solid-state drive

The Patriot Memory Pyro solid-state drive (SSD) is the "budget" version of the Patriot Wildfire that was reviewed a few months ago.

While costing some 90 cents per gigabyte less than the Wildfire, the Pyro is still one of the most expensive SATA 6Gbps SSDs on the market, with the 120GB version being priced at around $200 and the 240GB version at around $430.

The drive's data transfer speeds were relatively slow compared with those of other SSDs of the same standard, including the Wildfire.… Read more

Toshiba announced today the updated version of its Canvio portable drive, which now comes with USB 3.0 and cloud backup capability. The original version of the drive was announced more than a year ago and offers only USB 2.0 connectivity.

The Canvio 3.0 drive is available now in three capacities, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB, which cost $90, $110, and $140, respectively. The drive is preloaded with NTI BackupNow EZ software for Windows, which enables users to back up both to the portable drive and to the cloud. Toshiba says the software will scan a computer automatically for important documents and recommend which files to back up to the cloud and which to back up to the directly connected portable storage device. It's unclear, however, if the online storage is free, and if so how much storage is included with the drive.

Toshiba also announced that its entry-level Canvio Basics storage drive now comes with USB 3.0, too. The Canvio Basics 3.0 is also available now in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB versions that each cost $10 less than the Canvio 3.0 of the same capacity.… Read more

Even when you get a good deal, a solid-state drive still costs significantly more than a regular hard drive of the same capacity, and a drive's price is, of course, one of the biggest factors that determines its value. For this reason, it's really hard to rate an SSD without knowing how much it costs. However, that's exactly what I had to do with the Samsung 830 series.

While the final product has been available to the press, Samsung is very tight-lipped about the pricing of its new SATA 6Gbps-based SSD and will not reveal it until … Read more

Hewlett-Packard has begun selling an updated ultraportable laptop with a robust configuration for $664, far below Apple's competing model, the MacBook Air.

The redesigned Pavilion dm1z is now available on HP's Web site starting at $399.

But the sweet spot for the 3.5-pound, 11.6-inch laptop is probably the configuration that's just over the $660 mark. For that you get Advanced Micro Devices' newest dual-core E-450 processor (1.65GHz) with a Radeon HD 6320M graphics chip built in, a 128GB solid-state drive, 4GB of memory, Webcam, and 6-cell battery. … Read more

OWC announced today the Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G solid-state drive (SSD), which it claims to be the first on the market that fits inside the new MacBook Air (version 2011) and offers the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard.

Just in case you don't know, the new MacBook Air is known to support the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps), which offers a top data rate of around 500MBps. However, the laptop's stock SSD supports only the slower SATA 2 (3Gbps) standard. This means, despite how quickly the machine currently boots and performs, the drive could be the bottleneck that … Read more

Ultrabooks will adopt lots of cutting-edge laptop technology, not unlike what Apple did to perfect the design of its MacBook Air, according to research from TrendForce.

The first Ultrabooks from Lenovo, Toshiba, and Asus already tap into some impressive technology. Lenovo's 0.6-inch thick U300s, for example, boasts a "breathable" keyboard to reduce heat and RapidDrive solid-state drive technology to deliver a 10.5-second boot time.

Apple's MacBook Air has been the highest profile example of a laptop that continues to push the envelope on design with novel display, battery, and motherboard designs. "Intel, along … Read more

Solid-states drives are sexy for many reasons: They tend to be faster, lighter, more rugged, and cooler than their spinning-platter predecessors. Unfortunately, they've also carried a premium price tag. But that is starting to change.

According to DealNews, prices on 64GB SSD and 120GB SSDs have been steadily sliding, narrowing the price gap between them and standard disc drives (check out the DealNews story and chart for all the details). While the prices are still high compared with regular drives, with each passing month they become a more viable upgrade option.

Regular hard drives contain spinning platters and movable read/write heads. In comparison, an SSD has no moving parts, making it more energy efficient, quieter, and faster. You'll notice these differences in several ways. Computers boot up and wake faster, for example. Popular laptops like the MacBook Air come standard with SSDs and Apple proudly touts these advantages.

The lack of moving parts also makes them more rugged, a good quality for laptops.

"The price of SSDs are still very expensive," said Dong Ngo, who reviews storage devices for CNET. "Yes, they are cheaper now compared with a few years ago but still very expensive compared to regular hard drives and even system memory."… Read more

For those who favor hybrid drives over solid-state drives due to the cost, though the Seagate Momentus XT has thus far been the sole representative, there's now another option. OCZ announced today its first hybrid drive, the RevoDrive Hybrid.

The new drive is very different from the Momentus XT, as it doesn't follow the traditional design of an SATA drive, but rather that of a PCI Express (PCIe) add-on card, normally found in a video or sound product. This means that while the drive won't fit in most places where regular SATA hard drives would be used, … Read more

I reviewed the Crucial m4 solid-state drive a while ago and thought its performance could use some improvement. Crucial announced today that it has just released a firmware update to do just that.

The new version upgrades the drive's firmware from revision 0002 (used for the review) to revision 0009, which is slated to significantly improve the drive's throughput and overall performance. Crucial says that the new firmware will make the drive read and write faster. It will also help the computer boot and load applications even faster when used as the main drive that hosts the operating … Read more