SSDs or Solid State Drives are by no means a new phenomenon but as of yet have limited exposure in the market. USB 3.0 has been around for a while now but as with Solid State Drives (SSDs) there has been a dearth of products and those that are available are still beyond the reach of the average consumer. Belkin recently released USB 3.0 Superspeed products including a PCIe card, cables and also a Superspeed USB 3.0 Expresscard for use with laptops. SanDisk meanwhile are starting to ship 60 GB and 120 GB G3 SSD to North America and Europe.
Samsung, SanDisk, Intel and Western Digital are the main players in the SSD consumer market today and have each come out with various Solid State Drives. Perhaps the most extensive use of SSDs has been in laptops, netbooks, notebooks, OLPCs and gaming consoles such as the PS3 and the XBox 360. Solid State Drives have also been used for server storage solutions cutting costs not only by saving time but by improving reliability.
SanDisk is an American MNC that is the global leader in flash memory products. They recently starting shipping the SanDisk G3 Solid State Drive with two versions available, one with 60 GB worth of storage and the other with 120 GB. According to SanDisk, the SanDisk G3 SSD can open files twice as fast as a 7,200 rpm hard disk drive and is also far more reliable.
Furthermore with compatibility for the Windows 7 feature TRIM added to the mix, one can expect even better performance from the SanDisk G3 Solid State Drive as this feature allows Windows 7 to better manage resources and optimize performance.
Belkin on the other hand is essentially associated with connectivity products and the recently launched Superspeed USB 3.0 peripherals are nothing out of its way.
The Superspeed USB 3.0 peripherals by Belkin will allow current computers without USB 3.0 ports to use USB 3.0 compatible products and of course as USB 3.0 is backwards compatible so all USB products can essentially be used. There are three Belkin Superspeed USB 3.0 peripherals launched by Belkin and of them, one is merely a USB 3.0 cable which can connect two USB 3.0 devices.
Of the other two Belkin USB 3.0 peripherals, one is a PCIe card with two USB 3.0 slots that allow you to utilize the considerably faster data transfer rates for Superspeed USB 3.0. This card is compatible with PCIe slots only.
The last of the Belkin products is a Superspeed USB 3.0 ExpressCard which works with laptops and also has two slots.
Now the reason why these are not for everyone is that firstly, they are horribly overpriced and secondly there are very few products that can actually utilize the far greater transfer rates available to Superspeed USB 3.0. In fact a SSD is perhaps the only device that actually utilizes the prowess of USB 3.0 to any degree and they too are very costly, $299 and $399 for the 60 GB and 120 GB versions of SanDisk’s G3 SSDs.
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