news 28 Posted December 17, 2008 Hi all, We have just published a review of *Intel's X25-E 32GB SSD*. If you could post a link on your site that would be very much appreciated. *Link:* http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/17/intel-x25-e-32gb-ssd-review/1 *Picture:* http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2008/12/intel-x25-e-32gb-ssd-review/fp_img.jpg *Quote: */While still very quick even with the write speeds halved, this certainly takes a lot away from the X25-E, especially in regards to the possibility of using it as a boot partition. While the first run through writing to the disk would be very quick indeed, reusing hard drive space nullifies the huge write speed performance advantage, making the X25-E somewhat of a disappointment, especially considering its £505 price tag. The capacity itself is also a real sticking point -- these days 32GB is nothing in terms of storage, and was barely enough space to install Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit and Crysis. While we love the idea of a fast writing, fast reading drive for use as a boot drive, it needs to actually be able to fit more than the operating system onto it to make it a realistic option. In comparison, the MLC based Intel X25-M doesn't suffer from the same re-write speed problems thanks to MLC using storing data using multiple states per cell, is more than twice the size at 80GB, costs £50 less, and has near identical read performance. If you're in the market for a high end SSD we'd certainly still point you in the direction of the X25-M rather than the X25-E, although for the majority of you, a high speed 1TB drive will likely meet all your storage needs and will also be much more wallet friendly -- the excellent Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB can be had for as little as £73. Although we love the idea of a fast writing, fast reading, all round speedy hard drive, the X25-E isn't quite there yet. While write speed post-format is impressive, re-write speeds are doubled and read speed is no better than the cheaper, larger mainstream version of the drive. While we're sure fast writing SSDs like the X25-E will find a place in highly spe[censored]ed business setups, there's just no way such a small and ludicrously expensive drive should find a space in your home system, even if your budget can stretch to it./ * *Cheers guys! Tim Smalley www.bit-tech.net Share this post Link to post
