SanDisk Ultra II Solid State Drive Family Targets Price Concscious Consumers
SanDisk is one of the biggest players in the flash storage industry, though the vast majority of its solid state drive (SSD) products are intended for commercial (corporate and enterprise) clients. In fact, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of SanDisk's revenue comes from the commercial sector, versus 35 percent derived from retail customers. So, where's the love for home consumers? Look no further than the SanDisk's new Ultra II SSD line.
SanDisk is taking aim at mainstream notebook and PC users with its affordable Ultra II SSD line. And by affordable, we mean less than $0.50 per gigabyte for the 240GB model ($115). If that's not enough space (or too much), the Ultra II will also come in 120GB ($80), 480GB ($220), and even 960GB ($430) capacities, the latter of which are big enough to replace primary hard drives that are starting to feel a bit long in the tooth.
Source: SanDisk
Though these drives are affordable, SanDisk isn't gimping performance. All four capacities boast sequential reads of up to 550MB/s and sequential writes of up to 500MB/s. SanDisk won't shatter any benchmark records with those figures, but it can sit towards the front of the class of SATA-based SSD solutions with respectable scores in hand.
SanDisk tells us its new drive series uses nCache 2.0 technology for enhanced speed and endurance. This is essentially an optimization technique whereby a large, non-volatile write cache consolidates small writes to boost random write performance, along with the long-term data endurance of the drive. It also employs a Marvel 88SS9187 controller paired with SanDisk's second generation 19nm TLC NAND flash memory, making the Ultra II Series the first non-Samsung brand SSD to ship with TLC NAND.
Serving as value adds, SanDisk tosses in a trio of software with each Ultra II SSD. These applications include EZ GIG IV cloing software, Trend Micro Titanium Antvirus+, and Absolute LoJack to help track down your laptop when it's lost or stolen.
SanDisk is taking aim at mainstream notebook and PC users with its affordable Ultra II SSD line. And by affordable, we mean less than $0.50 per gigabyte for the 240GB model ($115). If that's not enough space (or too much), the Ultra II will also come in 120GB ($80), 480GB ($220), and even 960GB ($430) capacities, the latter of which are big enough to replace primary hard drives that are starting to feel a bit long in the tooth.
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Source: SanDisk
Though these drives are affordable, SanDisk isn't gimping performance. All four capacities boast sequential reads of up to 550MB/s and sequential writes of up to 500MB/s. SanDisk won't shatter any benchmark records with those figures, but it can sit towards the front of the class of SATA-based SSD solutions with respectable scores in hand.
SanDisk tells us its new drive series uses nCache 2.0 technology for enhanced speed and endurance. This is essentially an optimization technique whereby a large, non-volatile write cache consolidates small writes to boost random write performance, along with the long-term data endurance of the drive. It also employs a Marvel 88SS9187 controller paired with SanDisk's second generation 19nm TLC NAND flash memory, making the Ultra II Series the first non-Samsung brand SSD to ship with TLC NAND.
Serving as value adds, SanDisk tosses in a trio of software with each Ultra II SSD. These applications include EZ GIG IV cloing software, Trend Micro Titanium Antvirus+, and Absolute LoJack to help track down your laptop when it's lost or stolen.
