Last week we looked at the ASUS U30Jc and found a lot to like… so much that we awarded it a Bronze Editors' Choice. The stock configuration comes with a conventional hard drive, but SSDs are all the rage these days. What happens to performance when you install a decent SSD, like a 120GB OCZ Vertex? We happened to have one waiting for just such a test, so here are the updated results. Hint: it's a lot faster, at least when the HDD is the bottleneck.

The promise of Hybrid HDDs has come and gone with no champion. Today Seagate is announcing its Momentus XT, a 2.5" 7200 RPM notebook drive (9mm form factor) with 4GB of SLC NAND on board used as a read cache for frequently accessed data. The end result is a notebook drive with notebook power characteristics that performs like a 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor. We finally have something in between a HDD and SSD for those who need more space on a single drive than a SSD can affordably offer.

Read on for our full review of the drive!

Sources close to Seagate roadmaps have leaked the potential of a 3TB SAS drive being released this year.

The quest for storage is almost a never ending saga.  Dubbed the Constellation-ES, the replacement for the Seagate Barracuda-ES, the drive is expected to arrive later this year with a 7200 RPM rotation speed, and a 6Gbit/s SAS interface.  A 1TB version of the 2.5" Barracuda-ES is also expected to arrive around the mid year point.

A 3TB drive would suggest an increase in maximum platter size, from the current 500GB limit.  If you remember back that far, the increase in density was due to a change in bit alignment, from horizontal to vertical, to counter the superparamagnetic effect.  Hitachi made an excellent and funny flash animation to describe the technology.  The feeling is that the increase in platter size is an extension of that technology, rather than a new physical property being exploited.

Depending on how quickly these new hard drives hit the enterprise sector, we could see consumer 3TB hard drives by the end of the year as a positive estimate.  However, 17GB/$ ($175 a unit) or a price comparable to current 2TB hard drives would be required for consumer market acceptance.  Whether people require 3TB is another matter - video editors, professional photographers, or just for storing your movie and blu-ray collection are possibilities.

Poor Crucial. Although it started its C300 campaign on the right foot, posting some very impressive sequential read speeds thanks to 6Gbps SATA and ONFI 2.0 NAND, things haven't been so smooth lately.

First off, Crucial's timing was unfortunate as it was right around the time we started seeing SandForce make some noise. Secondly, while performance was good, my drive showed some performance and reliability issues within two weeks of receiving it. And third, the firmware update that was supposed to address the problems I had managed to brick some drives. 

If you bought a C300 there was a chance that your drive would brick itself by just using it. If you used the firmware that fixed the aforementioned problem, then there was a chance the process would brick your drive. 

Crucial just gave me an update on the situation and things appear to be looking up:

A week ago I got a shipment of a bunch of new SSDs including OCZ's long awaited Onyx. This is based on the Indilinx Amigos controller, which is basically a cost reduced version of the Barefoot controller with only half the channels. A 32GB Onyx should sell for around $99.

The first drive I received showed CRC errors during a Windows install. I told OCZ to stop shipment two Fridays ago. OCZ responded by saying that they wouldn't stop shipments after only one bad drive. Their mistake.

In my experience, I never get a "bad drive", it's either DOA or has a firmware/controller bug. Three days later OCZ issued a recall on the drive and got in touch with its customers directly to make sure they were taken care of.

OCZ had the bug fixed within a week and sent me a new drive (as well as posted an updated firmware on their site). I've been testing the fixed Onyx and while it doesn't exhibit the same issues as the first drive, I am seeing an unexpected CRC error in one particular test that shouldn't be there. I just got off the phone with OCZ and they are going to be pulling back all drives until the problem is squashed.

Building SSDs is a challenging business. I stressed to OCZ that this could have been avoided if they just sent out samples a week before shipping to etailers. I have to at least hand it to OCZ for acting quickly to pull the drives, especially after today's warning. 

Update: OCZ's earlier firmware update appears to have squashed the bug completely. Its engineers and I have been working to reproduce the more recent CRC error and it doesn't appear to be an issue with the drive itself, rather something limited to my test platform. I was concerned about the possibility of another data corruption bug given the issue I had with the first drive and arrived at the wrong conclusion. Using the latest firmware the OCZ Onyx has completed almost all of my tests thus far without issue. I will keep you all updated on my experiences with the drive.

Back in March I posted an update on my experiences with Crucial's RealSSD C300. In it I pointed out that not only had my review sample apparently bricked itself but I was also able to get the C300 into a state of extremely low performance (~20MB/s) that it could not get out of, even if I TRIMed the whole drive.

Crucial discovered the source of the problems and promised a fix in mid April. It's a bit later than that but we do finally have an update from Crucial. An updated fw has been posted to Crucial's site (Version 0002) and it promises the following fixes:

 Change Log:

• Improved Power Consumption
• Improved TRIM performance
• Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11)
• Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss
• Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency
• Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data
• Improved Data Integrity

The update is destructive so you'll lose all of your data when you apply it. I haven't had the opportunity to test it thoroughly yet so if you're concerned, you may want to wait until others have used it. If you are a C300 owner, please feel free to leave your experiences with the update in the comments below.

