12. SuperTalent MasterDrive MX 60 GB Solid State Disk

By Ed Tittel and Toby Digby

Anybody who’s dug into the specifics of SSDs knows that they offer light weight, silent operation and amazing random disk access speed—but also at quite a price. Expectations to the contrary notwithstanding, however, these drives can seldom compete on a true par with moderately fast (Seagate 7200.10 PMR) or extremely fast (WD VelociRaptor) conventional hard disks. With its second generation of solid state drives, SuperTalent presents an interesting double-whammy: its FTM60GK25H SSD drive delivers improved performance (they claim 120 MB/sec maximum sequential read and 40 MB/sec maximum sequential write on their spec sheet) at a more affordable price: $450 for the 60-GB model covered here and $300 for a 30-GB model, while a 120-GB model launch is scheduled for summer’s end.

The 60-GB SuperTalent SSD comes in a sturdy, attractive housing that makes it a supremely portable eSATA drive, as well as a silent, reasonably capable internal notebook or PC drive.

Whereas earlier, first-generation SSDs couldn’t outperform conventional hard drives, newer products have shown themselves to be quite capable in this regard. When coupled with an SSD’s lack of sound output, lower power consumption (usually less than a quarter, sometimes less than 15% of the power required for conventional drives), and lower heat output (these devices seldom exceed 35° C / 100° F), this makes them especially attractive to notebook PC users. They can generally live with their smaller capacities (even the latest SSD drives still top out at 128 GB) in return for their speed, light weight, absolute quiet and improved battery life.

This SSD is small and very light. Its dimensions are 2.75" x 3.94" x 0.37" / 69.85mm x 100.2mm x 9.5mm and it weighs a scant 2.1 oz / 60 g. It’s packaged in a black plastic housing, emblazoned on top with the company logo at center and the term SSD at the lower right. Alas, the mysterious product code on the back of the unit doesn’t identify the drive, so you have to plug it in to see what you’ve got!

The SuperTalent MasterDrive MX series can’t match screaming performance levels reported for Mtron drives, but vendor speed ratings notwithstanding (we achieved nearly 90 MB/s sequential write speed on an Nvidia 780 chipset) and at one third the cost of the faster drive, it doesn’t have to.

For about $450, this SSD offers a great price/performance combination—no tech-savvy grad or dad will want to be without one! For more information, visit the Master Drive MXproduct page.