Buffalo MicroStation 32GB external SSD

You can picture Team Buffalo's thinking. Solid-state drives are increasingly being used in notebooks, so why don't we put one in an external storage device? That's what it did, and the result is the MicroStation SSD. Buffalo MicroStation SSD Buffalo's MicroStation SSD: glorified - but fast - USB Flash drive But did no one …

[Anonymous Coward]

so...

not time to change from spinning rust - yet

[Steven Jones]

Purpose?

I've no idea what the purpose of this device is. I should add that I'm seriously sold on SSD for a primary disk. The 256GB unit I have in my PC was very expensive, but absolutely transforms the performance and usability of my machine.

However, when it comes to bulk storage of large files or use as a backup device, then HDDs are far more cost effective. As far as this particular device is concerned, then it's too small for a sensible backup device for most people and the dreadful random write performance means that copying significant numbers of small files (or resynching them) will take an age. Sequential write rate is OK, but some HDDs will beat that.

Given the performance characteristics, then I guess it would peform well for lots of small random file reads, but I'm not sure what sort of data you'd hold on an external storage device to justify the cost. I suppose it is physically more roubst than an HDD, but 99% of purposes I would have thought a USB flash drive would be fine with a smaller footprint and lower costs.

There is no way this thing is an HDD killer under any circumstances.

nb. a plea to testers - please report on read & write latency times. Reporting random access performance by data rates misses the point...

[Citizen Kaned]

sucker....

man, what a waste of cash.

you say why use this as a backup drive? you wouldnt. nobody in their right mind would use ssd yet for this. apart from you by the looks of it.

most people would just have a 40-60gb SSD drive for their OS and apps then run a HDD for everything else. im mulling it over to see if it makes windows and a game any faster. i will still keep my 1/2 tb drive for backups and media as that will be fine.

[Chris Elvidge]

Price per Gig?

Buffalo 32GB = 100 quid; Kingston 64GB SSD = 140 USD plus what, a tenner for the case (SATA/USB). No contest really.

[Tom_]

Stupid question?

How is this better than an SD card? Is it just that access is faster? I'm asking because my netbook (Samsung NC10) has a built in SD card slot. SD cards are really tiny and you can get a 32GB one for a similar price to this SSD. So would there be any point in getting the SSD?

[Stuart Archer]

Gwah..

Surely drives of this type are crying out for a USB 3.0 interface? Anyone?

[A B 3]

RE: Stupid question

SD cards max out at 6 Megabytes a second. Class 4 means 4MB/s. Class 6 means 6MB/s. Compact Flash can be found faster, unfortunately it's unpopular because of the size.

[Cthonus]

Buffalo tech support fail

Given a lot of us are still waiting for a proper fix for a wake-on-LAN issue EIGHT months after the initial issue was raised I'd be wary of purchasing any Buffalo product again.

They takes your money and they leaves you waiting.

[Andus McCoatover]

Not bad, in reality..

Being a Ubuntu Fanboi, the only thing* I'd be concerned about would be write lifetime.

My home machine's ancient, but I'd use "Spinning Rust" as the swap drive. Not for speed, but reliability. It's only 14Gigs (and only half-full!), but does what I'd do. Yep, this SDD drive's getting a reasonable bit of interest from the McCoatover household. (Face it, diff. in price is no more than a decent Friday lager&curry night out)

* These teeny-weeny connectors also worry me. Misalign once, tata. My other bits of kit at home all have little "sacrificial" USB cables. OK, cuts failure by 50%, but it's a start.