Free Republic

Less than 24 hours ago I was called into a meeting with SandForce, the SSD controller manufacturer that has been on fire lately. The company makes two controllers: the SF-1200 and SF-1500. The meeting was initiated by SandForce to clear up any misconceptions I might have about the differences between the two controllers. No good deed goes unpunished, and the quick meeting turned into an hour long debate about responsibility and ethics. It turns out that while I finally know the difference between the SF-1200 and the more expensive SF-1500, not all drives based on the SF-1200 will offer the...

By the end of January 2011, almost all new hard drives sold will have switched to a new format that will increase their size and efficiency, but will leave those clinging to Windows XP frustrated. Traditionally, data on hard disks has been broken up into 512 byte chunks. Each broken-up sector requires additional space on a physical disk to mark the beginning and the end of each piece. Extra space is also needed for error correction, and there needs to be a bit of room to separate it from the next chunk. This wasn't much of a problem when the...