With OCZ intent on moving as much volume to its in-house Indilinx controllers as possible, SandForce (now LSI) needed to expand to additional partners. OCZ has strong control over the channel so SandForce needed to turn to multiple partners to diversify its portfolio. One key win for SandForce was Kingston. We saw the launch of the first Kingston SandForce (SF-2281) based drive last year under the HyperX brand. Today Kingston is announcing a lower cost version of the drive with the HyperX 3K.

Kingston's HyperX 3K (top) vs. Kingston's HyperX (bottom)

The 3K in this case refers to the number of program/erase cycles the NAND inside the SSD is rated for. Read on for our full review.

Over the past year we've tested more than twenty different enclosures using our existing testbed and produced a mountain of comparative data. The goal of the undertaking is produce actual case reviews rather than testing enclosures in a vaccuum. Our approach has allowed us to compare both cooling performance and acoustics between the cases we've tested.

That said, it was really our first effort at such an endeavor in some time, and since we started some minor inconsistencies began to creep up in our reviews and between test cases. Now that we have data under our belts, we're now taking measures to correct those inconsistencies for future tests, improve the quality of our results, and allow for more reliable comparisons. In other words, we're about to revamp our case testbed and methodology, and hopefully this setup can last us through the next year.

Let me pose a hypothetical situation: say you bought an iPhone or iPad, but cheaped out and got a 16GB model. You’ve got around 10GB worth of music, a few gigs in photos and applications, and you lose the rest to formatting and the OS itself. Basically, you’re maxed on capacity. Day-to-day, this isn’t a huge issue, but let’s say you’re going on vacation and want to have some movies to watch so that you can avoid the customary in-flight chick flick [or replace with whatever type of movies you dislike]. HD movies aren’t storage friendly, they take a solid chunk of storage space, and you don’t want gut your portable music library for the sake of watching a couple of decent movies on the plane. So what do you do?

Fret not, there is now a solution to that dilemma by way of Kingston and Seagate, among others. Both have recently launched wireless storage devices, streaming your media files to your mobile device via WiFi. Now, both of these are non-ideal solutions to a relatively marginal problem, but that’s to be expected in any newly conceived market. With the shift to cloud-based data and media streaming for mobile devices, there is going to be a gradual de-emphasizing of local device storage. We’re already seeing that in a big way with Google’s Cloud OS and Apple’s iCloud service, so wireless storage technologies are going to play an important role in handling media streaming for the future. The two devices we’re looking at today are pricey and aren’t perfect by any means, but they point the way to what the future of local media storage might look like. Interested? Keep reading to find out more.

Given the rise in prevalence of USB 3.0-enabled computer systems and maturation of the USB 3.0 flash drive market, we provide here benchmarks and real-world performance tests of USB 3.0 portable storage devices. How much faster are USB 3.0 flash drives compared to their USB 2.0 predecessors? Are they worth the cost premium? Does using a USB 3.0 flash drive in a USB 2.0 port yield better results than native use of a USB 2.0 flash drive? Do USB 2.0 flash drives benefit from being plugged into USB 3.0 ports? To find out the answers to these questions, read on!

CES 2011 has kicked off in a major way and the talk on a lot of vendors lips is Sandy Bridge: what it means, what it brings to the table, and yes, how to capitalize on it. But Sandy Bridge isn't the only big thing going on here; we had a chance to sit down with Corsair, Kingston, Zalman, Zotac, Patriot, A-Data, Thermaltake, and Cooler Master to see what they had on the horizon. These are some of the trends and noteworthy products we came across.

Although OCZ was first on the market with a USB 3.0 enabled SSD with its Enyo drive, competitors are knocking down the doors and bridging the gap. We saw the first lower cost USB 3.0 SSD with Kingston's DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0, however the JMicron JMF612 controller it was based on didn't really impress. The only thing the DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 had going for it was a lower total cost for the smaller capacity versions.

Hot on the heels of the release of its unusually potent V+100 SSD, Kingston aims its sights at the high end with its second USB 3.0 SSD: the HyperX MAX 3.0. Borrowing a brand from Kingston's enthusiast memory line, the HyperX MAX 3.0 is literally a SSDNow V+100 SSD paired with a SATA to USB 3.0 bridge PCB. 

Read on for a quick look at the drive's performance and behavior over time.

I'm not sure what it is about SSD manufacturers and overly complicated product stacks. Kingston has no less than six different SSD brands in its lineup. The E Series, M Series, SSDNow V 100, SSDNow V+ 100, SSDNow V+ 100E and SSDNow V+ 180. The E and M series are just rebranded Intel drives, these use Intel's X25-E and X25-M G2 controllers respectively with Kingston logo on the enclosure. The SSDNow V 100 is an update to the SSDNow V Series drives, both of which use the JMicron JMF618 controller. Don't get this confused with the 30GB SSDNow V Series Boot Drive which actually uses a Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller, also used in the SSDNow V+. Confused yet? It gets better.

The standard V+ is gone and replaced by the new V+ 100, which is what we're here to take a look at today. This drive uses the T6UG1XBG controller but with updated firmware. The new firmware enables two things: very aggressive OS-independent garbage collection and higher overall performance. The former is very important as this is the same controller used in Apple's new MacBook Air. In fact, the performance of the Kingston V+100 drive mimics that of Apple's new SSDs.

Read on for our full review.

Since I reviewed my first SSD, three things have happened. 1) Controllers have improved significantly. My personal favorite, SandForce’s SF-1200, can outperform the original X25-M by more than 3x in random write speed. 2) Consumer capacities have tripled. While the majority of SSDs sold are still under 100GB in size, you can now get 240GB and even 480GB consumer drives. 3) Prices have dropped. The first SSD I reviewed was Intel’s 80GB X25-M and it carried a $595 MSRP. OCZ will sell you a 120GB Vertex 2 for about half that today.

As a result of prices dropping, SSDs are being used for more than just expensive boot/application drives. Personally, I use a couple of old SSDs connected to Apricorn SATA-to-USB adapters as Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 install discs. Using an SSD instead of a DVD drive speeds up OS install time considerably. I can install Windows 7 from one of these SSDs to an SSD in just under 3 minutes (timed from the moment it starts installing to the first reboot).

OCZ was the first to produce an interesting SSD for external use but Kingston has since delivered a lower priced alternative. Read on as we look at both options.

Two years ago the best SSD you could buy was made by Intel and it cost $7.44 per GB of MLC NAND. Today Intel is actually the value leader. The 80GB X25-M G2 will set you back $205 at Newegg, or $2.56 per GB. The performance crown now belongs to companies like Micron and SandForce. Although Intel hopes to have performance leadership once more with its 25nm SSDs due out in Q4, the priorities have shifted. Intel’s focus is on bringing SSDs to the mainstream; it wants a bigger slice of the HDD pie. At the end of the day, that’s where the money is.

At just over $200 that’s affordable enough for high end notebooks and desktops but what about more mainstream price points? For many the $99 mark is key. Luckily as SSDs have gotten faster, a new breed of small, affordable SSDs have emerged right around the $100 mark. Today we’re going to take a look at three of those devices.