Update: It seems as though the new firmware, designed to prevent drives from bricking, appears to be bricking drives. Hold off on this one guys.

I've also requested a 128GB C300 for review and I should see that in the coming days. I've got a ton of non-SSD stuff to deal with this week so I'm not sure I'll be able to get to all of it before I leave for Spain this weekend. If I can't get it done before I leave, I'll definitely tackle it all when I get back.

No, it’s not the new Indilinx JetStream controller - that’ll be in the second half of the year at the earliest. And it’s definitely not Intel’s 3rd generation X25-M, we won’t see that until Q4. The SSD I posted a teaser of last week is a modified version of OCZ’s Agility 2.

The modification? Instead of around 28% of the drive’s NAND set aside as spare area, this version of the Agility 2 has 13%. You get more capacity to store data, at the expense of potentially lower performance. How much lower? That’s exactly what I’ve spent the past several days trying to find out.

Last week we reviewed OCZ's Agility 2 SSD with SandForce's standard, mass production SF-1200 firmware. This week we're back with the Vertex 2. For an extra $20 you get roughly the same performance as the Agility 2 plus an extra boost in small file random write speed.

Read on for our full review of the Vertex 2.

Next week I'll have more to report on than just SSDs, I promise. Until then, the SandForce festivities continue with today's arrival: The OCZ Vertex 2.

As you may have heard, the Vertex 2 uses a special brew of SandForce's SF-1200 firmware that gives it the small file random write performance of a SF-1500 based solution, without most of the added cost. Unless Corsair and SandForce work something out, the Vertex 2 is going to be the only SF-1200 based SSD that can use SandForce's MP firmware and attain 30,000 sustained 4K random write IOPS.

I'm running the drive through the ringer now and hope to have results as well as an update to our SSD Bench later this week. If you want to see pics of its internals, check out the gallery.

SandForce made news last week, but for some not so great reasons. It turns out that the production firmware on SF-1200 drives drops random small file write performance by a decent amount on drives presently shipping.

Those impacted include Corsair and OWC. Corsair is handling it by sticking with the RC firmware and providing a workaround for a known issue with the earlier firmware. OWC on the other hand has quietly updated its website to reveal the new (lower) specs of the drive.

Today we have our first drive shipping with the new 3.0.5 MP firmware: OCZ's Agility 2. Due to ship to etailers later this week, we put the Agility 2 through our test suite (including some new tests to see how SandForce's technology performs with highly random data).

Read on for the review!

Things move in real time around here. Just yesterday we published an article detailing the differences between SandForce's SF-1200 and SF-1500 controller. We also pointed out that the mass production firmware for the SF-1200 controller (v3.0.5) caps 4K random write performance on all drives except for OCZ's upcoming Vertex 2. The only problem (aside from the obvious) is I had no way of determining how much of a real world impact the lower 4K random writes would have on a SF-1200 drive. Until today that is.

The Agility 2 is OCZ's standard SF-1200 SSD, using the same firmware that's been made available to all of SandForce's partners. The performance of this drive should tell us what we can expect from all other SF-1200 drives on the market. My Vertex 2 sample won't be here until next week.  I also received a reference SF-1200 drive from SandForce to verify the performance results.

The drive just arrived this morning and I snapped some shots of (and took it apart) for a quick This Just In post before I got to testing. As a reminder, these posts are designed to give you all a glimpse into what is dropped off at our doorstep on a regular basis. The full review will follow.

Observations? OCZ bundles the 3.5" drive tray we've seen with a few SSDs now. The Agility 2 PCB has a silkscreened location for a super cap, which indicates that the layout/routing differences between the SF-1200 and SF-1500 are negligible. You can catch these details and more in the Gallery.

Update: Our full review is up!

Less than 24 hours ago I was called into a meeting with SandForce, the SSD controller manufacturer that has been on fire lately. The company makes two controllers: the SF-1200 and SF-1500. The meeting was initiated by SandForce to clear up any misconceptions I might have about the differences between the two controllers. No good deed goes unpunished, and the quick meeting turned into an hour long debate about responsibility and ethics. It turns out that while I finally know the difference between the SF-1200 and the more expensive SF-1500, not all drives based on the SF-1200 will offer the same performance. In fact, some drives that are currently on the market today will actually drop in performance (in one metric) if you upgrade them to SF’s mass production firmware. Yep.

Read on to find out the full story.

Late last year we were told that SandForce's client controller, the SF-1200 wouldn't be as solid of a performer as the SF-1500. It would be on par with Indilinx's Barefoot, perhaps a bit faster, but nothing major. Oh how wrong we were.

