Tag Archives: 6Gbps

We are often amused at the progression of SSDs throughout the years.  Even today, check anywhere and you can easily find information on the fastest SSD, or even the highest capacity SSD, but what about SSD form factors?  Form factor progression has seen SATA 3 notebook SSDs grow into to PCIe SSDs, AIC, mSATA, U2 and then to what was …

It isn’t too often that we’re reviewing SATA 3 SSDs these days.  The reason of course is that that bigger and better gets all the attention.  Data transfer speeds of 550MB/s are all to often forgotten when PCIe 4×4 is now moving data at just under 10x that.  Similarly, capacities up to 2TB are fairly common but we have really …

It has been a bit since we posted a review on a 2.5″ notebook SATA3 SSD and that comes with the territory I guess.  We get caught up with the latest and greatest, and we are always amazed that M.2 SSDs the size of a stick of gum can reach mind blowing speeds of NVMe at 3.5GB/s.  Nevertheless, SATA3 SSDs …

There comes a time when we all just need to stop, sit back and think; take a look around and reassess our direction perhaps.  The SSD industry is a beautiful example of this.  SSDs were introduced some 11 years ago now, although flash technology had been in use prior.  Today, there isn’t a person in the world that hasn’t been …

To give you an idea how far we have come in solid-state storage, the very first notebook sold with an SSD was the Dell XPS M1330.  It shipped with the Sandisk u5000  (my first and very embarrassing review) SATA2 32GB SSD, an SSD that would gain infamy as the first ‘stuttering SSD’ and, back then, storage capacity wasn’t an option. …

SSDs are state of the art memory components. Over the recent years we have seen the market grow and diversify. With the explosion of TLC SSDs in the marketplace these days it is a race to the bottom more than ever. Companies are trying to find ways to reach those penny hoarders by developing cheaper and cheaper SSD models to …

Back in 2014 we took a good look at the Mushkin Reactor. At the time, it was the best value 1TB SSD you could buy. You could even argue that it was THE SSD which made high value, high capacity SSDs the norm. Now, Mushkin is trying to take value a step farther by introducing a cheaper alternative into the market. Instead of …

Controllers are the heart and soul of every SSD. Without one, an SSD would be a useless PCB with some components slapped on it. It is responsible for everything from garbage collection and wear leveling to error correction and hardware encryption. In simple terms, all these operations can be quite complicated to implement as well as expensive to develop. This …

If we were to look at the flash controller hierarchy, Phison has typically placed as a mid-tier company.  We met with Phison at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, this past August and they spoke of a new controller that might move them up in the stack, the Phison Quad-Core PS3110 6Gbps controller.  Capable of 550MB/s read, 530MB/s …

We have been seeing more M.2 SSDs lately, a lot of which are companies’ first steps into the market since the form factor is so new. They have been designed to meet strict size requirements and allow for greater flexibility in product development. They are the perfect fit for mobile devices with their compact size and light weight. Transcend was …