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SSDs for the masses, 2014 edition

Dave Farquhar Hardware June 3, 2014June 2, 2014intel, micron, PNY, samsung, toshiba

If you’re looking for alternatives to nasty platters of spinning rust for storing your data, I have good news for you: SSDs are getting cheaper, and fast. They aren’t as cheap as rust, but there’s probably a good reason for that if you think about it for a minute.

PNY has been tempting me all year with the PNY XLR8, a 240 GB drive that typically sells for $80-$90 after a rebate. It uses an inexpensive controller to deliver middling performance, but compared to the speed that spinning rust can deliver, it’s still going to be pretty good. Then Micron came along with its Crucial MX100, which delivers 240 GB for $110, or 480 GB for $225, along with enthusiast-grade performance. Read more

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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And it looks like OCZ is no more

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 28, 2013April 3, 2025kingston, ocz, toshiba

Last night I saw reports that OCZ’s main creditor is forcing it to liquidate, and OCZ has an agreement to sell most of its assets to Toshiba.

Dave Farquhar

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The problem with Lifehacker’s computer manufacturer ranking

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 20, 2013October 11, 2019android, apple, asus, black friday, dell, hp, lifehacker, toshiba, Western Digital

Lifehacker posted a controversial computer manufacturer ranking this week. I’m not sure how you can rank anything with Apple, HP, and Dell in it and not be controversial–someone’s going to be offended that their favorite isn’t at the top and their least favorite isn’t dead last–and while I agree with it more than I disagree with it, there are at least three problems with it.

So, let’s go. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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SSDs might be getting less interesting, but that’s not necessarily bad

Dave Farquhar Hardware January 12, 2013November 3, 2025amd, apple, Ars Technica, CES, consolidation, corsair, intel, kingston, samsung, toshiba, Western Digital

Ars Technica has a story about SSD news coming out of CES.

Basically, they’re predicting that the big news this year will be consolidation and lower prices. That may be bad news for someone who writes about SSDs for a living (I don’t), but good news for consumers. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Flash memory is cheap, and maybe as cheap as it’s going to be for a while

Dave Farquhar Hardware July 31, 2012toshiba

If you’re in the market for anything that uses flash memory–USB thumb drives, memory cards, SSDs–this is a good time to buy. Toshiba is cutting its production by 30%, citing oversupply in the market. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The Samsung SSD 830: A user review

Dave Farquhar Hardware May 26, 2012April 2, 2025dell, Dell Inspiron, firefox, intel, kingston, nvidia, ocz, ramdisk, samsung, toshiba

I didn’t need much convincing to purchase a Samsung 830 SSD; I was in the market for a bigger SSD, and my short list consisted of Samsung and Intel drives. So when I found a good price on a 128 GB Samsung 830, I bought two.

The laptops I put the drives in aren’t able to fully take advantage of what the 830 brings to the table, but it’s still a worthwhile upgrade. I thought that two months ago when I installed them, and two months of living with them hasn’t changed my mind. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Remember Plextor? Now they’re making SSDs.

Dave Farquhar Hardware April 9, 2012April 3, 20251990s, anandtech, apple, intel, kingston, kodak, marvell, micron, ocz, plextor, samsung, Taiyo Yuden, toshiba

Those of you who’ve been around as long as I have–which is probably most of you–will remember Plextor as the maker of the very best SCSI CD-ROM drives back when there was a market for SCSI CD-ROM drives. I had one, and I haven’t used it in years, but I relied on it, especially when I was doing A/V work. And it never, ever let me down. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The mainstream places a bet on SSDs

Dave Farquhar Hardware October 27, 2011intel, jmicron, marvell, ocz, samsung, toshiba

I just saw that LSI Corporation bought Sandforce, maker of high-performance SSD controllers, earlier this week for $400 million.

LSI makes a lot of things. I’ve owned a couple of SCSI controllers over the years with their chips on them. I’ve administered servers with their RAID controllers in them. They also make system-on-a-chip solutions.

Dave Farquhar

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Upgrade diary: Compaq Presario C552US

Dave Farquhar Hardware July 9, 2011July 9, 2011apple, compaq, intel, spartan, toshiba, vista, Western Digital, windows 7, Windows Vista

The Presario C552US shipped from the factory with a 1.6 GHz Celeron M single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, and Windows Vista Home Basic.

It’s the most miserable computing experience I’ve seen in a very long time, if ever. I don’t know how they ever sold a single one of these machines, performing like that.

Fortunately, there’s room to improve it.

Dave Farquhar

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Samsung, Samsung, and more Samsung

Dave Farquhar Hardware April 19, 2011apple, samsung, toshiba, Western Digital

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. Yesterday Samsung announced its hard disk business was for sale. Today it announced Seagate was buying it for $1.375 billion in cash and stock, a slight discount from the asking price.

So after the deals finish shaking down, Seagate and Western Digital will each have somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the market, and Toshiba around 10 percent.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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