Corsair Joins SandForce Bandwagon, Intros Force SSDs

SandForce controllers have bee used in a rather large number of solid state drives from a variety of companies, such as OCZ, A-Data, Team Group, OWC and Viking Modular Solutions. Eager to enter the competition, Corsair has announced that it is now offering SandForce-based SSDs as part of the new Force Series. Through use of the SF-1200 controller, the company has created two models that are ready to start shipping in the near future.

The Corsair Force drives employ the compact 2.5-inch form factor and operate on the SATA 3.0Gbps interface. They are constructed out of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND Flash memory chips and have maximum read and write speeds of 285 MB/s and 275MB/s, respectively. This performance is superior to that of other SSDs, in the case of which the writing speed is significantly lower than the read speed. Not only that but Corsair's storage units support the TRIM functionality and have a mean time before failure (MTBF) of one million hours.

"The Force Series are the fastest SSDs that Corsair has launched to date," stated Kevin Conley, Vice President of Engineering at Corsair. "We have been very impressed with the SandForce SSD Processor innovations in the months that we have been working with them, and we can't wait to get these extraordinarily fast SSDs into the hands of our most demanding customers."

“The SandForce SF-1200 SSD Processor employs revolutionary flash management technology to create a new class of SSD with unparalleled performance and reliability,” said Thad Omura, Vice President of Marketing at SandForce. “We have enjoyed working closely with Corsair to bring this exciting technology to market for Corsair’s large worldwide network of system builders, retailers, and computing enthusiasts.”

The Force devices are available in 100GB and 200GB and should start selling during the next few weeks. Unfortunately, the press release does not give out any pricing information but does mention that the drives will be backed by a two-year warranty.