The product we received from Silicon Power technology, is the 32 GB Core Series SATA II 2.5" SSD. Also available as an IDE version, by the way.

Silicon Power series SSD drives are available in capacities of 8, 16, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. The drives deliver 119 MB/s read and 67 MB/s write speeds at maximum. The seek time on these puppies is amazing; at less than 0.1 ms. And that's very important, the speed will increase your overall PC experience as the vertebrae of overall system speed and performance is your boot drive.

Let's be honest, how many of you have a faster read/write boot drive with your OS on it and then other (slower) HD's for pure storage? Not bad for a product weighing 90 grams. The drives come with a two year full warranty.

Some advantages of this product are:

• Compatible with SATA-I and SATA-II interface
• Fully compatible with notebooks, personal computers, and servers
• High reliability assured based on the internal ECC
• ROHS Compliant - no lead used
• Low power consumption to extend battery life
• High performance and reliability
• Shock resistance increases data protection
• No noise
• 2 years warranty

Silicon Power cites reliability as one of the key driving points for the new series of drives, and as discussed earlier; it uses Single-Level-Cell NAND Flash (SAMSUNG SLC K9WBG08U1M-PCB0), which traditionally is speedy and more reliable than MLC based NAND modules.

Next to the much higher number of write cycles, the device comes with wear-leveling algorithms which we explained in the previous chapter.

Silicon power gives the product a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of 1.5 million hours, which is a highly statistical figure. But in reality, if that MTBF even was a tenth of the claimed value (150,000 hours) then the drive would still last 8760hrs (365 days x 24 hours) / 150,000 = 17 years.

Specifications

• Dimensions: 100mm x 69.85mm x 9.5mm
• Weight: 90g
• Durability: 10,000 insertions(minimum)
• Power Requirement: 4.5V~5.5V
• Operating Temperature: 0C~70C
• Storage Temperature: -40C~85C
• Humidity: 8%~95%
• Vibraion: 15G peak-to-peak max
• Shock: 1500G max
• 2 years warranty

Versions available:

• 8.0GB SP008GBSSD750S25(SLC) SP008GBSSD650S25(MLC)
• 16.0GB SP016GBSSD750S25(SLC) SP016GBSSD650S25(MLC)
• 32.0GB SP032GBSSD750S25(SLC) SP032GBSSD650S25(MLC) ]
• 64.0GB SP064GBSSD750S25(SLC) SP064GBSSD650S25(MLC)
• 128.0GB SP128GBSSD650S25(MLC)

Now remember what I told you about MLC and SLC based NAND versus reliability. Really, if you want a long life-time of you product ensuring the up most reliability then SLC will be your choice. Silicon Power offers both though. We're testing the P032GBSSD750S25 which is SLC based.