Introduction

It is a little known fact that the Indilinx Barefoot controllers that we have been raving about for the last two months are capable of using Single Level Cell (SLC) flash memory. In the past we tested several SLC drives and were amazed at how fast the drives were compared to their MLC counterparts. Just as amazing were the prices associated with the SLC drives.

If you follow along with solid state drives then you know that the big call to fame for the Indilinx Barefoot has been its low cost, at least lower than the Intel controller. So what happens when we take the Barefoot and pair it with fast SLC memory ? Well, that is what we are here to find out.

We have reviewed a couple of products from Solidata already. The company keeps a fairly easy to follow product naming scheme; K1, K2 and so on. The drive we are testing today comes from the K5 series. If you are interested in an MLC Solidata drive with the Barefoot controller then you will need to wait for our review of the K6 drive that was provided to us by DVNation.

Our sample Solidata K5-64 came to us from Solid State Central, Australia's premier supplier of solid state drives. Solid State Central carries Solidata's full product line as well as products from Silicon Power, OCZ Technology, RunCore, Patriot Memory and Team Group.