14 DAY TRIAL // Yet another SandForce-enabled solid-state drive has appeared, or perhaps it would be more accurate to use the phrase “solid-state drive series.”
We aren't sure if this is one of the products subject to that unfortunate problem that SandForce chips were found to suffer from. It probably is.
For those who don't know yet, LSI, the company that has recently bought SandForce, has discovered that the 256-bit AES encryption did not work. Not properly at any rate.
SandForce chips are the only ones with two AES encryption engines. One of them performs 128-bit encryption while the other does 256-bit keys. The problem we are talking about is that the 256-bit engine is restricted to 128-bit too.
Of course, if you aren't overly concerned about security and don't mind waiting until LSI finishes that firmware fix, you shouldn't be bothered by this too much. That said, on to the specs of the Super Talent TeraNova.
The TeraNova solid-state drive line is made up of 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB models. All of them communicate with the host PC via the SATA III interface. That's SATA 6.0 Gbps, for those more familiar with the performance level.
Together, the SandForce S2200 controller and the SATA III bandwidth allow the drives to reach over 500 MB/s when reading or writing data.
Super talent wasn't too specific about the read and write rates, but SF-based units usually go above that mark for both, as opposed to others which, though they may achieve 500+ read speeds, are much slower at writing (though still faster than HDDs by a great deal).
Finally, the company tossed in a special feature: when power is suddenly lost, the TeraNova protects valuable data before the electricity drop can corrupt it. Again, no specifics have been provided as to how this feature works or how the SSD decides which files are important (it might be according to user settings). We're sure it's all in the product manual though.