5-Way SSD Round-Up: Sandforce vs. JMicron

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 10:27 AM EDT

It is hard to believe that almost two years has passed since we first rounded-up some of the first solid state drive offerings for the PC. Since that time, the landscape has changed dramatically. Capacities have increased somewhat, but performance has been improved significantly. Many early solid sate drives suffered from terrible stuttering issues and offered performance that was actually lower than much more affordable, traditional hard drives. Today though, SSDs are far more stable and reliable and their performance is orders-of-magnitude better than even the fastest of hard drives.

Despite the rapid pace of advancement in the SSD space, innovation doesn't seem to be slowing. With that in mind, we've pulled together a quintet of the newest drives to hit the market, based on recently released controller designs from SandForce and long-time player JMicron, the SF1200 and JM612, respectively. We've got drives from OCZ, OWC, Corsair, and Patriot Memory on tap, but before we dig into the products themselves, let's take some time to talk about the controllers at the heart of the drives. It is, after all, the SSD's controller that determines much of how a drive will behave and perform in the real-world... SandForce and JMicron Based Drives From OCZ, OWC, Patriot and Corsair -- One of These Drives Is Not Like the Others...

5-Way SSD Round-Up: Sandforce vs. JMicron

Tags: SSD, OCZ, Corsair, Storage, SATA, OWC, Patriot, solid state

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com