Solid-State computer drive storage is poised to have it's best year ever in 2012. Not just in terms of unit shipment volumes, but in awesome performance at very affordable prices.

OCZ Technologies continues to lead the pack. Fast and cheap SSD's like the OCZ Octane Series SSD deliver more bang for the buck than any solid-state drive in history. Their recent acquisition of Indilinx and its controller technology assures OCZ direct control over production capacity, design and specs of one of it's most critical components. No other company has done more for advancing the SSD market than OCZ.

Unit shipments of SSD drives are on a sharp uptick that's showing no signs of stopping. As more and more laptop and (to a lesser degree) desktop computers incorporate stock solid-state drives, there appears there will be no let-up in demand for the foreseeable future.

Hybrid SSD drives are clearly the inevitable route to both high-performance storage and affordable capacity. Seagate just released their second-generation Hybrid, the Momentus XT 750 GB Solid State Hybrid Drive that not only rectifies some of the problems of the 1st generation drives, but has refinements that takes performance to the next level. I'd suspect by the end of 2012 Seagate will take this 2.5" laptop SSD Hybrid to 1 Terabyte capacity.

The reliability of SSD storage has always been a strong selling point of SSD technology. And it only gets better. SSD drives have evolved steadily with smarter controllers and firmware that manage block allocation, wear leveling and drive reliability and Read/Write endurance with absolute finesse. Enterprise users need this MTBF reliability - and casual consumers with far less demanding needs will simply enjoy hassle-free storage technology.

Lastly, although SSD's have been primarily an INTERNAL storage solution -- The explosion of USB 3.0 SuperSpeed and Intel ThunderBolt ports slated for 2012 are going to drive a growing interest in EXTERNAL SSD drives to take advantage of the huge leap in bandwidth. So expect a lot of products that leverage solid-state drives for auxiliary and backup storage to show up in droves.

Tags: Best SSD 2012, 2012 SSD Technology

As 5th and 6th generation SATA SSD drives hit the scene in 2011 - Here's some technology advancements, predictions and product trends to watch for:

1. "Me Too" performance. Most SSD's are based on a very few drive and NAND flash controller chipsets available to OEMS. Some SSDs are simply rebranded OEM reference designs - and that puts many of them in the same ballpark of performance. With few exceptions, SandForce controller based drives are delivering the best overall consumer SSD prices and benchmarks

2. Incremental speed gains thru minor Firmware tweaks, cache size options and flash memory clock speed timing is what differentiates many drives in benchmark tests. But these performance differences may become less apparent to end users.

3. The emergence of SATA III - 6Gbps interface SSD drives. The new Serial ATA 3 spec provides the potential to DOUBLE SSD performance - in theory. As more personal computers begin to include SATA III controllers, solid-state drives will take advantage of the increased bandwidth - but unless in multi-drive RAID configurations, NAND flash speeds have to improve too.

4. 3.5" form-factor solid-state drives have become more common. Consumers want a drop-in drive replacement option and would rather not fuss with SSD adapters and brackets and whatnot. Early full-size SSD's cost a premium, but now there's little price differences between 2.5 and 3.5 models.

5. The return of more SSD drives with USB mini ports built-in - Especially SuperSpeed USB 3.0 SSD's. There's just alot of convenience with built-in USB. JMicron's revised SSD controller chipset supports this very convenient USB transfer option. Many 2nd tier SSD suppliers will rebrand JMicron based drives and compete heavily in the cheap SSD 'value' end of the market.

6. JMicron 61X controller based SSDs don't suffer from the bad reputation of slow writes and 'stuttering' that plagued their 1st and 2nd generation JMF 60X based SSDs. The JMF supports much larger DRAM cache sizes and works with a wider variety of NAND flash chips: Toshiba, Intel, and Micron - in addition to Samsung flash. Still, this controller family is only right for 'Value' drives - not top performance.

7. Intel's in-house design fab will continue to push the efficient and optimized SSD performance envelope. Intel was getting leap-frogged by the new SandForce controller drives. However, Intel's 3rd generation Intel 510 Series SSD - is now shipping in 2011 to keep up with the competition.

