14 DAY TRIAL // Not a very long time after it launched its Astro Drive 266X Flash Drive, Walton Chaintech has served up a number of new products. The company has introduced a new CompactFlash card line with models of 16GB and 32GB, as well as a device which is capable of combining such cards and act as a solid state drive. This product is known as the Apogee SSD Convertor.
The new line of memory cards is dubbed 606X and is made up of the aforementioned 16Gb and 32GB models. These cards are aimed at DSLR cameras and have read speeds of up to 93 MB/s and write speeds of 91 MB/s. Nevertheless, while DSLR cameras will definitely be able to make the best of the new storage solutions, the Apogee SSD Convertor gives them another use.
The convertor is a 2.5-inch product that can pack either one or two CompactFlash cards and use them “on top of Raid 0 and Raid 1 disk array functions.” When the cards are in place, the Apogee SSD Convertor becomes akin to a solid state drive that can interface with any computer through the SATA 3.0 interface. The maker suggests that the product can reach read speeds of up to 55 MB/s, which is superior to an SSD's 46 MB/s. Nevertheless, this performance will be limited by the actual speed of the CF cards, although this also means that the storage capacity will increase if and more capacious cards are employed.
“The Apogee SSD Convertor is capable of reaching 55MB/sec in actual data read test, which is significantly faster than the 46MB/sec performance of current mainstream 5400-rpm hard disks in terms of transfer efficiency. By choosing high capacity CF cards, users will substantially increase storage capacity without having to replace the convertor, and this greatly boosts the product’s scalability,” the press release states.
Unfortunately, the company's press release did not give out any information on the prices and availability of the products.