Corsair looks to Marvell for TRIM support in RAID SSDs

FLASH STORAGE VENDOR Corsair has released SATA3 solid-state disk (SSD) drives using Marvell controllers.

Corsair's Performance Pro 128GB and 256GB drives are the latest from the firm that has been bringing its enthusiast oriented brand to the SSD market. Rather than going with Sandforce controllers, Corsair decided to slot in Marvell units, claiming a sequential read data transfer rate of 515MB/s and a write rate of 440MB/s with 60,000 and 65,000 IOPS for the 128GB and 256GB units, respectively.

The biggest selling point of the Performance Pro drives is the ability to maintain TRIM support even when the drives are in RAID configurations. The TRIM command is typically disabled when drives are set up in a RAID configuration, which leads to a problem in prolonging the useful life of an SSD.

Corsair and other SSD manufacturers typically mention read/write speeds of their drives to try to wow potential customers with big numbers. The fact is, the raw read/write rate has relatively little to do with overall SSD performance, with the controller's handling of workloads having a far greater effect on ultimate performance.

Despite Corsair not mentioning any of this in its release, Thi La, VP of memory products at Corsair claimed the Performance Pro series of drives are "designed specifically for real-world performance".

Corsair has a standard three-year warranty on its Performance Pro drives. According to the firm's website, UK retailers have yet to stock the drives, while Corsair's own US web store prices the 128GB unit at $280 with the 256GB unit costing $530. µ