Meet Corsair's Force SSD. As its name implies, this drive is based on a SandForce controller but not the more expensive SF-1500. What we've got here is SF's client controller, the SF-1200. Boasting a high end (but still somewhat reasonable) price, how does the Force stack up to Intel's X25-M G2 and OCZ's Vertex LE?

Read on to find out!

Testing is nearly complete on the last Corsair SSD that came my way, but this morning UPS dropped off another surprise: the Corsair Force SSD. Based on a derivative of the controller in the OCZ Vertex LE I reviewed earlier this year, the Force uses the mainstream version of SandForce's technology. Here's how it breaks down. Last year's Vertex 2 Pro used a SF-1500 controller, the Vertex LE uses something in between a SF-1500 and SF-1200 (closer to the SF-1500 in performance) while the Corsair Force uses a SF-1200.

The SF-1200 has all of the goodness of the SF-1500, just without some of the more enterprise-y features. I haven't been able to get a straight answer from anyone as to exactly what you give up by going to the SF-1200 but you do gain a much more affordable price. The Vertex LE is only low in price because it is using a limited run of early controllers from SF, presumably so SandForce can raise capital. The SF-1200 based SSDs should be price competitive with current Indilinx offerings.

You'll notice that like the Vertex LE there's no supercap on the Force's PCB. There's also no external DRAM cache thanks to a large amount of on-die cache and SandForce's real time data compression/deduplication technology. As you may remember from my Vertex 2 Pro and Vertex LE reviews, SandForce achieves higher performance by simply reducing the amount of data it has to write to NAND (similar to lossless compression or data deduplication). 

I've got the Force on my SSD testbench now and I should have the first results by the end of the day today. This one is exciting as it could give us a preview of what the performance mainstream SSD marketplace will look like for the rest of 2010.

More pics of the drive in the Gallery!

I haven't taken a look at a new Corsair SSD in a while. The company started out by shipping relatively uninteresting Samsung based SSDs, but since then we've seen Corsair ramp up adoption of newer technologies fairly quickly. With drives from Indilinx and now SandForce onboard, it's time for an update from one of the first companies to ever visit me in NC over a decade ago.

Next week I should receive their new SandForce SF-1200 based drive, the Corsair Force, however today I got their Indilinx Barefoot based Nova drive:

This drive is based on Indilinx's Barefoot controller but uses 34nm Intel NAND (other NAND vendors are supported as well). It's Corsair's version of the G.Skill Falcon II we looked at a while back, or OCZ's Solid 2. I'm running it through our test suite now, expect to see results in Bench in the next couple of days.

More pics in the Gallery.

We first laid eyes on Western Digital's Raptor line of 10K RPM desktop hard drives in 2003.  The drives were only 36GB in size, but man were they fast.  Since then Western Digital has increased capacity, decreased physical platter size (3.5" to 2.5") and overall driven performance up.  With the last VelociRaptor dating back to 2008, the line was overdue for an update.

Meet the new VelociRaptor:

Available in 450GB and 600GB capacities at $299 and $329, respectively, the new VR200M keeps the formula mostly unchanged but sees a performance boost thanks to increasing platter density.  Can it restore faith to the VelociRaptor line?  Read on to find out.

A few folks have sent this in so I thought it was worth posting about. Intel's X25-V that we've recently reviewed is now on sale at Newegg for $98. The deal lasts as long as supplies last but given the incredible performance we've seen from a pair of the drives in RAID-0, this might be worth looking at if you're thinking about jumping to an SSD.

I'm still waiting on OCZ's Onyx before calling the value race over at this point. The competition below $130 isn't huge yet but we're at least getting some action down there. As I've said before, once 25nm NAND starts shipping in Q4 then we should really see $/GB start to drop.

Update: Congrats to all who got them, the drives are now sold out.

Update 2: Drives back in stock, but the deal is over.

Intel has been shipping its value 40GB X25-V SSDs for a little while now, but the official launch was just 11 days ago.  In our review we found that for $125, the X25-V was a reliable way to enjoy all of the benefits of an SSD without breaking the bank.  Today we're here to tempt you a bit more.

For $220 you can get an 80GB X25-M G2 but for another $30 you can nab a pair of X25-Vs and RAID them together.  The resulting performance is truly staggering.  I'm talking faster than a 6Gbps Crucial C300 in some cases, and faster than a SandForce drive in others.

It's not all perfect though, you don't always get the best performance and you do lose TRIM.  The question: is it worth it?  Go ahead and click that fancy new Read More link to find out.

Earlier this morning I published an article looking into the performance of 6Gbps SATA controllers, both integrated and off-chip. In it I mentioned my recently deceased Crucial RealSSD C300 that decided to up and stop working one day. Given that Crucial is selling these drives, I wasn't too happy with the outcome.

Inside Crucial's RealSSD C300

The drive would not longer be detected on POST. In fact, with the C300 connected to any machine I couldn't get any OS to boot; the system would just hang at drive detection. After a couple of weeks of toying with my dead drive, Crucial came back to me with an explanation of what's going on.