At the beginning of August, Plextor announced the first details for the M5 Pro. Plextor now confirms it will start rolling out the M5 Pro series in several European countries in September and reveals more details about the new SSD line.
The M5 Pro is designed and engineered with prosumers, businesses, and small / medium enterprises in mind. The combination of the latest generation Marvell 88SS9187 controller and quality Japanese Toshiba Toggle NAND flash gives M5Pro enterprise-class performance. The M5 Pro boosts sustained random read / write speed up to 94,000 / 86,000 IOPS as well as continuous read/write speeds up to 540/450 MB/s. The drive also makes use of True Speed technology, which prevents the drastic performance drops seen in some SSDs after intense or long-term usage.
The Plextor M5 Pro introduces True-Protect: a unique protection system consisting of two layers to protect the integrity of your data. To confirm that each piece of data is correctly stored with 100% accuracy a 128-bit error correction code (ECC) built into the latest Marvell controller is used. This is complemented by a second layer of read protection offered by the Robust Data Hold-out algorithm in Plextor's exclusive firmware, allowing the drive to achieve total data accuracy even in the long-term.
"The M5 Pro is able to automatically check and correct the accuracy of data being read from the flash memory in case ECC decoding fails, thanks to the Robust Data Hold-out Algorithm embedded in Plextors self-developed firmware. The combination of this algorithm with powerful 128bits ECC of the latest Marvell controller is unique in the market." Maarten Souren, Plextor's European Marketing Manager comments.
Data Safe: AES Data Encryption
For data confidentiality the drive uses hardware in the US Government AES-validated Marvell controller to provide secure 256-bit full-drive encryption. AES is the U.S. government standard encryption technology, it is divided into three levels 128,192, 256 The Plextor M5 Pro uses the highest level of encryption - 256 bits.
Reliability Through Extensive Testing
With the M5 Pro, Plextor has focused on developing and supplying one of the most stable drives on the market. To ensure stability and reliability for individual drives, all drives undergo rigorous high-temperature burn-in tests and accelerated usage simulation testing.
In addition, extensive testing took place during the design phase of the M5 Pro. It was only when the design was able to pass strict enterprise-grade Zero Error standard of 400 units surviving 500 hours of the toughest continuous testing that the drive was manufactured.
"The M5 Pro is the next step in the evolution of the SSD combining high speed, drive reliability, and data-level protection. In recent years Plextor has been able to develop SSDs that deliver high real-world performance and sustained speed over the long-term. Now with the M5 Pro, we aim to use Plextor's abilities to offer extreme data protection and give users total confidence in every single aspect of their drive," according to Mr. Maarten Souren.
Each M5 Pro SSD is backed by an industry leading five-year warranty and Plextor's extensive international support infrastructure. The Plextor M5 Pro will be available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities 2012.
Recommended end user prices, including VAT, for the M5 Pro are:
PX-128M5P, 128 GB, 164.99 EURO
PX-256M5P, 256 GB, 294.99 EURO
PX-512M5P, 512 GB, 569.99 EURO
