Wednesday, April 6, 2011

SSD card for hybrid approach

A few months ago, Marvell announced a chip able to create a hybrid SSD from an SSD and a HDD. The principle is simple: the controller SATA 6 Gbit / s card is able to determine where to copy the data and it can - by Marvell - to obtain 80% performance of SSDs on the entire space. HighPoint, with RocketHybrid, is the first company to offer the cards.

It comes in two versions: one with two SATA connectors and one with two eSATA connectors. In both cases, the card interfaces in 1x PCI-Express 2.0, which de facto limits performance to about 500 Mb / s and the advertised price is right: $ 60. Good idea, two modes exist: either the card uses the SSD as a cache, or the card uses the SSD over the HDD.

The first mode is more reliable while the second provides greater usable capacity at the expense of data security: as RAID 0, a problem on one of two devices involves the loss of any storage space. HighPoint announced it had sent the cards to wholesalers, which indicates an imminent release.

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