Every SSD Drive Should Offer This Feature
I might be easily impressed, but I sure like this new Solid State Disk drive from Buffalo. No, it might not be the fastest nor the cheapest, but it has a super feature: a mini-USB port. You could just pop this SATA drive into a compatible computer like any other SSD drive, but that USB port gives you a little more flexibility. Your “internal” drive can be used as a portable external drive, for example. Or you could connect it via USB cable to clone an image or move backup data before installing the drive internally. I like it!
Akihabara says it comes in capacities ranging from 30- to 128GB but I don’t see any price details. Buffalo says it’s fast and cuts boot time by 30%, but as compared to what, I don’t know. I’m not sure I even care. They had me at USB. :) What do you think: gimmick or useful?
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This would be very useful, especially if you could boot off of it.
Kinda like FireWire’s ability to use target disk mode.
OCZ has had this out for a little while now, I believe in their core series ssd drives. I do agree this is a great feature, I am pretty sure I read somewhere that OCZ actually includes the drive clone software to make the switch easy.
Yes, many of the OCZ drives do already include this. We’ve gotten some OCZ Core drives here, and it’s about half and half between ones we got with USB and ones without.
Either way, no doubt this is useful. A killer app for SSD drives, not really, but still nifty.
One more thing Kevin, have you heard anything about OCZ’s Vertex series ssds?
Useful but not useful enough, and the controller and connector will take power and space. It would be more useful to have a small USB-SATA adaptor which can then be used with any drives.
My Card folds over on itself into a USB thumb drive. Infinately more useful than this. had the thing for 2 yrs now (l gig too)
sounds like what my Raon Everun Note does with its hdd though I believe the Notes mini usb port works with whatever hdd is in it, ssd or standard.
Nice, but not really impressive. I just spent over an hour moving 80GB of data from my sister’s dv4 notebook to an external USB drive. USB 2.0 is just horrible when it comes to moving hard drive data – an eSata connection would be far more suitable.
HP has got a similar solution with the dockable media drives they offer on their desktops. I believe they use Sata II when docked but let you plug in a USB cable for external use.
Also, there’s no way you’ll utilize SSD speeds over USB, the interface is too much of a bottleneck.
Priced from $124 for the 32GB model.
http://www.slashgear.com/buffalo-shd-nsum-ssd-with-sata-ii-and-usb-20-2535648/
still to pricey for my tastes. i want something to replace my stacks of dvd-r, and i do not trust external hardrives as i have seen one to many fail for no good reason…
Runcore has also been doing this for a while now on their PCI-E SSDs. However it has been noted that these drives often don’t work well in many netbooks (lockup issues), presumably because of the additional power draw required by the USB port.
Wow. JK complains about the journalistic integrity of other websites and then something like this gets posted! Wow!
Um… huh? Not following the point you’re trying to make here. Feel free to elaborate.
I like that a lot. I was just grumbling the other day about having to go find a external case to mount some old drives I wanted to root some data out of. I love easy as usb like that (though I doubt I would pay extra for it.
An SSD with a mini-USB port is the smart buy. It just gives you soooo much more flexibility – whether it’s initially formatting it, transferring data onto it or installing an OS – before you pry open a laptop or desktop. For technicians, an SSD as a service drive makes disk diagnostics, emergency booting, or upgrades and installs go so much faster!
I was surprised just how fast my MacBook was booting off SSD over USB 2.0 after cloning my hard drive contents onto it. Even more impressive once the SSD was installed. I just wanted to kick myself in the pants for not moving to a solid-state drive months and months ago. WOW!
I’ve been trying to track SSD prices, rebates and deals for over a year at http://www.ssd-solid-state-drives.com/ — The cost and performance is changing so rapidly in 2009 it’s unreal. 64gb drives are falling to $125 range making them MUCH less painful on the wallet than a year ago.