Transcend Information, a leading supplier of various DRAM- and NAND flash-based products, has revealed its new MSA720-series solid-state drives in tiny mSATA form-factor that deliver performance comparable to fully-fledged SSDs. Thanks to multi-level cell NAND flash with toggle DDR interface and SandForce SF2281 controller, the Transcend MSA 720 are the fastest mSATA SSDs to date.

Transcend MSA 720 solid-state drives are available in 64GB and 128GB capacities and use Serial ATA-600 interface. The SSDs are deliver blazing fast sequential transfer speeds up to 560MB/s read and 530MB/s write, and impressive 4K random file writes up to 91 000 IOPS. The extreme performance was made possible by new-generation SandForce SF2281 controller as well as latest-generation MLC NAND flash memory with toggle DDR interface. The controller also supports such functions as S.M.A.R.T., TRIM and NCQ to increase the long-term health and efficiency of the SSD and also supports hardware-based 256-bit advanced encryption standard (AES) protection.

The mSATA form-factor combines high-capacity SSD in a space that is about one-third of the size of a standard business card (3cm*5cm). Such tiny size allows to make notebooks extremely thin without sacrificing performance. Moreover, mSATA SSDs can act as cache drived to accelerate operating system boot-up time and commonly-used application launch speed in environments where hard drives are needed for high capacity reasons.

Unfortunately, Transcend revealed nothing about the reliability of mSATA solid-state drives based on MLC NAND with toggle DDR interface. Hopefully, it is not considerably lower compared to fully-fledged SSDs.

Transcend MSA 720 solid-state drives are available now. Pricing is unknown.

Tags: Transcend, mSATA, SSD, SandForce, NAND, Flash