid state storage to mainstream consumers at an aggressive price point that makes the technology more accessible to customers who want to take advantage of all the benefits of the SSDs without incurring the high cost normally associated with the solution."

Other World Computing, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today its OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini is the first 2.5" 1TB "Quad Interface" bus powered portable storage solution on the market and available for immediate ordering with 10 models priced from $119.99. Featuring a "Quad Interface" of FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0, and eSATA interface connectivity for data transfer speeds up to 300MB/s, the fanless Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini delivers high performance storage/backup to Mac or PC users in a portable, brushed aluminum, no AC adapter required Plug and Play footprint.In addition to the new 1TB model, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini is available in nine other "Quad Interface" models offering a variety of speed, capacity, and drive type options:

Active Media Products, manufacturer of SSDs and endangered species USB drives, today released new 32GB and 64GB 1.8-inch PATA ZIF SSDs that support read speeds up to 100MB/sec and, thanks to their DRAM cache, reach write speeds up to 85MB/sec. These new Turbo ZIF SSDs are available now through Amazon.

With no moving parts, SaberTooth ZT is rugged enough for use in industrial, embedded and network computing applications where a very compact yet high speed storage solution is needed. Its PATA / IDE ZIF interface supports PIO mode 4 and UDMA mode 6. It also supports SMART commands. The ZT includes excellent ECC, wear leveling and bad block management technologies that improve reliability and extend endurance. These drives have the same physical dimensions as industry standard 1.8-inch HDDs, measuring only 2.8 x 2.1 x 0.2 inches (71 x 54 x 5 mm), making them an easy plug-in replacement in many laptops and netbooks.

G.Skill showed off its newest line of solid state drives under the Phoenix series, at CeBIT. The SSDs come in capacities of 50 GB, 100 GB, and 200 GB, and in the 2.5" form-factor with SATA 3 Gb/s interface. Its USP is the SandForce SF-1200 SSD controller. With its MLC NAND chips, the controller can churn out transfer speeds of 200 MB/s read, and 141 MB/s write. When used with Windows 7 operating system, the SSDs offer TRIM support, a feature which uses idle time to erase deleted data which could otherwise consume many write cycles, also working towards reducing data fragmentation. The company will release these drives to the market soon.

Corsair, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer and flash memory products, today announced the Force Series of SSDs, providing outstanding SATA 3 Gb/s performance based on innovative SSD Processor technology from SandForce Inc.

By utilizing the state-of-the-art SandForce SF-1200 SSD processor combined with MLC flash memory, the Corsair Force Series of solid-state drives deliver outstanding performance figures of up to 280 MB/sec read and 260 MB/sec write. In addition, these drives feature class-leading random read/write performance. The highly innovative SandForce DuraClass Technology also delivers unparalleled write endurance and error correction features.

We dropped by the G.Skill booth and they are showing off a few systems with their memory in it. While they have seven different configurations to display, only three of them are out each day, so they are rotated around throughout the show. All of them are interesting, but some more than others. First off there is a dual channel kit running at 2500 MHz in combination with an Asus P55 board and Intel i7-860 CPU. This memory is just for show and will not be sold in retail. Then there is a high capacity kit with six modules running at 2000 MHz with CL6 on an Asus X58 board, while the last system is very interesting as well, with 1600 MHz memory and a set CAS latency of 5-8-5. We did not get pictures of their 24 GB kits up and running, as they were not on that day. G.Skill is also displaying their Phoenix Sandforce SF-1200 based SSD.

Like most other SSD manufacturers, Mushkin has added a SandForce based SSD to their lineup which promises to deliver leading performance at a better pricing than their existing products. In terms of capacities you will have a choice from 64 to 256 GB without exact pricing still unknown. As controller the SandForce SF-1200 is used, Mushkin is also working on a SF-1500 "enterprise" controller based drive, which mainly adds more IOPS to the write performance at the same 260 MB/s write speeds.

WD today announced that the company is shipping its new high performance WD SiliconDrive N1x 2.5-inch solid state drive (SSD) family. The new SSDs feature fast read/write speeds in high capacities and are designed for embedded system OEM applications that require superior performance, high reliability and long product life. The single-level cell (SLC) -based WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs are an ideal storage solution for a wide range of embedded system OEM applications in growing markets such as automotive and transportation, data center, communications infrastructure, video surveillance and industrial automation. The new WD SiliconDrive N1x family of products complements the recently announced multi-level cell (MLC) -based WD SiliconEdge Blue SSDs, which offer a cost-effective alternative for less-demanding OEM applications while still providing high read/write speeds and high random write IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) performance.

