|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The new Solid State drives have several advantages over the traditional SATA drives on the market. SSDs have no moving parts meaning that there is no spinning up the platters as other drives based on platters would. This means that the Intel drives are quiet, faster, and require lower power than say a Velociraptor from Western Digital.  X25-M  Bottom shot The drive Intel sent with their X58 kit was an 80GB X25-M drive that is supposed to be the Mainstream version of the SSD lineup they field. Intel also has the X18-M and next year will introduce the X25-E Extreme drive that will have improved write bandwidth of 170MB/second compared to the 70MB/second on the X25-M and improved read latency of 75ms instead of the 85ms on the X25-M.  Sticker  Head on shot Installing Windows Vista is normally done in an hour or so including the time it takes to install SP1. With the Core i7 965 installation time was much speedier than previous CPUs. In point of fact, the drive installed Windows Vista in about ½ the time of a normal installation due to the fact that the HDD platters don't spin up or down. Transferring a large 5.4GB file over the net took about a few minutes or an incredible 250MB/second transfer rate. One of the really cool features that set this drive apart is its size. While the Velociraptor HDD was considered small when I first saw it, this HDD is even smaller and doesn't require the large heatsink that the Velociraptor does. The X25-M requires mounting hardware inside a case or else the drive won't fit, as it is even too small for a 3.5” drive bay. Mounting it on a HDD cage with screws was very intuitive. Contents:
 
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
