Solid state storage is not a new thing and every one of us has some experience with that sort of thing (USB keys, flash cards in our cameras and phones or even iLok to store our licenses). Regular hard drives reached the point where they are considered stable, durable and fast. Thanks to new technologies like perpendicular writing and reading, more cache memory and almost flawless manufacturing processes they almost reached the point where the storage capacity and speed of rotating platters is maxed out and the price is driven down to pennies per GB.

With increasing capacity we have to accept some factors that come with it: increased heat, noise and power consumption. The new SSD from a company called MTRON is a real shocker. It works based on an extremely fast flash memory with amazingly low latency. The low latency occurs because there's no head to seek around a rotating platter since it is based on flash memory and the time it takes for the drive to cough up data from one cell anywhere in the drive doesn't matter. This lack of moving parts greatly increases durability as there's no head to crash, no motor or bearings to wear out and nothing moves at all. Since there's no platter to spin up and keep moving, power savings are also very good. No moving parts means no noise, almost no heat and rock solid durability. The company claims a write endurance of greater than 140 years with you writing or erasing 50GB per day!

• The SSD drives come in IDE or SATA versions.
• Mtron SSD applies advanced 7 bit BCH Error Correction Code (ECC) which eliminates virtually all errors in writing and reading.
• For serious Audio and Video production there are huge benefits in use of Solid State Hard Drives. The quiet operation, speed and reliability are the best benefits I see behind this technology.

How does the SSD compares to leading hard drives on today's market? Let's see some performance numbers among popular drives vs. the Mtron SSD.

Random Access Time: (Lower is better. Measured in milliseconds)

• 5400 Rpm WD Scorpio : 17.7 ms
• 7200 Rpm Seagate Barracuda : 14.2 ms
• 10000 Rpm WD Raptor : 8.2 ms
• 0 Rpm Mtron SSD : 0.1ms (unbelievable 0.1 ms which makes ultra fast Raptor look like a slug)

Average Read: (Higher is better. Measured in Megabytes per second)

• 5400 Rpm WD Scorpio: 45.5 MB/s
• 7200 Rpm Seagate Barracuda: 48.4 MB/s
• 10000 Rpm WD Raptor: 75.4 MB/s
• 0 Rpm Mtron SSD: 97.2 MB/s

Real Use Scenarios: XP Startup (Higher is better. Measured in Megabytes per second)

• 5400 Rpm WD Scorpio: 6.3 MB/s
• 7200 Rpm Seagate Barracuda: 8.5 MB/s
• 10000 Rpm WD Raptor: 11.9 MB/s
• 0 Rpm Mtron SSD: 49.9 MB/s

Real Use Scenarios: App Loading (Higher is better. Measured in Megabytes per second)

• 5400 Rpm WD Scorpio: 4.8 MB/s
• 7200 Rpm Seagate Barracuda: 6.7 MB/s
• 10000 Rpm WD Raptor: 11.6 MB/s
• 0 Rpm Mtron SSD: 40.5 MB/s

Real Use Scenarios: General Usage (Higher is better. Measured in Megabytes per second)

• 5400 Rpm WD Scorpio: 3.8 MB/s
• 7200 Rpm Seagate Barracuda : 5.2 MB/s
• 10000 Rpm WD Raptor: 9.6 MB/s
• 0 Rpm Mtron SSD: 33.7 MB/s

Real Use Scenarios: Virus Scans (Higher is better. Measured in Megabytes per second)

• 5400 Rpm WD Scorpio: 84.6 MB/s
• 7200 Rpm Seagate Barracuda: 79.7 MB/s
• 10000 Rpm WD Raptor: 88.2 MB/s
• 0 Rpm Mtron SSD: 89.1 MB/s

Real Use Scenarios: File Write (Higher is better. Measured in Megabytes per second.)

• 5400 Rpm WD Scorpio: 42.9 MB/s
• 7200 Rpm Seagate Barracuda: 47.9 MB/s
• 10000 Rpm WD Raptor: 70.3 MB/s
• 0 Rpm Mtron SSD: 67.3 MB/s

Our tests used the hard drives with a fresh install of Windows XP. The average read speeds of the drives seems to be a paltry 45MB/s or 48MB/s when compared to the 97MB of the Mtron SSD. That gives the Mtron SSD a 30 percent advantage in speed. The hard drive benchmark sequence reads and writes to the hard drive using pattern traces that are generated from real-world applications. Among those pattern traces is a Windows XP boot, a virus scan, and application load times for such things as Microsoft Word, Mozilla Firefox and Acrobat Reader 8. Again, the Mtron SSD crushed the competition with an overall PC Mark 2005 score more than 220 percent faster.

It is really great news for anybody who can benefit from quiet operation, solid performance and saving some energy while using a laptop on a session. Only bad thing right now is the capacity and the price of the product.

Available sizes of Mtron SSD are 16, 32, 64 or 128 GB. That is not much considering today's size of audio files. However the best scenario would be to have 16 or 32 GB drive for the operating system and programs, and another 64 or 128 GB as an audio data drive.

After each session transfer the data to an external HDD for backup and editing. The size of drives will of course increase in the future, and hopefully the prices will become more reasonable.

Mtron offers several different lines of their SSD drives, the difference is mainly in performance, connection and size. Also offering PCMCI connected SSD for laptops, this is a great solution for an audio drive.

So how much will we have to shell out for one of these drives? Prices are current to date 8-1-08. And hopefully we'll see them fall soon even lower.

• Mtron SSD MOBI 3000 64GB, 3.5" SATA 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write, .1ms access : $799
• Mtron SSD MOBI 3000 32GB, 3.5" SATA 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write, .1ms access :$449.
• Mtron SSD MOBI 3000 16GB, 3.5" SATA 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write, .1ms access : $279
• Mtron SSD MOBI 3000 32GB, 2.5" SATA 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write, .1ms access : $449
• Mtron SSD MOBI 3000 16GB, 2.5" SATA 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write, .1ms access : $279.
• Mtron SSD PRO 7000 64GB, 3.5" SATA 120MB/s read, 90MB/s write, .1ms access : $1179
• Mtron SSD PRO 7000 32GB, 3.5" SATA 120MB/s read, 90MB/s write, .1ms access : $669
• Mtron SSD PRO 7000 16GB, 3.5" SATA 120MB/s read, 90MB/s write, .1ms access : $409

The same prices apply to 2.5 inch drives for laptops.

• Mtron SSD PRO 7500 128GB, 3.5" SATA II 130MB/s read, 120MB/s write, .1ms access : $2599
• Mtron SSD PRO 7500 64GB, 3.5" SATA II 130MB/s read, 120MB/s write, .1ms access : $1369
• Mtron SSD PRO 7500 32GB, 3.5" SATA II 130MB/s read, 120MB/s write, .1ms access : $779
• Mtron SSD PRO 7500 16GB, 3.5" SATA II 130MB/s read, 120MB/s write, .1ms access : $479

Ladislav Svajcik, MCSE Senior systems engineer www.audeum.com

Some information about the product used in this article are taken from Mtron's and Maximum PC's website, tested in Audeum tech lab www.audeum.com.