Model: SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: SanDisk
Provided By: SanDisk

SanDisk has been a leader in the storage industry for more than 20 years. Founded in 1988 by Dr. Eli Harari, the company has grown from a three-person Silicon Valley startup to the world's largest provider of flash memory storage solutions. The company offers a wide range of products including memory cards, USB flash drives, SSDs and its popular line of Sansa music and video players.

One of the latest additions to SanDisk's line of consumer-oriented solid state drives is the Extreme PRO. Designed with gamers, enthusiasts and media professionals in mind, this high-performance SSD is powered by Marvell's 88SS9187 "Monet" controller and is equipped with SanDisk's new 1Ynm eX2 ABL MLC Toggle NAND flash to deliver up to 550 MB/s sequential read and 520 MB/s sequential write speeds. The Extreme PRO also features a tiered caching system which combines a sizeable DRAM cache with the latest developments in SanDisk's nCache Pro technology. To deliver consistent high performance, nCache Pro uses a large non-volatile SLC cache to accumulate small writes at high speed and then flushes them to the larger MLC sections of the NAND flash memory array.

The Extreme PRO is available in 240GB, 480GB and 960GB capacities. For this review, SanDisk sent us the 480GB version of the drive which comes equipped with 512MB of on-board cache and is capable of delivering up to 550 MB/s sequential read and 515 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 100,000 random read and 90,000 random write IOPS.

 SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB Solid State Drive
General Specifications
Product Number SDSSDXPS-480G-G25
Capacity 480GB
Flash Type 1Ynm eX2 ABL MLC Toggle NAND
Controller Marvell 88SS9187
Cache 512MB DDR2 DRAM
Form Factor 2.5-inch
Interface SATA III 6Gb/s

Performance
Sequential Read 550 MB/s Max
Sequential Write 515 MB/s Max
Random Read 100,000 IOPS Max
Random Write 90,000 IOPS Max

Reliability
MTBF 2 million hours
Endurance 80TBW

Power Consumption
Active 0.15 W
Max Read Operating 2.7 W
Max Write Operating 3.5 W
Slumber 100 mW
DEVSLP 19 mW

Environmental
Temperature (Operating) 0 ºC to 70 ºC
Temperature (Non-Operating) -55 ºC to 85 ºC
Humidity 5% to 95%, non-condensing
Vibration (Operating) 5gRMS, 10-2000Hz
Vibration (Non-Operating) 4.9gRMS, 7-800Hz
Shock 1500G @ 0.5 msec

Dimensions and Weight
Dimensions 69.85 mm x 100.5 mm x 7.00 mm
Weight 58g

Other Features
nCache Pro technology
Dynamic and Static Wear-Leveling
Bad Block Management
Background Garbage Collection
Supports TRIM, SMART and NCQ
SanDisk SSD Dashboard software
Ten year warranty

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the Extreme PRO has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at SanDisk's new SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the Extreme PRO have what it takes? Can it deliver the value and performance we've come to expect from SanDisk? Keep reading as we find out.


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