Where's the eSATA?
No eSATA interface. Sure and USB 3.0 is nice and all, but there are a hell of a lot more eSATA ports out there and having one on this device would make it far more versatile/useful. Especially in light of the bridge board issue.
Kingston Technology's HyperX Max is the company's latest SSD offering that will be hitting the shelves next month. Packaged as an external drive, it's available in capacities from 64GB to 256GB. Kingston HyperX Max SuperSpeed storekeeper: Kingston Technology's HyperX Max Entirely bus-powered and measuring in at 74 x 119 x …
I second the eSATA comment. If it had this, I could pick it up and use it right now. As it is, it will probably not be useful to me until I (a) go through my next motherboard upgrade cycle, which will probably be a few years from now and (b) go through my next laptop upgrade cycle, which might be a very long time from now as increasingly a number of things that I had to have a laptop for (mobile working), I am starting to be able to do some of on my phone.
Of course I could use it with USB 2.0 (I presume), but that defeats a lot of the purpose of this thing for me. Sorry Kingston - nice try, though.
The best thing about these things is that your average punter ALREADY thinks their external 2.5" HDD is solid-state, and treats them accordingly. I've lost count of the times I've seen them unplugged while spinning, dropped, chucked into bags, turned upside down while writing and otherwise abused, and the owners always expresses suprise when I point out that they wouldn't treat their laptops that way and expect them to survive...
I agree that the reading speed is significantly slower than a typical internal drive but the sequential writing speed is in fact somewhat faster than my Intel 80 Gb X25 (by most of 30 Mb/sec). As an external storage drive the read/write performance balance is pretty reasonable - as long as the price is of course!
I have a question though, might be a bit dimwitted but here we go. TRIM-support, does it have it and how does the mob support it? Anyone know?
Anandtech have just published a short review that includes read/write speed tests highly relevant to this drives use as an _external_ storage drive.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4032/quick-look-kingston-hyperx-max-30-a-usb-30-v100-ssd
My thanks to El Reg for a very timely heads up on this piece of kit - think I know what I will be asking Santa for now!