SSDs

Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe family of budget SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs that, among other things, adds a 4 TB model. Being budget drives, the SN5000 series is not going to be a performance monster, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular both among casual buyers and among enthusiasts looking for relatively cheap bulk solid-state storage. Western Digital's WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are based around an in-house WD controller (the company rarely discloses their codenames these days). WD's controller is a 4 channel, DRAMless design, which is what we typically see for budget and mainstream...

Western Digital Launches New WD Black NVMe SSDs And Thunderbolt Dock

Today Western Digital is announcing a major expansion of their WD Black family of gaming-oriented storage products. In a digital event later today on Twitch, Western Digital will introduce...

40 by Billy Tallis on 10/8/2020

Marvell and HPE Introduce NVMe RAID Adapter for Server Boot Drives

In 2018 Marvell announced the 88NR2241 Intelligent NVMe Switch: the first—and so far, only—NVMe hardware RAID controller of its kind. Now that chip has scored its first major (public...

29 by Billy Tallis on 10/6/2020

USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 State of the Ecosystem Review: Where Does 20Gbps USB Stand in 2020?

USB has emerged as the mainstream interface of choice for data transfer from computing platforms to external storage devices. Thunderbolt has traditionally been thought of as a high-end alternative...

81 by Ganesh T S on 10/5/2020

SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD v2 and WD My Passport SSD (2020) Review

External bus-powered storage devices have grown both in storage capacity as well as speeds over the last decade. Thanks to rapid advancements in flash technology (including the advent of...

7 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2020

Western Digital Unveils USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD v2

The SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD released in 2019 has been one of the top performers in the external flash storage market segment. Putting a high-end WD Black SN750-class...

14 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2020

Patriot PXD 1TB M.2 PCIe Type-C External SSD Capsule Review

High-performance bus-powered direct-attached storage units have become very popular, thanks to the advent of high-speed interfaces and technologies such as USB 3.2 Gen 2, NVMe, and 3D NAND flash...

5 by Ganesh T S on 9/29/2020

ADATA External and HP Portable SSDs Review: Featuring the ADATA SE800 and HP P700

Portable flash-based storage solutions are one of the growing segments in the direct-attached storage market. The emergence of 3D NAND with TLC and QLC has brought down the cost...

13 by Ganesh T S on 9/24/2020

The Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD Review: A Spirit of Hope

It may be a bit later than originally planned, but Samsung's first consumer SSD to support PCIe 4.0 is here. The Samsung 980 PRO was first previewed at CES...

137 by Billy Tallis on 9/22/2020

ADATA XPG Launches a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD for Notebooks: Gammix S50 Lite

One of the primary issues with most of the PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage drives on the market today is power consumption. The only base solution for OEMs in the...

15 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 9/18/2020

Western Digital Launches Security Platform for Portable Storage with G-Technology's ArmorLock-Encrypted NVMe SSD

Data safety is of paramount importance for many enterprise use-cases, and in certain scenarios, for home consumers too. Portable storage devices have typically offered data protection in the form...

4 by Ganesh T S on 9/3/2020

TeamGroup Previews New 15.36 TB Consumer SATA SSD, for $3990

The two main angles that most SSD storage seems to be moving towards is performance or capacity. On the capacity front, we are starting to see the first 8...

26 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 9/2/2020

Seagate Updates IronWolf NAS Drives Lineup with 18TB Pro HDD and New 4TB SSDs

Seagate is introducing new flagships in their IronWolf lineup today on two fronts - the SMB/SME-focused IronWolf Pro, and the SATA SSDs line. On the HDD front, we have...

14 by Ganesh T S on 9/1/2020

Samsung 980 PRO Briefly Listed Online

In what seems to be an accidental leak, a product page for the highly-awaited Samsung 980 PRO SSD was posted and later taken down from Samsung's website for Singapore...

78 by Billy Tallis on 8/31/2020

The Best NVMe SSD for Laptops and Notebooks: SK hynix Gold P31 1TB SSD Reviewed

SK hynix has entered the consumer NVMe SSD market with a big splash: the new Gold P31 has solid high-end performance, but its power efficiency blows the competition out...

80 by Billy Tallis on 8/27/2020

Nimbus Data’s New ExaDrive NL: 64 TB of Enterprise Grade QLC in 3.5-inch

Today Nimbus Data, one of the first companies to venture into enterprise flash storage in 2003, is announcing its latest generation ExaDrive product. Following on from the success of...

27 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/26/2020

Crucial Launches X6 Portable SSD, Updates X8 with 2TB Model: QLC Drives for the Budget-Conscious

Crucial introduced their first bus-powered direct-attached storage product last year - the X8 Portable SSD. The product put their P1 NVMe SSD behind an ASMedia bridge to offer read...

8 by Ganesh T S on 8/25/2020

Western Digital's USB 3.1 Gen 2 WD My Passport SSD Gets an NVMe Refresh

Western Digital's lineup of direct-attached storage (DAS) products targets a range of markets and form-factors. After the acquisition of HGST / G-Technology and SanDisk, the company now offers similar...

20 by Ganesh T S on 8/20/2020

SK Hynix Launches First 128 Layer 3D NAND SSD: Gold P31 NVMe

Last year SK Hynix re-entered the consumer retail SSD market with their Gold S31 SATA SSD. At CES 2020, they previewed a pair of consumer NVMe drives, the first...

20 by Billy Tallis on 8/18/2020

Intel Previews 4-Layer 3D XPoint Memory For Second-Generation Optane SSDs

As part of Intel's Architecture Day 2020 presentations, Raja Koduri spent a bit of time talking about the status of their Optane products. Most of it was a recapitulation...

27 by Billy Tallis on 8/13/2020

The Next Step in SSD Evolution: NVMe Zoned Namespaces Explained

In June we saw an update to the NVMe standard. The update defines a software interface to assist in actually reading and writing to the drives in a way...

46 by Billy Tallis on 8/6/2020

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