1 - A Pretty Solid State

A couple of weeks ago we tested an OCZ Solid State Drive and I made a promise back then. Here at Guru3D we are going to make an effort to introduce to you this fantastic new technology. We really want to de-myth some of the worries and inquiries we had.

SSD is the future, make no mistake. Pricing is still a bit hefty, but with prices roughly halving each year, we entered a stage in this industry where they slowly are getting affordable. Next to the prices going down, the overall read and write speeds are going up. It's a serious win-win situation in the industry, and any manufacturer that is not getting on the big SSD boat is making a big mistake in my opinion.

Today the turn goes to the good people from Silicon Power. Not a company that is very known here in Europe. Yet, by handling some reviews for them, I hope to get them acquainted with you guys as they do make some very nice products.

As you guys know OCZ submitted one of the fastest of the year and cheapest SSD drives available on the market, and they can keep the price down mainly due to the fact that they have been using MLC based NAND flash memory in their SSD's. The downside of such drives is the number of cycles that each set of data cells can be written. Roughly 10,000 times. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but actually it's pretty darn reliable. We'll explain later.

With Silicon Power's product the dynamics change a bit. A couple of weeks ago they released a new series of drives. We got one fresh from the factory, and this is their all new revised version. Optionally they make use of SLC NAND flash based memory. In certain situations this type is not only faster, it's also 10 maybe 20 times more reliable as the number of write cycles (per cell) starts at 100,000 writes. So if the OCZ drive would last 5 years, this one could last 50 years. Such numbers are extremely important, as let's be honest here .. on any PC/Server/workstation there's nothing more important than your data. I mean a broken mainboard you can swap out. But damaged data? That's just horror.

So my feeling for SSD drives is simple, in fact I have a slogan: SLC all the Way !

With my horrible catchphrase out of the way, let's start up this review and see what the fine people from Silicon power have to offer. Next page please.