Looks like those firmware problems have been resolved, as the Intel X25-M is now for sale on NewEgg.com. Of interest is the 160 gigabyte variant, for it’s relative balance of capacity, performance, and price.
You’re probably wondering why you should spend $485 on a drive that can only hold 160GB of data. Well, solid state disks are known more for their read and write speeds, rather than the affordability. And in terms of speed, it seems nothing matches Intel’s flagship SSD offering for now.
In any case, the Intel X25-M line represents significant improvements over the X25-E models. Simply put, the newer …read more

What happens when you combine 16 64GB Intel X25-E SSDs into a RAID array managed by two Adaptec 5805 controller cards? Why, a storage setup that can write and read at sustained speeds of 2.23 GB/s. Yes, two point two-three gigabytes a second. With a total capacity of around a terabyte, you’re talking about being able to delete all data stored in less than 8 minutes.
The financially frivolous exercise (see prices below) was Tom’s Hardware US’s response to an email by Samsung’s PR agency, which apparently showcased a RAID array of 24 Samsung PB22-J flash SSDs achieving 2.12GB/s. Looks like …read more

You may have heard about Intel coming out with new SSDs. This X25-M upgrade represents the same capacities (80GB and 160GB) at much lower prices ($225 from $595 and $440 from $945 respectively), not to mention better reading speeds (”a 25 percent reduction in read latency”). Personally, this development made me hopeful that pretty soon we’ll see $200 320GB solid state drives.
But Intel discovered a hiccup with the new drives, asking retailers to put all deliveries on hold, and to actually pull the X25-Ms from their respective store fronts. William George of Puget Systems narrates what happened:
After several hours of …read more

An adventurous soul over at jkkmobile decided to put a 32GB solid state drive into the Dell Mini Inspiron 9.

Stay tuned for updates: apparently by disabling on-drive compression, the read-write process can go a lot faster. (jkkmobile.blogspot.com)