The Intel SSD 520, code name Cherryville, is the latest consumer SSD offering from Intel which breaks a tremendous amount of new ground for the company and the SSD industry at large. The big highlight is that Intel has transitioned to a SandForce processor in the SSD 520, away from the Marvell processor used in

We’ve already looked at the Intel SSD 520 a few different ways in our client SSD 520 review and enterprise SSD 520 review. Additionally though, with the superb performance and Intel’s reputation for SSD reliability, there’s potential for the SSD 520 to be offered by notebook and desktop OEMs as a performance upgrade for buyers

The Crucial m4 SSDs have been on the market nine months, and have built a good track record around mainstream value and reliability in that time. Crucial has been great about continuing to enhance their line of m4 SSDs with firmware updates, a key advantage thanks to using their own NAND and extensive engineering team. While

OCZ updated the firmware on their Indilinx-powered Octane SSD to v1.13 last week, touting significant increases in random 4K write performance. On the lower capacity models the gains are quoted to jump over 100%, with advertised speeds increasing from 7,700 IOPS to 18,000 IOPs. Percentage gains taper off as capacity climbs, with the 512GB model

When we completed our review of the Samsung SSD 830 in September, we praised the SSD for being built entirely in-house, which includes key components like the NAND, processor, cache RAM and firmware. Being a home grown creation generally means to better host system compatibility and better/faster support when issues arise. But SSDs need to

OCZ has announced that Intel has approved their enterprise-grade Deneva 2 mSATA SSDs for use in Ultrabooks configured with Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT). SRT acts as a caching mechanism for an internal hard drive and SRT only works with SSDs approved by Intel. OCZ will offer both 30GB (D2CSTEMS1A10-0030) and 60GB (D2CSTEMS1A10-0060) Deneva 2

Apple enabled TRIM support in OS X Lion 10.7 but there’s a catch; Apple only allows TRIM to work when using an Apple sanctioned SSD. If you switch to a non-Apple SSD or upgrade your hard drive to an SSD, TRIM support does not get enabled by default. In fact, Lion offers no simple switch

The Corsair Force Series 3 is one of three current generation SSDs offered by Corsair. It’s nearly identical to their Force Series GT, both leverage a SATA 6Gb/s interface, SandForce SF-2281 processors and 25nm MLC NAND. The key difference is the Series 3 uses Asynchronous NAND where the GT uses Synchronous NAND. The difference gives

The Pyro SE is the latest SSD from Patriot and is a new and improved version of the Pyro, both of which are powered by SandForce’s SF-2281 processor. The main difference between the two is that instead of asynchronous NAND, the Pyro SE is equipped with 25nm synchronous MLC NAND, which can deliver up to