Storage
Once the domain of external, bus-powered hard drives, these days the market for external storage has been almost completely consumed by portable SSDs. Rapid technological advancements in NAND flash technology (including the advent of 3D NAND) has allowed their capacity to eclipse 2.5-inch HDDs, all the while multiple improvements in host interface speeds (such as the move from USB 2.0 to 3.0, and onwards to 3.2 Gen 2 / Gen 2x2 / USB4) has made portable SSDs faster and more reliable than the hard drives they replace. All of which has helped to make portable SSDs the go-to solution for external storage, both big and small. For our latest storage buyer's guide, we've rounded up some of the best portable SSDs we've looked at in...
Samsung Teases 256 TB SSD: 3D QLC NAND at Its Best
Samsung teased the industry's first 256 TB solid-state drive at the Flash Memory Summit 2023. The new drive features unprecedented storage density and is aimed primarily at hyper-scale data...
27 by Anton Shilov on 8/11/2023
Silicon Motion Readies PCIe Gen5 SSD Platform with 3.5W Power Consumption [UPDATED]
UPDATE 8/24: As it turns out, the 3.5W figure referes to power consumption of the controller alone, not the whole SSD. The story has been updated accordingly. We also...
19 by Anton Shilov on 8/9/2023
SK Hynix Shows Off 321-Layer 3D TLC NAND Device
SK Hynix showcased its 321-layer TLC NAND memory at the Flash Memory Summit 2023. The South Korean company is the first NAND maker to publicly demonstrate 3D NAND with...
11 by Anton Shilov on 8/9/2023
Kioxia's CD8P SSD Unveiled: Up to 30.72 TB, PCI 5.0 x4 Interface
Hyperscale data centers have very specific requirements for different tiers of storage devices: some tiers need maximum performance, and others demand maximum storage density. Kioxia's new CD8P drives for...
11 by Anton Shilov on 8/7/2023
Western Digital Preps 28 TB UltraSMR Hard Drive
Western Digital is gearing up to start sampling of its 28 TB nearline hard drive for hyperscalers. The new HDD will use the company's energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR...
19 by Anton Shilov on 8/1/2023
Seagate Ships First Commercial HAMR Hard Drives
Seagate announced this week that it had begun the first commercial revenue shipments of its next-generation HAMR hard drives, which are being shipped out as part of Seagate's latest...
3 by Anton Shilov on 7/28/2023
Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro High-Performance Portable SSDs Announced
Crucial's X6 and X8 Portable SSDs have been attractive budget options for the mainstream consumers looking to purchase high-capacity direct-attached storage drives. The company has been delivering some industry-firsts...
8 by Ganesh T S on 7/25/2023
Solidigm Announces D5-P5336: 64 TB-Class Data Center SSD Sets NVMe Capacity Records
Advancements in flash technology have come as a boon to data centers. Increasing layer counts coupled with better vendor confidence in triple-level (TLC) and quad-level cells (QLC) have contributed...
18 by Ganesh T S on 7/20/2023
Adata Reveals Its First PCIe Gen5 SSD: Legend 970
Adata has introduced its first PCIe 5.0 SSD, the Legend 970. A Phison E26-based design, the Legend 970 pairs Phison's high-end controller with a sophisticated active cooling system that...
26 by Anton Shilov on 7/6/2023
PNY Pro Elite V2 and Elite-X PRO Portable SSDs Review: Performance on a Budget
PNY Technologies is well known in the computing industry for its NVIDIA-based graphics cards, but the company also participates in the DRAM and flash-based storage products markets. In the...
5 by Ganesh T S on 6/30/2023
Western Digital Updates WD Blue Series with SN580 DRAM-less Gen4 NVMe SSD
Western Digital is unveiling its latest addition to the mainstream WD Blue family today - the SN580 NVMe SSD. A DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 x4 drive, it brings in performance...
4 by Ganesh T S on 6/28/2023
Seagate Announces FireCuda 540 PCIe Gen5 SSD
Flash-based computer storage has been improving in speed and capacity at breakneck pace over the last decade. M.2 NVMe SSDs have almost completely replaced SATA drives for primary storage...
3 by Ganesh T S on 6/27/2023
SK Hynix Launches Beetle X31 Portable SSD
UISK Hynix has introduced the Beetle X31, its first portable SSD. The drive promises to hit sequential transfer rates of up to 1,050 MB/sec when working with appropriate hosts...
3 by Anton Shilov on 6/26/2023
Transcend ESD310C Dual-Interface UFD Review: Silicon Motion Powers Portable SSD in a Thumb Drive
Transcend recently introduced the ESD310C portable SSD in a thumb drive form-factor. A compact device with both Type-A and Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) interfaces, the ESD310C...
28 by Ganesh T S on 6/22/2023
Micron Unveils First UFS 4.0 Modules: Up to 4,300 MB/s Storage for Smartphones
Micron on Wednesday introduced its first UFS 4.0-compliant storage devices. The company's latest generation of single-module smartphone storage devices are slated to be the fastest yet, offering a combination...
16 by Anton Shilov on 6/21/2023
Western Digital Estimates HAMR HDDs to Emerge in 1.5 Years
Western Digital is somewhat behind its rival Seagate in adopting heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), which promises radical improvements to areal density and HDD capacities. Still, the company expects hard...
16 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2023
SK Hynix Starts Production of 238-Layer 3D NAND: 34% Denser with 2.4 GT/s Interface
SK Hynix announced this week that it had started volume production of its 238-layer TLC NAND memory. The new device promises higher bit density and lower NAND bits cost...
5 by Anton Shilov on 6/8/2023
Big Leap for Hard Drive Capacities: 32 TB HAMR Drives Due Soon, 40TB on Horizon
Offering a brief update on the future of hard drives, Seagate has shared some fresh insights concerning launch of its next generation hard drives featuring its heat-assisted magnetic recording...
28 by Anton Shilov on 6/8/2023
Western Digital Unveils Xbox Series X|S Expansion Cards
Ever since Microsoft introduced its Xbox Series X/S game consoles in late 2020, Seagate has been exclusively selling storage expansion cards for these systems. But to the chagrin of...
8 by Anton Shilov on 6/6/2023
TeamGroup Goes Big on SSD Cooling, Demos 120mm AIO Liquid Cooler For M.2 Drives
TeamGroup is demonstrating at Computex 2023 what it claims to be the world's first all-in-one liquid cooling system for hot-running M.2 SSDs. The SSD-sized Siren cooler is meant to...
10 by Anton Shilov on 6/1/2023
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