14 DAY TRIAL // Not too long ago, the 2.5-inch form factor was the smallest available for hard disk drives and solid-state drives (and HDD/SD hybrid for that matter), but things are very different now, and Mushkin is gleefully exploiting that at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Sure, the company has all the expected 2.5-inch drives on display in Las Vegas, Nevada, all powered by the SF-3700 LSI SandForce controller, but the M.2 drives are the ones stealing the show.
And we can understand why. After all, how many other SSDs are there with form factors smaller than your thumb?
Granted, they aren't narrower than your thumb, but they are thinner and, most importantly, shorter.
And even so, Mushkin still managed to cram 512 GB on them, although we suppose that if CompactFlash cards can have 256 GB, then these drives, which are larger, should manage double that amount just fine.
It's not even close to the 2 TB supported by the 2.5-inch Helix drives (Helix is the brand name for all the Mushkin SSDs examined here), but it's still a lot.
Especially since this time last year it was very rare to find any SSD with more than 256 GB, especially at an affordable price.
Not that the M.2 Helix will be all that affordable, but they are small and thin enough to be used in ultrathin tablets/PCs and gadgets.
Mushkin will have competition in terms of LSI SF-3700 SSDs, but for now, it can bask in the glory of being among the very few, if not the only one, with such units on show for the public to see.
That said, the 2.5-inch Helix SSDs and another SSD line called Scorpion II are the only ones that allow enterprise MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory in addition to normal MLC NAND. TLC (triple-cell) can be used on some units as well.
Finally, the newcomers all have DuraWrite, SHIELD Error Correction, RAISE Technology, and Dual AES-256 Encryption. Standard protection on SF-3700 drives. No clue on performance though, but it should be better than the 550 MB/s maximum of SandForce SF-2281 controllers.