ssd

PerfectDisk Free Defrag knows how to treat an SSD

Talk is cheap but bytes are cheaper: speed is the need with multiterabyte hard disks. It's too easy to leave high-capacity disks badly fragmented, robbing your system of critical performance advantages. There's one type of storage that delivers on speed, but at a high cost (as in money): SSDs (solid-state drives) don't use disks and should never be defragmented. But SSDs can be optimized, with care. PerfectDisk Free Defrag is a powerful disk defragmentation utility that can tell SSDs from HDDs. Its unique SSD Optimize feature consolidates the free space on SSDs with minimal impact, extending their … Read more

Get a 90GB internal SSD for $79.99

This is an update of a post from a few months ago.

For a long time I was a solid-state-drive naysayer. I'd heard mixed things about their performance and longevity, and I certainly wasn't a fan of their sky-high prices.

But SSDs have improved considerably over the years, to the point where they're now a highly desirable alternative to traditional hard drives.

Indeed, a good SSD is usually significantly faster, and it consumes less power -- a big consideration for battery-conscious laptop users. Also, because it has no moving parts, it's much less susceptible to damage.… Read more

Five things the next-gen MacBook Air needs to compete with ultrabooks

A new generation of slim, lightweight laptops has taken the PC world by storm. These ultrabooks (to use Intel's trademarked marketing term) are exactly what many laptop shoppers have been longing for, a PC version of Apple's MacBook Air that runs Windows.

But despite very strong showings from HP, Dell, Lenovo, and others, there still is not an ultrabook on the market right now that really beats the MacBook Air in a head-to-head shootout. That's not because of price, processing power, or features -- the Air is more expensive, has about the same CPU horsepower, and lacks … Read more

OS X Disk Utility missing options to erase free disk space

Erasing free disk space is an easy (albeit not quick) way to help prevent the recovery of files you have erased from your system. Conventionally when files are deleted from storage device, the system only removes their entries from the file system's directory, thereby flagging blocks containing the data as being free to use. While this offers a quick way to delete files from the drive, the data is technically still intact on disk and thereby leaves open the possibility for recovery using special software.

To prevent this from happening, one option that Apple has offered in OS X … Read more

Marvell intros low-cost, high-performance SATA controller for SSDs

Marvell announced today the deployment of its 88SS9187 SATA controller designed for solid-state drives (SSDs).

The company says the new controller is powered by high-performance embedded processor technology and features the latest 6Gbps SATA 3.1 host interface optimized specifically for SSDs. The 88SS9187 also has Marvell's Adaptive Read and Write Scheme and on-chip RAID functionality. This means it can be used with the latest generation of NAND flash memory.

According to Marvell, the new controller will deliver lower costs, high performance, and better power efficiency, making it also a great choice for the ultrabook computer market. Most of all, the new controller might also lead to the further reduction of SSD prices.… Read more

Elgato Thunderbolt SSD review: The crazy price of the magic

Bus-powered portable drives, those that don't need a separate power adapter to work, are not new and have been in the market for years. But the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is the first made specifically for Macs and for now can only work with Macs.

For this reason, like many thing Apple-made, it changes everything all over, again.

For one, it's by far the fastest bus-powered portable drive on the market, though not at all the fastest among Thunderbolt storage devices. Secondly, it's super-expensive at $700 for 240GB (or $450 for 120GB).

While souped-up pricing and performance of … Read more

Migrating to SSD: Get yourself a new computer without getting one

You've had your computer for a few years. Recently things have started to get slow, and you're thinking of getting a new one. I have nothing against a new computer, but what if you could greatly improve your current machine's performance without much hassle?

You actually can with a standard SATA solid-state drive (SSD).

(An SSD looks very much like a traditional 2.5-inch laptop hard drive, but it's much faster. You can find out more about the difference between these two types of storage devices here.)

In this post, I'll walk you through how … Read more

Plextor M3 SSD review: A decent side step from the M2

The Plextor M3 is the second solid-state drive (SSD) from Plextor I've reviewed, and it's quite different from the previous M2 drive.

While the two drives look essentially the same, share the support for the SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard and have a 2.5-inch, 9.5mm standard design, the M3 is not really the next straight step from the M2, but rather a totally different step.

This is because the new drive is actually slightly slower than the previous model, which, by the way, is still one of the fastest on the market. To make up for this, … Read more

Top 5 internal drives of 2012: Your system deserves a worthy upgrade

No matter how big or small your computer is, there is at least one internal drive to host its operating system and programs. This drive is almost always a standard internal drive, which comes in the form of a regular hard drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The former is affordable and offers lots of storage space, while the latter is generally more expensive but superfast. The good news is, 2012 marked the time SSDs became more and more popular, thanks to the reduced costs and the increased number of vendors joining the storage market of this type.

That … Read more