Corsair Force F40 40GB SSD Review

The drives look very inconspicuous, as they are encased in a thin black aluminum shell with rounded corners.  Like all SSD drives, they are 2.5 inches wide and have standard SATA data and power connectors.   The drive has eight mounting screw holes (two on the left and right sides, and four on the bottom).   The drive can be taken apart by removing four screws located at each corner on the back of the drive (two of which are concealed underneath “Warranty Voided” stickers.

The data is accessed through a SandForce SF-1222 controller chip, which is placed in the very center of the small board.   This chip supports DuraClass technology (you can read the SandForce datasheet here if you wish), which has a host of flash management features that make the most out of the NAND flash chips.  DuraWrite technology optimizes the number of program cycles to the flash chip, thereby extending its endurance by 20 times ore more.  It also supports error correction and RAISE (the Flash version of RAID), which is how the chips can be arranged in a 4-channel setup.  The chip also monitors the flash chips for wear and helps to get the most life from the drive.

SandForce SF-1222 Controller Chip is the brains of the operation

There are a total of twelve Intel-branded 29F32G08AAMD8 34nm NAND 4GB Flash chips which are arranged in a four-channel setup.  Five of the chips are on the top side of the board, and seven on the bottom of the board.  The chips are arranged in a four-channel setupFour chip slots are left vacant; one of the bottom and four on the top of the board.  If you do some quick math, you can see that these twelve chips should provide 48GB of storage space, but the extra is usually taken up in overhead.

The front and back of the controller board

A quick online price search shows how the drives differ in price, and we can quickly calculate their value:

Just like when you shop at Costco, you can get more for your money when you buy in bulk.  The problem is that most people don’t buy 10 gallons of olive oil at once, and similarly most people can’t affort a $500 drive when you can get the same capacity in a magnetic drive for less than $40.   The drives are fast, but given the prices people will opt for the sweet spot of the most drive for their money… especially when considering the limitations of smaller drives.