KingFast Reveals 1 TB C-Drive SSD

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

KingFast has announced a new SSD with a 1 TB capacity, accomplished by putting two 512 GB SSDs in a RAID 0 array.

KingFast, a Chinese manufacturer, has announced its new 1 TB SSD, ingeniously named the "C-Drive." The drive itself might look like any other 2.5-inch 9.5 mm SSD, but underneath the housing you'll actually find two SSDs. The device contains two 512 GB SSDs, each driven by its own SandForce SD-2281 controller. The two work together to create an internal RAID 0 configuration. While there is no official word on TRIM support, due to the RAID 0 configuration, it is likely that the drive does not support TRIM commands.

The drive has a SATA3 interface, can reach sequential read speeds of 559 MB/s and write speeds of up to 532 MB/s. There was no word on the device's pricing or availability.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jaber2
    that is one clever idea
    Reply
  • blackened144
    10963656 said:
    that is one clever idea

    Its been tried before.. The OCZ Colossus. Unfortunately that thing was a big steaming pile. We bought 20 at work for testing and we killed almost 1 every single day... After RMAing 10 or so we just gave up. Hopefully this one is more reliable.
    Reply
  • SuperDuper931
    That is one expensive idea.
    Reply
  • aramisathei
    How practical is that drive if it doesn't support TRIM?
    Reply
  • Estix
    With a "no-name" company behind it, I'd be too worried about warranty support to trust...
    Reply
  • osamabinrobot
    just what i need, a raid 0 array that makes sure if one of the drives goes down instead of losing data + 1 drive i lose data + 2 drives!
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    10963854 said:
    just what i need, a raid 0 array that makes sure if one of the drives goes down instead of losing data + 1 drive i lose data + 2 drives!
    It is sold as a single drive that internally uses RAID to make its two internal units look like one so as far as as-purchased goes, you are losing only one drive.

    You aren't any more or less screwed than if the SSD attached all the NVRAM dies to a single larger controller.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    10963656 said:
    that is one clever idea

    Just about every 1TB SSD on the market uses this trick because most controllers (and especially the SF controllers) cannot address more than 512GB of usable space, so anything larger than that is using some form of internal RAID0 to aggregate more usable space.

    That is going to be one of the big deals about next gen controllers. We will finally have native 1TB SSDs (making them much cheaper), and internally raided 2TB drives... just no official word on when they are going to be available as they were supposed to be out already.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    10963804 said:
    How practical is that drive if it doesn't support TRIM?

    for normal day to day use it is actually not that big of a deal. The issues crop up if you are running the drive full, or constantly filling and deleting large portions of the drive, but for most people (and even power users like gamers) it is just an issue where you understand that the drive will not perform at top speed as memory is used and needs to be cleared before being rewritten, and that there may be issues down the road where it can die early due to uneven wear and tear. But unless you are really pushing the drive, most people would never know.

    I have 2 SSDs in RAID0 (2x 240GB drives), and I ended up upgrading from a z68 to a z77 motherboard for the sake of having RAID support because I did notice some performance degregation over the course of 3-4 months. It was one of those things where it really wasn't a huge deal... but I wanted to be better safe than sorry, and I would prefer to not replace my drives any time soon. Now I have been on z77 for ~6 months, and things have slowed down a little bit compared to the fresh install, but not nearly to the same extent as it did before. Plus I think a lot of it is in my head as I have 2 mid-level drives, and I have since had the opportunity to use some much higher end drives in other systems. So it may just be me holding the drives to a higher standard.
    Reply
  • WithoutWeakness
    I'd much rather just buy a Crucual M500 960GB drive for ~$600. It uses higher-density NAND and doesn't rely on a RAID-0 to reach the 1TB mark. It also is a 7mm drive instead of 9.5mm and is 100% made by Crucial/Micron and isn't some no-name brand using off-the-shelf parts from other companies.
    Reply