Super Talent intros a sub-$300, 128GB solid-state drive -- things will never be the same

If you've been waiting for SSD prices to drop to reasonable ranges -- now may be the time to put the credit card down. Super Talent has begun selling its 128GB, 2.5-inch, SATA II "MasterDrive LX" for the shocking affordable price of $299, which works out to about $2.49 per gigabyte. If that still puts of pinch on your pocketbook (and what doesn't right now?), then perhaps you can be enticed by the company's 64GB offering, which clocks in at a fairly doable $179. With prices this low, you barely have a defense against purchase... unless, you know... you don't have the money. Then we totally understand.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

[Allan @ Sep 30th 2008 8:25AM]

Ya, the price is good. But if the performance sucks, it's not even worth it.

[M3Ls @ Sep 30th 2008 8:29AM]

I concur.

[Will @ Sep 30th 2008 8:34AM]

100 mb/s reading is considered fast, 40 mb/s write is.. fastish. It's not an amazing speed demon, but it's still a decent SSD and will perform admirably.

[pball_inuyaha @ Sep 30th 2008 9:06AM]

Something I'd like to know is the average speed of IDE and SATA HDDs. Because I've never seen hard drive speeds advertised like they are with SSDs

[Chuckles McGee @ Sep 30th 2008 9:13AM]

Yes, but excellent performance does little good if you can't get a hold of one. Looks like this features the both.

[sidewinderx2 @ Sep 30th 2008 9:34AM]

pball: to see a general performance benchmark between some SSDs and SATA drives (including the blazing fast VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM drives), go here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=1

It's an article about some Intel SSDs they're releasing soon, but it still has relevent data, and some potential reasons for not buying these ones...

[pball_inuyaha @ Sep 30th 2008 9:59AM]

Thanks sidewinderx2
I didn't notice actual speeds given, but it's very informative and interesting

[Knives_Out @ Sep 30th 2008 10:21AM]

yea .. I'll wait till performance gets a bit better. multiple read/write applications going at the same time really destroys most of these cheap drives.

[Basic @ Sep 30th 2008 12:01PM]

Beware of SuperTalent quality. It's not always been so great.

Whats the MTBF? What kind of write leveling (if any)?

[Kevin @ Sep 30th 2008 2:46PM]

I wonder if i can put it in my dell 910... oh wait... it hasn't shipped yet...

[Phil Perman @ Sep 30th 2008 8:44AM]

A message to everyone planning on buying a cheap SSD, read this

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=7

Most cheap SSD's at the moment have massive issues with random writes, so while it might blaze through file transfers, in normal use it will cause the computer to actually feel slower.

I recommend that everyone planning on buying one looks out for a good review beforehand, otherwise you'll just be wasting your money

[sidewinderx2 @ Sep 30th 2008 9:30AM]

Good to see another Anandtech reader here :)

And yes, that article is very important... i was kinda questioning these drives cus Super Talent was one of the manufactures named in with the abysmal random write performance issues.

Mayhaps they changed the controller? I hope so...

[mmendoza27 @ Sep 30th 2008 11:36AM]

Thanks for pointing this article out. I read it a couple of weeks ago. I've been reading Anandtech more often lately because of genius articles like this. It explains the differences between MLC and SLC and how the technology works. I'm waiting for SSD to drop in price and increase in performance.

[nikster @ Sep 30th 2008 3:45PM]

thx for the link - much appreciated.

[DS @ Sep 30th 2008 8:50AM]

Who cares whether you have the money? You're buying this all on credit anyway, right? If one card is maxed out, get another. It's the American way!

I'm waiting for

1) Intel SSDs to drop in price
2) Toshiba to offer them in its laptops

[iEye @ Sep 30th 2008 8:55AM]

with a name like "Super * Talent" ... you can't lose!

[Eric @ Sep 30th 2008 9:20AM]

Believe it or not, they actually make some sturdy hardware.

[iEye @ Sep 30th 2008 10:13AM]

Oops, your finger slipped on the keyboard... let me correct that for you...

"Believe it or not, they actually make some turdy hardware"

[Ellianth @ Sep 30th 2008 10:53AM]

I have one of their flash drives here and it's performed well for me over the years...

So you shaddap!! you shaddap yur face!

