Oct 22, 2010 08:53 GMT  ·  By

Typically, PCIe SSDs are a lot faster than their SATA counterparts, but they also tend to be significantly more expensive, thus making them slightly out of reach for most consumers out there, even of the enthusiast kind.

[ADMARk=1]However, a company called Angelbird has decided to try out a slightly different approach to this particular issue with the launch of the Wings platform, that will offer somewhat of a modular approach to SSDs, enabling users to add as much storage as they see fit (or, to be perfectly honest, as much memory as they can actually afford).

Practically, the Wings platform is an expandable PCIe controller board with slots for up to four SSDs of 120GB in size, each offering SandForce 1200 controllers.

The main idea here is that users can link up to five fully populated Wings cards together using the ArchWings function, thus increasing both the available storage space and data transfer speed each time they add a new module (from 285 MB/s read, 275 MB/s write with one module up to 1081 MB/s read, 945 MB/s write with four modules).

Plus, as an extra option, connecting one's existing 2.5 inches HDD or SSD is also possible through our universal clip & couplers, included in every box.

The solution is accompanied by a Linux-based operating system called Virtue OS that allows users to manage all of their operating systems on the Mac or PC, intuitively select them at boot, organise the storage spaces, sync data and much more.

Also, users can build and manage the RAID array on the cards and upgrade the firmware safely.

The Angelbird solution starts at just $239, for this price users getting a wired 16 or 32 GB SSD used for booting, but also a significantly lower speed.

However, those who do want to partake into those huge data rates will have to cough up a lot more money, namely somewhere in the vicinity of 1,400 US dollars, which is not exactly a very small sum, all things considered.