Oh! Gizmo

By Chris Scott Barr

USB 3.0 is going to likely start showing up in new computers sometime next year, which means that we’ll be seeing USB 3.0 peripherals sometime in the near future. Since the main advantage of this new specification is obviously speed, hard drives will be one of the biggest things to take advantage of it. Since SSD’s are the fastest when it comes to transfer speeds, it’s only natural that some of the first devices to be announced are external SSD drives.

Active Media Productions has announced their new USB 3.0 SSD drives which range in sizes from 16GB to 64GB. This would essentially be the same speeds you would achieve with eSATA, only without the need for an external power source. These new Aviator 312 drives will be rather small in size, measuring only 3” long and 0.2” thick. Expect to pay a premium for the new technology, as prices will range from $89 to $209.

[ Active Media ] VIA [ EverythingUSB ]

By David Ponce

Coming in 8GB and 16GB capacities, these tiny SSD drives plug directly into the SATA ports of your motherboard. They feature decent 75MB/s (read) and 30MB/s (write) speeds and only measure 25 x 39 x 6.5 mm. Elecom is trying to market these drives as a quicker startup drive in a regular systems or even a primary drive in a Mini-ITX setup.

Unless we’re missing something, this seems stupid. For one, the square format will block adjacent SATA ports, severely limiting your system’s capacity. Secondly, much larger capacity SSD drives are available for decent prices, so the speed argument is moot. Sure, they’re not as small, but so what? Can anyone tell us, aside from the gee-whiz factor, why these are a good idea?

In any case, they’ll be available for pre-order from GeekStuff4U in a few days at an undetermined price.

[ Press Release (Translated)] VIA [ Gizmologia ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Last week we showed you one of our first SSD’s that we’ve had a chance to review here at OhGizmo. It performed very well, but it was also had a small capacity and a large price tag. If you’re not looking to spend quite that much, but still want to upgrade from that old spinning drive, then you might try more of an entry-level drive. Kingston was kind enough to send over one of their V Series drives, which I’ve spent some time testing.

We were able to test out the SSDNow V Series 128GB Desktop Bundle. 128GB should be plenty of space for most users, though some may still want a secondary drive if they tend to have a lot of larger files that they need. You won’t have to be nearly as careful with space as you would on say the 64GB drive we tested last week.

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By Chris Scott Barr

When you think about upgrading your computer, the first things that usually come to mind are the processor, memory, and if you’re a gamer, the graphics card. In the days where you only had spinning hard drives to consider, you didn’t really gain much from upgrading to a new one, except more storage. Sure, a few extra MB of cache didn’t hurt, but it really didn’t make a huge difference. With solid-state drives becoming increasingly popular, we thought we’d take a look and see just how much you would benefit from upgrading to one.

OCZ was kind enough to send us one of their new Summit series drives to test out. Specifically, the 64GB version. Yes, 64GB doesn’t seem like very much storage, especially when we’re already hearing whispers of 2.5TB hard drives. Then again, I stream my music and videos from a network drive, so aside from a few games and applications, I don’t need tons of space. I might feel more comfortable with a 128GB or 256GB one, which is why they have those options available.  Hit the jump for my full review.

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By Chris Scott Barr

When it comes to solid state drives, there are two main complaints. One being that they are still limited in size, and the other being the high prices. Thankfully as time goes on, we’re seeing bigger drives and lower prices. OCZ is definitely doing its part to keep things moving, as they’ve officially announced the first 1TB SSD.

That’s right, we’ve finally broken the terabyte barrier with SSD drives. The increase in storage space calls for a larger physical drive, which won’t likely upset too many people. The new drive uses the 3.5-inch format, which is rather convenient. Most SSD’s these days are 2.5-inch, and thus don’t fit into desktop PC’s without an extra bit of work, or some type of converter.

So how much is this monster of an SSD going to set you back? Just a small fee of $2,500 is all it takes when the Colossus hit’s store later this month. If you’re too much of a cheapskate to throw down that much cash, then there will also be a 500GB Colossus drive for a lower (and currently undisclosed) price.

[ OCZ ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

This morning Corsair launched a new ‘extreme’ series of solid-state drives that use the Indilinx Barefoot controller, Samsung MLC NAND flash memory and 64MB of on-board cache to achieve read speeds of up to 240MB/sec and and write speeds of up to 170MB/sec. The drives will come in 3 capacities including 32GB, 64GB and 128GB and should be available worldwide immediately. While they’re obviously not the biggest SSDs on the market, if speed is your priority I’m sure these will work quite nicely.

[ Corsair SSDs ]

By Shane McGlaun

The netbook is one of the most popular categories in the notebook market right now. According to recent numbers form DisplaySearch netbooks accounted for 20% of the total notebook market in Q1 2009 and sales keep growing.

Asus sired the netbook category with its Eee netbooks back in 2007 and some of those early machines have tiny SSDs for storage. Super Talent has announced a new line of upgrade SSDs for owners of the Eee 900, 901, 901A, 901 GO, and S101 netbooks.

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By Ian Chiu

We laptop owners can easily run out of storage space since most 2.5″ drives are still relatively small in capacity. Other than paying notebook vendors for over-priced hard drives to keep our warranty and then spending a beautiful weekend afternoon on drive cloning, there is a simpler and time-saving way to expand storage without breaking the bank. This is where OCZ Slate SSD comes in. The USB-based Slate is basically like any other flash drives except it is housed in an ExpressCard. The design allows the storage card to fit snugly inside the ExpressCard slot without the risk of it breaking off. On the opposite side of the ExpressCard connector is a mini USB 2.0 port which can be used for hooking up with desktop PCs or older laptops.

The Slate performance is decent with read speed topping at 30MB/s and write speed hovering between 15 and 17MB/s. The card doesn’t have a native PCI Express interface so USB 2.0 will always remain the bandwidth bottleneck for this product. Everything USB discovered the Slate to be particularly useful for storing music, video & photos as you can easily relocate them to the card and Slate’s speeds can easily handle even multiple 1080p HD playback. Overall, if you’ve an unused ExpressCard slot on your notebook, and don’t plan on getting a 3G wireless modem card, the Slate is something you should check out as an effortless storage option.

[OCZ Slate SSD ExpressCard Review @ Everything USB]

By Shane McGlaun

I have yet to jump on the SSD bandwagon and most consumers are probably the same way. I have tested netbooks with SSDs inside and while the performance gains installing applications and booting the systems are noticeable, they aren’t enough to justify the extra cost in my book.

The price of SSDs is coming down, albeit slowly. Kingston has a new SSD upgrade kit that is now available called the SSDNow M Series that comes with all the gear you need to install an SSD inside your desktop computer or notebook.

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