intel have upgraded their X25 solid state hard drive with an 'Extreme' offering - the X25-E - the X25-E is in some ways an upgrade to the X25-M that we reviewed back in October.  This time Intel are concentrating on the poor (comparatively) write speeds of the former.

Whilst certainly the fastest Flash Memory based storage device that we have tested in the lab, the write speed offered by the X25-M was significantly lower than the read speed:

Sustained Read Speed: 250MB/s

Sustained Write Speed: 70MB/s

This bottleneck is down to the use of MLC (Multi Level Cell) Memory chips, which are inherently slower to write to than SLC (Single Level Cell) Flash chips.

The X25-E solves this problem by reverting to SLC chips, whilst most of the other stats remain the same.  This change leads to a sustained read that is on a par with the original whilst the write speed has been upped to 170MB/s - very respectable indeed.

The device also features a SATA II interface and capacities up to 80 GB, as did its predecessor.  The price however is significantly higher and as such this device is clearly aimed at the Enterprise sector.

Of note:  The newer design uses BGA NAND memory chips rather than the TSOP-48 chips used in the older model.  The chips are also surrounded by resin, making data recovery much more difficult than it was on the previous iteration.  As soon as we can get our hands on one of these devices, abc Data Recovery Ltd will attempt to adapt our current data recovery technology to the new drives.  Any News on this will be posted here first.

abc Data Recovery offer Solid State Drive Recovery from all devices that use standard Flash Memory chips.  For more information about our data recovery services contact us here.