Features

• Free utility works to overcome SSD slowness

  To understand why I love the tiny, free FlashFire utility/driver, you'll need a little background. I bought an original Acer Aspire One netbook with an 8GB solid state drive instead of a hard drive to keep the weight down. I replaced its custom Linux OS with XP--but XP, not being optimized for a super-slow SSD such as the one on my netbook, froze every half minute or so for 5 to 15 seconds while data was written to the disk. It's not long before such behavior starts driving you nuts.

• Seagate's pulsar drives bring SSD to enterprise primetime

  Seagate jumped into the SSD (solid state drive) market today with the unveiling of its Pulsar drives. SSD drives have been a growing segment, but Seagate adds significant credibility and opens up new possibilities for the nascent technology.

• Despite the cost, SSDs are great value

  Solid-state drives recently hit the 1-terabyte mark with the release of the US$3,300 OCZ Colossus 1TB SSD. Obviously, drives at this price point are not aimed at masses. Yet, from a historical perspective the Colossus is remarkably cheap. It's easy to forget that just a few short years ago, neither mainstream SSDs nor 1TB drives existed at any price. It's also important to remember that smaller, affordable SSDs are available today and represent an incredible value.

• Four considerations for SSD deployment

  While solid state drives offer increased performance, the key to figuring out the role they can play in the data center is balancing that performance against cost.

• Automated tiering key to getting value from SSDs

  Though flash storage could be the most powerful tool yet for IT administrators who want to speed up access to frequently used data, reaping its benefits may require automation software that has just begun to emerge from the major storage vendors.

• SNW highlights SSDs, more

  At Storage Networking World a couple of weeks ago, the focus was on solid-state drives and cloud technologies.

• Solid-state drives go mainstream

  Just about everyone has heard the hype surrounding solid-state drives, but only now are we starting to see SSDs get a foothold as a storage alternative for everyday use. The market is flooded with options, and the performance we've seen from several of the latest drives in our tests back up some of the claims that SSD supporters have made about the technology's advantages.

• Review: Hard disk vs. solid-state drive -- is an SSD worth the money?

  Solid-state disk (SSD) drives are all the rage among techies. The drives use non-volatile NAND flash memory, meaning there are no moving parts. Because there is no actuator arm and read/write head that must seek out data on a platter like on a hard disk drive (HDD), they are faster in reading and, in most cases, writing data.