8. Product branding and SSD naming conventions will continue to confuse buyers in the consumer market. What's the difference between an OCZ Summit - Vertex - Apex - Turbo - EX - Solid - Solid v2 and Solid 2 series SSD? Or... a SuperTalent LE - ME - GX - GX2 - DX drive? Deep analysis of the variants by cross-referencing spec sheets and Read/Write numbers will still be needed.

9. The arrival of 5Gbps SuperSpeed USB 3.0 peripherals in 2011 will open up opportunities for higher-capacity USB 3 SSD's to be used as external backup drives. Perhaps right only for those who can afford the large 500GB+ SSD sizes most people want in a back-up disk. USB3 and Solid-State drives - especially in a RAID configuration - are a great match for the available bandwidth the SuperSpeed bus offers.

10. Likewise, the even more capable 10Gbps Intel and Mac ThunderBolt Interface introduced on Apple's MacBook Pro and iMac line will provide plenty of excess bandwidth for years to come. It's a match made in heaven for the solid-state future of Multi-Drive storage arrays.

11. SSD price competition in 2011 will likely be heaviest in the 100-GB-128GB drive market. It seems to be the sweet spot of SSD affordability with enough capacity to meet most users needs. Price pressure - and endless rebate promos will likely pull these down from around $250 closer to under $200 by the end of 2011.

Tags: 2011 SSD, Best SSD 2011

OCZ's solid-state drive line must be on it's 6th or 7th iteration of refinements since it first launched it's Solid and Core line barely a few years back. So given their penchant for horrible naming schemes, we now have the '2' line of drives - TWO as in "Let's forget the last FIVE Vertex variants we released..."

Well maybe it's all worth putting up with, cuz advancements in the OCZ Vertex 2 Series
and it's performance should make any speed freak geek happy. Max Read: up to 285MB/s, Max Write: up to 275MB/s, Sustained Write: up to 250MB/s. Take that Intel!

Of note is the change of DRIVE CAPACITY. With the Vertex 2 line, they're now in 50GB, 100GB, 200GB sizes. Lets assume OCZ is setting some room aside on the flash disk to make sure these drives to maintain peak performance over their lifetime.

Tags: 2010 SSD

As we head to the end of 2009 - the truly decent 2.5" SATA SSD's worth buying and give the best bang for the buck can be simplified down to a handful. The broad adoption of Indilinx and Samsung controller chips - combined with ample on-board cache has taken performance to new levels - and leveled out the playing field.

The best value lies in these few drives: An OCZ Agility, A Super Talent UltraDrive ME, The Patriot Torqx or Warp V3 Series, and an OCZ Vertex & Summit -- or perhaps a RAID 0 Apex. The rest of the chart below - from BenchMarkReviews.com - was cropped out - It just wasn't worth bothering with - altho Corsair's latest Samsung/Indilinx models probably should have had a spot on the list, as the still highly respectable Intel SSD G1 and G2 drives.

In the OCZ Vertex drive variants and Firmware Revs shown below - the performance differences may matter only to the incremental Tweaky-Geeks who live by a stop-watch or have bleeding-edge wallets. The designs, controller chips, clock-speed of the flash memory chips used - are all leveling out to a basic commodity used in most of the drives these days. Any of the handful of SSD's above will deliver GREAT performance far, far exceeding your original SATA hard drive.

Tags: indilinx ssd, samsung SSD, fastest ssd

OCZ ain't the only game in town for solid-state drives. Patriot Memory is aggressively nipping at their heels for mind and market share - and is gunning after OCZ's latest offerings by countering with the Patriot Torqx solid-state drives using the same 'Barefoot' Indilinx controller for comparable performance to OCZ's highly respected Vertex lineup.

As this consolidation in the flash memory drive market continues - and as OEM components used in the marjority of drives becomes more common -- Price, and not 'me too' performance will differentiate variosu brands of drives. Performance will flatline somewhat because they're using basically the same hardware, so a leveling of the playing field will characterize the SSD drive market in late 2009. Several companies are now using the Indilinx or Samsung controller chipset - and regardless of brand - you'll love the smooth performance!

On the low-end, JMicron is revising it's somewhat dissapointing controller chip with a redesign and larger cache. Should help with occasional SSD Write issues and noticeably improve SSD performance on the value end of the market.

Tags: 2009 SSD, torqx ssd