Walton Chaintech - the Taiwanese manufacturer formerly known as just Chaintech - has unveiled a do-it-yourself SSD in the form of its Apogee SSD Convertor.
The device, pictured above, takes the form of a 2.5in drive and allows the user to slot in two CompactFlash (CF) memory cards to create a low-cost SSD, of sorts.
Equipped with a standard SATA interface, the Apogee SSD Convertor allows for two internal CF cards to be combined or mirrored using Raid 0 or Raid 1 configurations - a feature that Walton Chaintech reckons makes it "superior in function to the traditional SSD".
It might have a point, but don't expect the performance of an actual SSD, as the do-it-yourself Apogee Convertor can only reach read speeds of around 55MB/s, which ultimately isn't going to threaten your average hard drive. There are other benefits, we suppose, as this could be seen as a no-noise, no-moving-parts storage upgrade for a notebook. Then again, with a single high-speed 16GB CF card priced at around £60, it'd still be cheaper to buy a 32GB SSD.
We can't see it catching on. Particularly when you consider that RAIDON tried the same thing back in July 2008.
