Archivi Blog
Samsung SSD 840 Pro caters to speed seekers with faster random access
It’s difficult to thrive in the solid-state drive world. Unless you’ve got just the right controller and flash memory, most performance-minded PC users will rarely give you a second glance. Samsung muscled its way into that narrow view with the SSD 830 last year; it intends to lock our attention with the new SSD 840 and SSD 840 Pro. The Pro’s 520MB/s and 450MB/s sequential read and write speeds are only modest bumps over the 830, but they don’t tell the whole story of just how fast it gets. The upgraded MDX controller boosts the random read access to a nicely rounded 100,000IOPS, and random writes have more than doubled to 78,000IOPS or 90,000IOPS, depending on who you ask and what drive you use. The improved performance in either direction is a useful boost to on-the-ground performance, as both AnandTech and Storage Review will tell you. We’re waiting on details of the ordinary triple level cell-based 840 model beyond its 120GB, 250GB and 500GB capacities, although there won’t be an enormous premium for the multi-level cell 840 Pro over existing drives when it arrives in mid-October — the flagship line should start at $100 for a basic 64GB drive, and peak at $600 for the ultimate 512GB version.
The Folderix Flash Drive
We have featured quite a few different USB drives here at Geeky Gadgets over the years, the latest one is called the Folderix Flash Drive, and as the name suggests it is designed to look like a folder icon.
The Folderix Flash Drive comes with 4GB of storage built in, and it is available in a range of colors, which include yellow, blue and purple.
Lexar Outs Speedy USB 3.0 Flash Drive
Lexar has unveiled a slick new flash drive for those of you needing to move large files around and need speed. The new flash drives plug into the USB 3.0 port and have very fast write times. The flash drives come in three capacities.
The capacities include 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. The family is called the JumpDrive Triton and boast up to 155MB/s read and 150MB/s write speeds. The flash drives are $69.99 for the 16GB and $109.99 for the 32GB version.
The price of the 64GB version isn’t offered. The drives are all in metal alloy cases and have retractable USB ports so there’s no cap to lose. If you back up large files to a flash drive and have a USB 3.0 port, this is the drive for you.
via EverythingUSB
SanDisk outs Extreme Pro SDXC, Mobile Ultra microSDXC, new Cruzer USB sticks
Super Talent USB 3.0 Express RC8 looks like a thumb drive, acts like an SSD
It seems too much to hope for, but Super Talent insists it has the benchmarks to prove it: a USB 3.0 stick that achieves 270MB/s reads and 240MB/s writes under optimal conditions. Unlike your average joe flash drive, the RC8 boasts a fully-fledged (albeit previous-generation) SandForce SSD controller that permits the simultaneous use of eight channels of NAND memory. In other words, this zippy little thing actually is an SSD, enclosed in an aluminum case that measures 1-inch wide, 4-inches long and 0.3-inches thick. No definitive word on pricing yet, but it was reported at Computex that a 50GB variant would go for around $110, while 25GB and 100GB capacities will also be available. Now, could someone please hurry up and build a Thunderbolt version?
Microsoft to malware: your AutoRunning days on Windows are numbered
Beware, malware. The Windows AutoRun updates for Vista and XP SP3 that Microsoft released in February have so far proven successful in thwarting your file corrupting ways. Although Windows 7 was updated to disable AutoPlay within AutoRun for USB drives — freezing the ability for a virus to exploit it — the aforementioned versions had remained vulnerable up until right after January. Fast-forward to the period between February and May of this year, and the updates have reduced the number of incidents by 1.3 million compared to the three months prior for the supported Vista and XP builds. Amazingly, when stacked against May of last year, there was also a 68 percent decline in the amount of incidents reported across all builds of Windows using Microsoft’s Malicious Software Remove Tool. There’s another fancy graph after the break to help illustrate, and you’ll find two more along with a full breakdown by hitting the source link down under.
PhotoFast i-FlashDrive does USB on one end, 30-pin dock connector on the other (Video)
AirStash wireless flash drive (and iOS app) review
We love ourselves extra storage as much as the next guy, and we also happen to hate cables as much the next guy, so whenever a device promises some extra wiggle room with no strings attached, we’re all ears. The AirStash is a wireless flash drive that lets you expand the capacity of your mobile device up to 32GB at a time through swappable SD cards, freeing up local storage for apps and the like. We first got our paws on one back at CES, but now that it’s a shipping product and has a finalized iOS app, we gave it a quick shakedown as promised to see whether this gadget is worth dipping into your personal stash for.
Kingston refreshes DataTraveler Ultimate USB 3.0 flash drive, demonstrates the high price of speed
Sick and tired of the Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0′s slow-as-molasses 80MB/sec read speeds? Good news, the flash drive has been souped up for a second generation, offering up 100MB/sec read and 70 MB/sec write speeds when plugged into a USB 3.0 port — plugging into a 2.0 port should give you in the neighborhood of 30MB/s for both read and write. That speed ain’t cheap, however — the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB drives will run you $77, $116, and $213, respectively. The drives are available now and the press release is after the break — if you can catch it.
The Collector concept turns unused microSD cards into a refillable thumb drive
Digging through our drawers here at Engadget there is one thing we’re clearly not in desperate need of: USB flash drives. We also happen to have a plethora of microSD cards in 1GB an 2GB sizes, left over from the days when picking a smartphone meant Windows Mobile or BlackBerry. This concept USB drive, dubbed The Collector, could potentially solve our conundrum by allowing us to toss all those thumb drives and find a use for our now homeless microSD chips. The Collector wouldn’t have any storage of its own, instead you’d slip up to three microSD cards into it and, when full, simply swap them out for more. It would also combine your smaller chunks of storage into a single block, so those three 2GB scraps would become a slightly less useless 6GB drive. Of course, keeping that pile of microSD cards (now bound by common data) organized might actually be a bigger headache than rifling through your drawers looking for that OFWGKTA mixtape you downloaded so many months ago.
