Transcend Launches MSA720 mSATA 6Gbps SSD With LSI SandForce Driven Performance

Transcend today launched their MSA720 mSATA SSD, offering this small form-factor (3cm x 5cm) drive in 64Gb and 128Gb flavors.

The MSA720 features SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) built around the SandForce SF2281 controller, with blistering speeds of up to 560MB/s read and 530MB/s write, and impressive 4K random file writes up to 91,000 IOPS, making it possibly one of the fastest mSATA SSDs to date.   How can we go wrong with LSI SandForce Driven performance?

The MSA720 includes shock resistance, S.M.A.R.T., TRIM and NCQ functions, 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) protection to prevent unauthorized access, and DuraWrite flash endurance enhancement for high sustainability and reliability. One-eighth of a standard 2.5″ SSD, and weighing only seven grams, the MSA720 is perfect for notebooks, netbooks, ultrabooks, tablet PCs, and SSD-based systems.

The high-performance anoints the MSA720 as a great cache drive in dual-drive systems, as more and more consumers move towards the SSD + HDD mix. A large capacity hard drive is great for storing data, complemented with a fast SSD cache drive used for accelerating operating-system and software boot-time, and overall system responsiveness.

The release of Transcend’s MSA720 coincides nicely with the release of Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor and concurrent motherboards. The Z77 chipset takes advantage of said dual-drive hybrid set-ups, illustrated by the fact that some Z77 motherboards have integrated native on-board 3Gb/s mSATA slots designed ultimately for caching. Unfortunately, Transcend have not released any pricing information at this time, but did reveal the drive being backed by a solid three-year limited warranty.