Introduction

When Jason at DVNation contacted me about reviewing their new Solidata RAIDPak Internal Storage Solution that houses four 2.5 inch Solidata X2 Series solid state drives, I took a brief look at the specs and asked him to ship it over. Later that evening I had a flash go through my mind, kind of like when someone mentions a name and a few hours later the face flashes across your internal screen and you blurt out, "yeah...I know that person". This wasn't a flash of a face; it was a statement printed on DVNation's website for the individual offering of the Solidata X2 Series; faster than the Intel X25-M MLC SSD.

At Storage Visions, the pre-CES show for everything regarding data retention, I spoke with many SSD manufacturers and asked them when they would have a product on the market that could compete with Intel's X-25M. Just as quickly as the question came out, their expressions looked like the people you see flying out of Vegas as you are flying in. For most the answer was a year or so down the line when they would be ready to compete with the X Series Intel products. A few others chimed in with the old "If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them". These manufacturers will just be taking the Intel products and re-badging them to have their company name somewhere on the drive.

Solidata took a different approach. They didn't want anything to do with just rebranding an Intel drive and were determined to make a run at the new king of the MLC throne. With hard work and a great product development team, they may have just leaped over the X25-M with their new X2 Series products.

Today we are going to take a look at the Solidata X2-128, a 128GB MLC solid state drive that was provided to use by DVNation, the leading source for all of your SSD needs. Let's now take a look and see what this new cutting edge drive is all about.