Mushkin Callisto 120GB SSD

Mushkin has been a very well known and respected brand in the high end memory market for years. However, memory is not the only segment of the market where Mushkin products can be found, as it also manufactures power supplies, flash memory and, most recently, SSDs. Mushkin’s entrance to the SSD market came in the form of the consumer based Io drives. These drives use the the INDILINX “Barefoot” controller and can be found in capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB. SSD technology has been changing at a rapid rate though, and in the few short months since we first took a look at the Mushkin Io SSD, Mushkin is now releasing a new line called “Callisto”.

Like the Io series, the Callisto is a consumer grade SSD, which is currently available in 60GB, 120GB and 240GB capacities. However, instead of using the INDILINX controller, the Callisto uses the new SF-1200 controller from SandForce. The use of this new controller adds Mushkin to a growing list of manufacturers that are releasing drives that utilize the SandForce controller. And for good reason – this controller is capable of write speeds of up to 285MB/sec and reads of up to 275MB/sec, and unlike other SSD controllers, the SF-1200 is not reliant on the use of additional DRAM cache to prevent the stutter problems that were prevalent with older SSDs. The SF-1200 instead relies on a technology called “DuraWrite”, which uses a real-time compression method, as well as a small amount of internal cache, to eliminate the need for large amounts of DRAM to be used as cache. However, this technology, along with Wear Leveling and SandForces data protecting RAISE technology, requires a large amount of NAND Flash memory to be set aside. This in turn will reduce the strorage area of a 128GB SSD to that of just a 100GB capacity. Setting aside such as large amount of memory would be necessaryfor enterprise devices, where a high degree of data protection is essential.

The 60GB model has a list price of $240.49, the 120GB version is $406.99,