WD SiliconDrive N1x SSD products feature a native SATA 3.0 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface with target read speeds up to 240 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write transfer rates up to 140 MB/s in capacities up to 128 gigabytes (GB). WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs deliver maximum drive endurance and high sustained sequential write speeds to satisfy the 24/7 operational requirements in critical OEM applications. The WD SiliconDrive N1x products also feature WD's innovative Speed Assurance technology for consistent read/write performance.

The guys at patriot have an interesting demo up and running. They managed to build the worlds fastest PC, using five LSI controllers to connect forty SSDs to them. The system manages a sustained 155,000 IOPS/s This may not give you and idea about the actual speed, but we were given a great example. Ripping a Blu-Ray takes 2-3 hours on a good PC. It takes a mere 0.9 seconds on this one. Yes, less than "one Mississippi". For all of you wanting to build a system like this, be prepared to spend around 60,000 US Dollars on it.

Fast, stable and lightweight, the solid state disk (SSD) has successfully replaced conventional mechanical hard drives to become the product with the most potential in 2010. After the great market success of the Xtreem-G1 SSD last year, Team Group Inc has launched technological cooperation with the US-based SSD pioneer Sandforce to introduce the faster and more reliable Xtreem-S1 SSD tailored for power users and will display it for the first time at CeBIT 2010.

In addition to continuing the absolute silence, light weight, low power consumption and shock resistance of the Xtreem-G1 SSD, the Xtreem-S1 SSD is equipped with the Sandforce processor, the fastest SSD solution in the industry, to fully exploit the extremes of the cost and performance MLC chip and thereby enhance the read/write speed of the Xtreem-S1 SSD. Besides delivering a reading speed of 270MB/sec and a writing speed of 260MB/s, which is 10 times faster than ordinary IDE hard drives (taking 1 second to accomplish tasks that used to be done in 10 seconds), the Xtreem-S1 SSD is 2 times faster than ordinary SSDs, making it the world's fastest SSD! Also, it supports SMART and the US AES-128 encryption specifications to provide real-time SSD health diagnostics and safeguard important data for users.

Corsair, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer and flash memory products, today announced the addition of the Reactor Series and Nova Series to its family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Both the Nova Series and Reactor Series provide the performance benefits of solid-state technology at an attractive cost per gigabyte.

The Reactor Series, including 60GB and 120GB drive capacities, is built using the new JMicron JMF612 controller. This second-generation controller from JMicron incorporates 128MB of DDR2 cache memory for stutter-free performance. The 120GB Reactor Series SSD delivers speeds of up to 250MB/s read and 170MB/s write, while the 60GB Reactor Series SSD features speeds up to 250MB/s read and 110 MB/s write.

One of the industry's first solid state drives that use the new SATA 6 Gb/s interface - probably the only devices that can truly benefit from its bandwidth, the Crucial RealSSD C300 series has gone on sale, on the company's online store. The 128 GB variant (CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1) is priced at US $499.99, while the 256 GB one (CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1) goes for $799.99. Backed by expertise from IM Flash Technologies, the RealSSD C300 high-speed Synchronous NAND chips to achieve read speeds of 355 MB/s, something the device cannot achieve over SATA 3 Gb/s taking its natural bandwidth and protocol overhead into account.

Providing SATA 6 Gb/s controllers is a growing trend among motherboard manufacturers with upper mid-range and high-end motherboards. Many of these use Marvell 88SE9123-NAA2, a two-port controller that uses a single PCI-Express 2.0 lane for system interface. AMD's new SB800 series southbridge chips that will feature in motherboards with AMD 8-series chipset, which release next month, have native SATA 6 Gb/s support. This is where RealSSD finds its support base.

RaidSonic is ready with three new external storage solutions that make use of USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface, in its Icy Box series. To begin with, the Icy Box IB-230StU3 is a compact enclosure that makes for a portable, pocketable solution that can house a single 2.5 inch SATA HDD or SSD. It gets a healthy dose of brushed metal and aluminum overalls that keep it light and sturdy. It uses USB 3.0, and is backwards compatible with USB 2.0. It will ship next month for 27 EUR a piece.

