2009's Top Solid-State Drives
High speed storage with no moving parts
Kit of the Year Solid-state drives have yet to truly challenge magnetic media when it comes to storage capacity and the price you pay for it. But 2009 saw a bumper crop of SSDs as Flash and storage specialists really tried to drive performance.
Some even pushed low capacity but cheap drives in a bid not to replace the HDD but to work alongside it...
Kingston SSD Now V 40GB
Kingston has delivered a disguised Intel X25-M that will transform your PC for a trivial amount of cash. The 40GB SSD Now V delivers on read performance and that’s exactly what you need when you’re starting Windows or loading an application off the disk and into memory. Provided punters can handle the discipline of uninstalling unwanted application and games, we predict that the Kingston will make massive inroads into the desktop market.
Read the full review
Reg Rating 90%
Price £70 (standalone drive), £75 (desktop upgrade kit)
Crucial CT256M225 256GB
There’s no denying that the thick end of £400 is a hefty price to pay for storage, but with the M225, Crucial is delivering superb value for money and a level of performance that is quite astounding. This 256GB SSD delivers in every department and shows that you can get performance and decent capacity at a reasonable price.
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Reg Rating 90%
Price £480
Samsung PB22-J 256GB
An SSD with a capacity large enough for your desktop PC, Samsung's drive hits 256GB yet the price won’t make your eyes water. The up-front cost is high, but on a pound-per-gigabyte basis, it's not half bad. And it's a great performer, too.
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Reg Rating 90%
Price £500
Best of the Rest
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Patriot Torqx/OCZ Vertex 128GB
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Kingston SSD Now V 128GB
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Intel X25-M (34nm) 160GB
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COMMENTS
TRIM?
None of those drives support the sata 'trim' command.
I think I'll wait another couple of months.
Best upgrade I ever made
I bought the 128Gb variant of the Crucial drive and replaced the hard drive on my MacBook. It's made such a huge performance improvement; I'd highly recommended SSD drives to any laptop user. I've noticed a particular improvement in running VMs (especially XP) and IntelliJ (when it goes off to index stuff, for example).
The capacity could be seen as a bit limiting, but once I put all of my videos and other large documents on a NAS, I've not been complaining.
And what about SLC drives for us performance freaks?
Why haven't Ingram been able to get the intel X25-e for over a month now? They've just slipped the ETA back to 11/12/2009.
Are Intel using Farther Xmas for deliveries?
Waiting to join the SSD revolution
Have had two Crucial X32 SSD drives die in a whiff of smoke now. Both have been RMA'd. Can't help feeling that the SSD technology still has some way to go.
Old timer
I remember the original SSD; magnetic core memory. It was made by hand, they threaded the bits one at a time. I also remember when all this was fields.
