For further information about Plextor's lineup refresh, you can view the official announcement. FREMONT, Calif. November 24, 2008 - Plextor, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, announces new products as a part of its new 2008 lineup. Featured in the new offering are 6x Blu-Ray Combo drives, 22x Super Multi DVD±RW drives, and an 8x Slim External USB DVD±RW for PC and Mac.
'Plextor continues to strengthen its position in the optical storage market with the addition of these new drives to its already robust line of products,' said Bob Gronski, vice president of sales and marketing for Plextor. 'Now more than ever, people are going out less and taking advantage of home entertainment more, so it's a perfect time for us to introduce such an extensive line of products.'
Px-610u For Macbook Pro
My 6-year-old Mac is slowly dying and I lost use of the super drive the other day when trying to burn a CD but I can't seem to get the OS to.
LEGEND of Graphs X25-E.2 = dual Intel X25-E 32G SSDs in a RAID 0 set 7K500.2 = dual Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500G 7200rpm HDDs in RAID 0 set 7K500 = single Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500G 7200rpm HDD 7K320 = single Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 320G 7200rpm HDD (Apple factory) QuickBench 4.04 Random test is an average of 5 iterations of 4K to 1M block transfers. QuickBench 4.04 Extended test is an average of 5 iterations of 20M to 100M block transfers. 'Test Mule' was a 'late 2008' MacBook Pro 2.8GHz 'unibody' 15' running OS X 'Leopard' 10.5.6. INSIGHTS and ANALYSIS Dual X25-E SSDs using the really rock as an extreme boot volume for the MacBook Pro in both small random transfers and large sustained transfers!
The bad news is that the X25-Es are expensive and limited to 64G capacity each. There are larger capacity SSDs currently shipping such as the Intel X25-M, but the write speed is an unimpressive 80MB/s per drive.
And non-Intel SSDs have major stuttering issues in random write mode. The good news is that Micron and SanDisk have announced second generation SSDs with capacities up to 256G with read and write speeds to match or exceed the X25-E. We'll be testing them as soon as they are available. An interesting alternative dual boot combo for the MacBook Pro is the Seagate Momentus 7200.4. It's not nearly as fast as the SSD dual boot solution but it is the fastest 7K notebook HDD you can buy. Plus many of you are looking for added capacity, not just speed. This scenario offers one terabyte when striped.
One terabyte inside your MacBook Pro! And though not as fast as the SSD pair, a striped pair of Momentus 7200.4s more than doubles the overall transfer rate of the fastest single factory drive. For you mere mortals wanting to replace the factory drive with a single drive that's faster and with more capacity, a single Seagate Momentus 7200.4 is a compelling option. WHAT ABOUT THE DISPLACED SUPERDRIVE? The one compromise with the dual internal HDD or SSD solution is that it displaces the internal slot load SuperDrive. The best alternative to the internal mounting is to install it in a USB enclosure. I noticed MCE Tech offers one with their but I understand it doesn't work with all SuperDrives.
You can always put your SuperDrive in 'moth balls' and buy a pre-packaged external optical solution like the or which we will be testing soon.