Introduction

Less than 24 hours ago I was sound asleep dreaming about spending time in the lab testing solid state drives. You know that you really enjoy your job when you start envisioning the day that is to come. Like clockwork, I was awakened by the friendly horn of my favorite USP guy and it was time to start living my dreams.

Just hours before, I had finished playing twenty questions with the Western Digital media rep. Western Digital is what I would consider an old school HDD company. At the turn of the century affluent families with long standing status would consider themselves as coming from old money and WD is defiantly an old money company in the HDD world. In recent times the old money HDD companies have found themselves under an assault by new money and the companies that are modernizing while globalizing the storage market. New money companies like RunCore, OCZ Technology and Corsair are playing on a court that encompasses the globe with suppliers, products and even manufacturers playing a larger role in the new money product lines.

When it comes to solid state drives the controller is the heart of the drive. There are SSDs on the market that are using bottom of the barrel, slow as molasses NAND flash, but their controller is able to make it all come together. Most of the time we are able to find out what controller is in a product and have a very good idea about the drives performance.

As it sits right now I have no idea what controller is in the Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue. To further aid to the confusion the cache is larger than anything we have tested before. The good thing is that when we buy SSDs we are rarely buying a name or the laser etches found on the controller. Pricing, performance, overall value between the two, length of warranty and a company's reputation on standing behind their products is what we are breaking our wallets out for.

Let's take a look at the published specifications and some of the information we were able to find on our own.