[iEye @ Sep 30th 2008 3:10PM]

Flash Drive? any joker can produce a flash drive.. I have a no name 32MB, yes MB Mp3 player from many years ago! is still works!

now making an SSD is much different...

[Clif Watson @ Sep 30th 2008 9:03AM]

wow...for a second there thought this was the Wal*Mart computer. Just look at that logo and the similarity.

[le Chen @ Sep 30th 2008 12:53PM]

same here dude....
Wal*Mart ....maybe becoz the *

[corndog @ Sep 30th 2008 9:11AM]

I'm having this problem - my boot drive is a Samsung PZA064 - my laptop always pauses and looks like it's hung up for 2 to 5 seconds when only moderately busy - opening web pages, sending an IM - sometimes even the mouse won't move. My system meter at these times shows disk activity hitting 100%.

I wish I had never got an SSD - this is the worst performing laptop I've had in years.

[Eric @ Sep 30th 2008 9:21AM]

Instead of blaming it on the SSd you should find out exactly what is causing the high io first.

[Phil Perman @ Sep 30th 2008 10:02AM]

Read the link I posted above, those are the exact symptoms shown by poor MLC SSD's. Replace it with a standard hard drive and everything will be sorted again

[Peter @ Sep 30th 2008 9:34AM]

After clicking through about 15 pages on the manufacturer's website, buried on the spec sheet .pdf file you can see the information that this is an MLC drive, meaning speed will be a fraction of the stated speed if the drive is formatted in the NTFS format, which is the file system everyone recommends all drives to be formatted as. YMMV, of course.

[Macdelaney @ Sep 30th 2008 2:53PM]

what about ext3? I would like to use this for system files, and i'm running linux

[Precurse @ Sep 30th 2008 9:36AM]

I think I'll still wait another year or two before I jump on the SSD bandwagon. SSD is still a relatively new technology compared to hard drives and MLC chips haven't been out too too long. As long as you keep regular backups it shouldn't matter (you should always make sure you have enough backups that if your drive fails you won't loose anything important). However, if there is still random corruption throughout your data from the SSD, it isn't fun to deal with. I'm not saying that this is impossible to happen with hard disks, but rather hard disks have been around for a lot longer and tend to have these kinks worked out.

I'll observe the bleeding edge guys before I purchase.

[thehumanyawn @ Sep 30th 2008 10:08AM]

Thank you for acknowledging the poor among us.

[Jamus @ Sep 30th 2008 10:09AM]

Must. See. Revieeeeeeeeeeew!

[Al @ Sep 30th 2008 10:30AM]

Is it just me or are external SSDs kinda pointless?

[DracoDan @ Sep 30th 2008 1:06PM]

They're internal drives, the pretty case is just to protect the electronics and give you something to mount to your case.

[linuxamp @ Oct 1st 2008 12:27AM]

There's no requirement that says internal drives must be silver with a sticker label, that's just the way it's typically been done in the past. We're starting to see a lot of internal drives that don't look like "legacy" hard drives. Some Raptors have clear covers and some netbook drives don't have a case at all.

[Joe Mars @ Sep 30th 2008 11:20AM]

For one second I thought we have a new netbook with 128 SSD and below $300.
I guess I'll have to dream on...

[BigD145 @ Sep 30th 2008 11:43AM]

With the value of the dollar continuing to fall, how are they able to do this?

[JB @ Sep 30th 2008 9:40PM]

Do you have any idea how cheep the components they use to make this stuff is when purchased in million piece quantity?

[Dach @ Sep 30th 2008 12:27PM]

I'll probably get one fairly soon, though my reasons are probably different from everyone else's.
The 7200RPM drive in my lappy gets up to 55 degrees C. I'm quite confident this SSD will not be nearly so hot.

[linuxamp @ Oct 1st 2008 12:31AM]

You might be right about it not being as hot as your HDD but MLC chips do generate heat. My flashdrive is pretty warm to the touch after average use.

[The Police @ Sep 30th 2008 2:19PM]

I've bought Super Talent products before (mainly flash memory) and if their build quality is any indication, i'd steer clear from this netbook.

[linuxamp @ Oct 1st 2008 12:31AM]

What netbook?

[JoeNES @ Sep 30th 2008 2:44PM]

The important question is: does it work in a PS3? Anything that might keep the temp down in there would be welcome..