Next up, is the Icy Box IB-330StU3 enclosure, which although portable, is fit for the desktop. It can house a single 3.5" HDD or SSD. It has silicone inserts for noise dampening. Again, it uses USB 3.0 for connectivity. This one is slated for an April 2010 release, and will be priced at 39 EUR.

Lastly, there's the Icy Box IB-RD4320StU3-B desktop enclosure. It can house two 3.5" SATA drives with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and JBOD support, and USB 3.0 interface to let you make use of the transfer speeds. Its release date and price are not known at the moment.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), has unveiled the highly anticipated Vertex Limited Edition (LE). Based on a cutting-edge new architecture, OCZ's Vertex LE is the epitome of innovation for power users seeking to integrate a new class of SSD in their Windows-based systems. For early adopters, a Vertex LE drive can take a high-end computing experience to the next level. OCZ will offer Vertex LE through its extensive network of distribution partners over the next few weeks.

"OCZ has an excellent reputation as a leader in solid state drives, and as new technologies become available, we are continually expanding our solution portfolio to bring enhanced performance benefits to the complete spectrum of our client's applications," commented Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The new Vertex Limited Edition SSD is our fastest, multi-level cell (MLC), performance-based drive yet and delivers both exceptional speed and reliability for customers demanding a superior storage solution including intensive applications such as audio/video editing, mobile computing, and even use in workstations."

Buffalo Technology introduced its newest portable solid state drive, the MicroStation SHD-PEU2 series. These portable SSDs come in 32 GB and 64 GB capacities, measure 57 x 13 x 98 mm, and connect to the host using USB 2.0 interface. The enclosure itself has a piano-black surface. The drive's software bundle includes Memeo Autosync and Secure Lock Ware data synchronization and protection software.

"The SSD technology incorporated into Buffalo's latest drive is truly innovative and has allowed us to combine style and portability with efficiency and reliability, making it a pleasure to use," said Paul Hudson, Northern European Sales Director, Buffalo Technology. "Still not a mainstream consumer product, the MicroStation SSD portable drive is ideal for early adopters," he added. Backed with a two-year warranty, the MicroStation SSDs will reach stores later this month, with prices starting at 115 EUR.

Active Media Products, manufacturer of SSDs and innovative USB drives, today launched the new Aviator-2 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external 2.5-inch SSDs, which offer a 400% performance gain compared to USB 2.0 external HDDs.

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 supports transfer speeds up to 4.8Gbits/sec -- ten times faster than USB 2.0. Aviator-2 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external SSDs take advantage of USB 3.0's massive bandwidth, delivering unprecedented performance in a mobile flash storage device. Measuring just over 3 x 5 inches, the Aviator-2 is slim enough to slip into a jacket pocket.

Transcend Information, Inc., a global leader in storage and multimedia products, today announced a radical redesign of its 2.5-inch solid state drives (SSD). The updated SSDs now offer a superior outer casing and additional tamper-resistant features, making them the most reliable and secure alternatives to conventional hard disk drives.

Designed to deliver the highest level of quality, the new versions of Transcend's 2.5-inch SATA and IDE Solid State Drives provide customers with extra peace of mind, incorporating innovative tamper-resistant features, including an anti-counterfeit Transcend logo security hologram and tamper-evident seals. These new features assure the end-user receives a 100% genuine Transcend product that has never been tampered with or opened by unauthorized third parties or other customers, thus further guaranteeing the SSDs' authenticity and quality.

LaCie today announced the Rugged eSATA, the first mobile external hard drive on the market that features a Power eSATA interface. The Rugged eSATA offers major storage capacity and a cost advantage over eSATA SSD solutions, and is one of the only portable, bus-powered eSATA solutions on the market.

Bus-powered when connected to a USB-eSATA combo port, the LaCie Rugged eSATA combines superior transfer speeds of up to 90MB/s in a truly mobile form. The USB-eSATA combo interface, also known as Power eSATA, features a slightly different connector than eSATA and is frequently found on late-model laptops. The drive is also compatible with standard eSATA ports when the included USB power-sharing cable is connected.