The PC Report

Seagate today has released the company’s first Hybrid Hard Drive, the Seagate Momentus XT, that combines a physical spinning disk with a bit of solid state NAND to give the best in performance. Seagate claims that this drive is around 80% faster than a normal 7,200 RPM hard drive, and looking at the tests done by AnandTech in their review (check the source link below) it appears as though this is close to being the truth. Performance-wise the drive sits somewhere between a WD VelociRaptor and a 5,400 RPM drive.

The drive itself is available in 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB capacities for US$133, US$132 and US$156 respectively, which comes out to around US$60-70 more than a standard 7,200 RPM drive. Each drive also comes with 4 GB of solid state NAND to help speed up the drives and store critical data that needs to be accessed quickly; what is put in the NAND is up to the on-board controller. The drive is perfect for laptops as it comes only in a 2.5″ form factor with a 9mm height, plus 32 MB of cache for the 7,200 RPM disk.

The drives should be available very soon from your favourite retailers.

Super Talent has launched a new budget line of SSDs – the VSSD range – that start at cheap prices and with “no compromise in performance.” For US$65 you’ll get a whopping 8 GB drive with speeds of 90 MB/s read and 30 MB/s write and a 16GB unit will also be shipping with the same speeds (no word on price). A 32 GB drive will be available (again, no price specified) with speeds of 150 MB/s read and 60 MB/s write. The top drive in the series packs 64 GB, costs US$175 and pushes 150 MB/s read & 100 MB/s write.

Judging by their pricing structure you could probably estimate a cost of US$120 for the 32 GB drive, which is arguably not quite as good value as the 32 GB OCZ Onyx drive which delivers 125 MB/s read and 70 MB/s write for  under US$100. I personally wouldn’t even touch the 8 GB drive, but whatever floats your boat.

Micron has released what appears to be the fastest solid state drive on the market today. Under the Crucial brand, the RealSSD C300 boats whopping 355 MB/s read speeds and 215 MB/s write speeds -  faster than what is on offer from Intel, OCZ, Kingston and more. So you can make use of these speeds, the drive is completely compatible with SATA 6Gb/s technology.

The drives themselves will be available in 1.8″ and 2.5″ form factors in both 128 GB and 256 GB capacities. If you want to purchase one of these drives it will set you back quite a bit: US$499 for the 128GB and US$799 for the 256GB. But you pay for quality, right?

Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT; a joint venture between Intel and Micron), responsible for a huge chunk of advances in SSDs and flash technology, has announced that they are sampling 2-bits-per-cell 25nm MLC NAND (pictured above). What this basically means is that solid state drives will be able to be bigger in capacity as well as cheaper for the consumers – both great pieces of news for the SSD market. Mass production of this new 25nm NAND should begin in Q2 of this year with products such as Intel’s 3rd-gen X-25M drives arriving in Q4.

OCZ has released some quality SSDs in the past, and their going to be adding to their line-up this CES. First up are the brand new ultrathin USB 3.0 external solid state drives which will support transfer rates up to a whopping 5Gb/s (~625MB/s). They will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. OCZ is also releasing a new range of internal SSDs named Vertex 2, as well as new PCIe drives that look like they are going under the same Z-Drive name. We aren’t sure of the exact specifics of any of the drives, or their release dates or pricing, but we’ll know soon enough.

The solid state speed war is not over yet, and now one of the biggest storage companies, Seagate, has announced their first range of SSDs – the Pulsar lineup. These solid state drives will come in 50GB, 100GB and 200Gb options, and while that’s slightly strange for solid state drives, we’re sure they will perform fine against other market leaders.

The Pulsar range will be able to manage 240MB/s read and 220MB/s write speeds and will be compatible with the SATA 3Gb/s specification. While slower in read speeds than the Intel X-25M, its write speeds far exceed those of the X-25M. The Pulsar drives have already began shipping to OEMs, which means consumers should be able to get the drives pretty soon, but we expect that the prices aren’t going to be pretty.

We have a new champion claiming the world’s fastest drive awards: the Micron RealSSD C300 line. These 2.5-inch, SATA 6Gb/s solid state drives are available in 128GB and 256GB capacities, and carry blazing fast read speeds of 355MB/s and write speeds of 215MB/s (the OCZ Agility EX only manages 255MB/s read and 195MB/s write).

These speeds are possible thanks to the latest ONFI 2.1 specification for solid state drives, which also improve multitasking capabilities. Like usual, these SSDs come at a price -- US$350 for the 128GB and US$715 for the 256GB, both when bought in bulk. The drives are set to go on sale next year, and we’re probably going to be seeing them in high-end laptops soon enough.

Looking for massive storage and massive speed in the one drive along with a massive price tag? Look no further than the new Super Talent 2TB RAIDDrive GS said to be shipping next month. The aluminium-enclosed drive slots into one of the free PCIe slots on your motherboard and offers blazingly fast speeds of 1.4 GBps, thanks to the four discrete SSDs enclosed inside the case.

However all this speed and storage does come at a hefty price. While no price has actually been specified yet, we do know that the lower end model 1TB RAIDDrive GS is set to cost US$4,999, which would place the higher-end brother around the US$8000-9000 mark – or the same price as a car. I know I’d choose the car, but for all those people wanting to spend that amount of money will be able to pick one up next month.

Last month Corsair released its brand new Extreme series SSDs in the sizes of 32GB, 64GB and 128GB, and yesterday they announced that a new SSD would be joining their line-up.

The X256 will be, obviously, 256GB and should carry the same read/write speeds as the previous drives, namely 240 MB/s read and 170 MB/s write. The speeds lag slightly behind other SSDs we’ve seen being released in the past, but are still blazingly fast compared to hard drives. While there is no official word on price, it is expected to market for around US$700.

Looks like Kingston is re-joining the SSD market with some faster versions of its SSDNow V range, by adding a plus and calling them SSDNow V+. The new SSDs carry capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB, and boast read speeds of 220MB/s and write speeds of 180MB/s as well as higher input/output operations per second making them a fair bit faster than the old range.

As with all SSDs these days, they still carry a hefty price tag, coming in at US$254, US$500 and US$992 for the 64GB, 128GB and 256GB respectively. While normal hard drives are cheaper for more storage, these do cater for the speed-freaks out there

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