14 DAY TRIAL // We've just finished talking about a fairly generic line of solid state drives, even if they do use SandForce chips with shortcomings, so now we get to cover a less ordinary series.
And by less ordinary, we mean that the solid state drives have a more uncommon form factor and connectivity interface.
Solid state drives are known as the smaller but faster storage products, with hard disk drives being the slower ones but capable of storing much more data.
The MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof 3 SSD series takes the idea of “small” and runs with it, like other mSATA drives.
With capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB, the drives should prove quite useful in ultrabooks where compactness is law.
The first two will work fine as SSD caching solutions while the latter pair will fit as HDD replacements on more expensive models.
That said, the performance is of up to 500 MB/s when reading and 300 MB/s when writing (mSATA 6.0 Gbps). The lower-capacity SSDs probably won't reach that high, but the other two will probably have no problems.
As for prices, they range between $49.99 / 40 Euro and $279.99 / 229.90 Euro. Sales should already be underway and a new Firmware is promised for July, which will enable maximum IOPS rates.
There is a second series of solid state drives that MyDigitalSSD released alongside the BulletProof 3: Smart Series.
They have SandForce controllers and the same SATA III interface as above, plus synchronous NAND Flash (BP3 use Asynchronous).
The available capacities are 64 GB, 128 GB and 356 GB while the prices are of $99.99 / 79.96 Euro, $179.99 / 143.93 Euro and $319.99 / 255 Euro. See the Bullet Proof 3 and Smart Series product pages for more details.