Tag: Intel

Today we are taking a look at one of Intel’s 2.5″ solid state drive models, the X25-M SSDSA2MH160G1C1. This solid state drive had quite the reputation back when it was released. It was, in the opinion of some people, the “best flash storage drives money can buy”. This drive uses 34nm technology, and having no moving parts makes this drive run cool and quiet. Since it has no moving parts, it’s less susceptible to vibrations and damage. The drive has a rated 1.2 million hours mean time before failure.

It has a lower power consumption than traditional hard drives, allowing your company to save more money on electricity bills. This makes it perfect for laptops as well because it can increase reduces your laptop’s power consumption and thus, increasing your battery life. Intel makes it easy for industries to migrate their technology from their hard drives to the solid state drives with Intel’s Data Migration Software. It supports Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, and XP.

Search for benchmark reviews on the web and you can see that the X25-M SSDSA2MH160G1C1 performing quite nicely for its value.

SSDSA2MH160G1C1 Specifications

Intel has released its new DC S3500 Series SSD. This Intel product seems to cater more to enterprise customers that don’t require as much writing endurance prowess as its enterprise counterpart, the S3700.The S3500 should be enough for a majority of enterprise users.

Cloud computing and data centers running on hard disk drive models will see significant improvements moving over to an all-SSD storage model. The S3500 specializes in read-intensive applications such as Web hosting, cloud computing and data center virtualization. it outperforms the S3700 in 128KB sequential reading and writing. AnandTech has done a performance review of the S3500 versus the S3700 and competing SSD’s in the enterprise market. Data centers will see increased multicore CPU utilization, reduced rack space, and lower power consumption.

Expect to see a consistent performance from Intel SSDs. NAND by design, require a lot of maintenance to prolong the endurance and keep it performing at a high level. Intel has always promoted consistent performance over variable performance of their SSDs. They prefer consistent maintenance of their SSDs compared to competing brands that don’t have a regular maintenance schedule on their drives. In this way, the S3500 will experience less hiccups or predictable latencies and provide a much smoother performance.

Intel DC S3500 Specifications

Intel boasts that the use of their products will give owners huge savings and benefits as a direct result of reduced power consumption, more consistent performance and smaller space requirements. They say that S3500 will increase the IO performance of cloud computing and data centers. This will allow them to transfer more data faster than traditional hard drives.

The new Intel S3500 series come with built in data protection systems. They are designed with small capacitors that will provide the SSD with backup power to finish its operations in the event that a power outage occurs.

Intel will be offering the S3500 through Intel approved distributors such as Saitech Inc. and resellers at a suggested price range of  $115 for the 80GB drive and $979 for the 800GB drive. It also comes with a 5 year warranty.