A-DATA S599 100GB SandForce SF-1200 Solid State Disk

Introduction

We managed to get the first review of a SandForce SF-1200 product out before anyone else when the Corsair Force F100 went up just last week. At the time we were planning on the A-DATA S599 arriving before the Corsair drive which came in unannounced and was a great surprise. Two days later the S599 arrived and at the same time Intel let us know that a new driver was on the way that would support RAID TRIM and bring new optimized performance for many SATA products.

In our first go around with the new consumer class SF-1200, we ran the drivers that were available at the time; the same thing that everyone else was running with a solid state drive, the out of the box Microsoft drivers that fully supported the TRIM command. As with any product, you will get better performance with optimized drivers, but until now that just wasn't available for the Intel chipset running SSDs.

A-DATA has been playing the SSD game since the first generation X25-M. Their first product was exactly that, a rebadged Intel drive, but it was just enough to spring them into the market. Since the X25-M the company has released a few Indilinx Barefoot products that allowed A-DATA to skate by, but at CeBIT they put the market on notice that A-DATA would not be just another 'me too' solid state drive company.

At CeBIT A-DATA made two big product announcements. The first was their new Indilinx Barefoot based N007 SSD that supports both SATA II and USB 3.0 (full review coming in a few days). The second huge product announcement was the drive we are testing today, the S599.

The A-DATA S599 isn't just a SandForce SF-1200 drive; it is only the second one we have seen in full retail trim, so the company was able to fast track the product and get it ready before some of the others that generally dominate the early launch cycle. You might want to sit down for this next part and I know A-DATA's competitors had better get ready to be nauseous. The new A-DATA S599 is going to be cheap, like 50 Dollars cheaper than what other companies are now claiming their SF-1200 drives will be launched at and a massive 150 USD less than the numbers we were told at CES!

You will have to wait 'till the next page to see just how much, but the price will have you looking to take advantage of the new Intel 9.6 RAID drivers. Come, let's get a move on; click to the next page!