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Apple has today announced a ‘MacBook Air Flash Storage Replacement Program‘ for ALL MBA systems purchased between June 2012 and June 2013.  The program speaks specifically to flash storage replacement and ONLY affects 64GB and 128GB MBAs containing Toshiba SSDs.  The SSDs are being replaced as a result of the potential SSD failing during future use. The specific models of …

If the fact that Toshiba is now selling retail SSDs to the consumer surprises you, it should.  For some time now, the SSD industry has had its eye on Toshiba as they seemed to get caught behind the eight ball.  From our perspective, the only Toshiba SSDs we had reported on were the client THNSN 128GB SATA 2 mSATA SSD …

UNDERSTANDING SATA M.2 AND NATIVE M.2 PCIE SSDS By now, many are aware that there is a new SSD standard known as NGFF or M.2.  NGFF is actually a slang term that started the process rolling and means ‘next generation form factor’.  If you have been following our reviews as of late, you would have also learned that, within the …

Perhaps the two most notable recent trends in SSDs have been the inevitable introduction of M.2 SSDs and the unexpected announcements of ‘driverless’ PCIe SSDs, that require no more than inserting the device into an available PCIe slot and rebooting the PC system. Very close and long-standing industry relations placed us in a position to provide exclusive analysis and report …

When it comes to SSD controllers, up until recent times LSI/SandForce and Marvell have pretty much “ruled the roost”.    Other than a few instances of utilizing proprietary controllers (such as Samsung does in most of their SSDs), and a smaller player in Indilinx (acquired by OCZ),  there were no other options for manufacturers to engineer a new SSD with.  That has …

A few weeks back, we posted an article that stated our opinion of the new Apple MBA as being one of the top ultraportable laptops available today, and quite possibly, untouchable.  The backlash from Sony fans was amazing, many clearly noting that we hadn’t tested, or included, the new VAIO 13 Pro as a comparison system in that report…and they …

When it comes to high performance RAID add-in cards, there are really only two big players in the market: Adaptec and LSI.  These two have been duking it out for years, each one constantly trying to one up the other, with LSI often coming out on top.  To give you a bit of history, lets take a look back at …

Our attendance at the Samsung Global SSD Summit in South Korea brought us a first glimpse of a new standard in ultrabook storage performance.  At the Summit, the Samsung XP941 M.2 PCIe SSD was displayed reaching 1GB/s transfer speeds and Apple has since released their 2013 MacBook Air which has a customized variation of the XP941; this attaining native performance of …

For the first time in awhile, I am sitting here stunned at what I just learned, and experienced, in new technology.  Just as I could use words such as amazing, unbelievable and remarkable to describe the Super Talent USB 3.0 Express Dram Disk, I could also grab your attention telling you that the ST Dram Disk’s PCMark Vantage Total Point …

Imagine that you could simply plug a PCIe SSD into your PC and immediately realize performance of over 2GB/s data transfer speeds.  For the average PC user that may not seem like much, but for the media professional, or even enthusiast, being able to manipulate and move large amounts of media in seconds can save both time and money, as …