Les Tokar

is a technology nut and Founder of The SSD Review. His early work includes the first consumer SSD review along with MS Vista, Win 7 and SSD Optimization Guides. Les is fortunate to, not only evaluate and provide opinion on consumer and enterprise solid state storage but also, travel the world in search of new technologies and great friendships. Google+

Samsung 470 Series SSD Review Revisited & RAID Tested!

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A short time ago, The SSD Review published a review of the Samsung 256GB 470 Series SSD after discovering what an excellent entry this was into the consumer SSD market with availability in many online retail outlets. We were initially a bit hesitant and confused because the SSD appeared to be one of the top drives available yet information and …

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RAID0 & the SSD – Simple To Build and Lightning Fast

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You truly know that your a computer geek when you hollar “Woot” to your first RAID results and have to call up the wife and kids to see.  Quite frankly I don’t think I will ever forget the look of confusion on her face as much as she won’t forget the look of amazement on mine.  She felt a bit …

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RAID0 & The SSD – TRIM And Building RAID0

TRIM IN RAID AND CRUCIAL REALSSDs Before we start, we need to give ample warning that TRIM does not work in RAID.  The most recent release of Intels RST package is 9.6.0.1014. Crucial C300 SSDs are ideal for RAID, more so than the competition, because they have very aggressive garbage collection, or ITGC, which works in a similar fashion to …

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RAID0 & the SSD – Optimization and RealSSDx4

10.  Enable Write Caching on Device and Turn Off Write Cache Buffer Flushing. This particular point made the largest difference in performance as you will see. Press the Win7 Start Orb; Left Click ‘Computer’ Right Click on Your RAID Drive; Select Properties; Select Hardware; Double Click on Your RAID volume; Click on Policies; and Check Both Boxes. Take a look …

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RAID0 & The SSD – Benchmarking in RealSSDx2

Crucial C300 256GB RealSSDx2 in RAID0 (16K Stripe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . We left the two true Crucial RAID tests until last to show how great these Crucial drives really are.  Installation for these 256GB drives took 9 minutes and 10 seconds and the boot time is simply amazing at just …

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RAID0 & The SSD – Conclusions and Intel RST Ver 10 Released

CONCLUSIONS EASE OF INSTALLATION AND PERFORMANCE The two things that can truly be said about experimenting with RAID0 this past weekend are that it is quick and easy and the performance boost that you see in the typical desktop is absolutely amazing. The only reason that we spent so many hours experimenting was to fine tune and show you how …

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Zotac GeForce GTX 580 Graphics Card Review @ eTeknix.com

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In an attempt to tame the cards temperature from the 480’s design, Nvidia have lost the heatpipe design that was in hindsight not fully up to the job and replaced this with a new vapour chamber designed heatsink. This along with a redesigned fan that is now around 5dB quieter, and that has also a quieter pitch than the squeaky …

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Emergency 2012 Review (PC) @ KitGuru

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Emergency 2012 is quickly turning into a cult classic, escaping the attention of the mainstream gaming audience. The real time strategy simulator puts you in control of the emergency services as you try to save people from a plethora of of natural disasters, tragic accidents and terrorist threats. Full Review @ KitGuru.

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MSI Wind Top AE2400 Review @ KitGuru

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The iMac has been selling well for Apple for many years and PC centric manufacturers are beginning to realise that there is a viable market for an attractive, capable All In One unit. Today we are looking at the MSI Wind Top AE2400 desktop system which features an Intel processor and AMD discrete graphics paired up with a high quality …

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SandForce Wins Prestigious 2010 Start-Up to Watch Semiconductor Company Award

Global Semiconductor Alliance crowns SandForce as the start-up company with the most impact on the industry SARATOGA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SandForce, Inc., the pioneer of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors that enable standard NAND Flash deployment in enterprise, client, and industrial computing applications, was crowned the prestigious Start-Up to Watch award at the annual Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) Awards Dinner Celebration held …

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