SSDs
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
Dell & HPE Issue Updates to Fix 40K Hour Runtime Flaw in Enterprise SSDs
In a second SSD snafu in as many years, Dell and HPE have revealed that the two vendors have shipped enterprise drives with a critical firmware bug, one will...
51 by Anton Shilov on 3/27/2020Greenliant Launches 1.92 TB M.2 Industrial SSDs
Greenliant revealed on Wednesday that it has started shipments of its new industrial-grade ArmourDrive M.2 SSDs. The enhanced-durability drives are rated to operate in a much wider range of...
3 by Anton Shilov on 3/27/2020GOODRAM Announces Entry-Level PX500 SSDs: Bringing NVMe to Budget Drives
As more SSD manufacturers introduce their inexpensive NVMe PCIe drives, the market of entry-level SSDs is slowly but surely moving away from SATA altogether. Case in point this week...
14 by Anton Shilov on 3/24/2020TerraMaster D5 Thunderbolt 3: A ‘Mega DAS’ with 5 Bays for 80 TB
TerraMaster this week introduced its first DAS featuring a Thunderbolt 3 interface. The D5 Thunderbolt 3 DAS with five bays is aimed at professionals who need a vast storage...
14 by Anton Shilov on 3/20/2020Seagate Introduces IronWolf 510 M.2 NVMe SSDs for NAS Systems
Seagate was one of the first vendors to introduce SSDs targeting the consumer / SMB / SME NAS markets with the IronWolf SSD 110 series at the 2019 CES...
12 by Ganesh T S on 3/17/2020Intel & Micron Sign New 3D XPoint Wafer Supply Agreement
Intel and Micron have inked a new 3D XPoint memory wafer supply agreement. Analysts believe that Intel will now have to pay Micron more than it did previously as...
20 by Anton Shilov on 3/16/2020Buffalo Launches Miniature Rugged External SSD w/ USB Type-A & Type-C
SSDs can survive drops and other kinds of hostile treatment much better than hard drives, but they can still be broken if their PCB or one of the chips...
24 by Anton Shilov on 3/6/2020SSSTC Launches CL1 M.2-2230 SSD: SMI, Up to 512 GB, Up to 2 GB/s
As notebooks are getting thinner and smaller, PC manufacturers require smaller components and therefore demand tinier SSDs as well as densely-packed SoCs. BGA SSDs are of course among the...
37 by Anton Shilov on 3/5/2020Western Digital Introduces WD Gold Enterprise SSDs
On what would have been the first day of the Open Compute Project's annual Global Summit, Western Digital is bringing out a new line of enterprise SSDs. The WD...
20 by Billy Tallis on 3/4/2020Kingston Releases DC1000M U.2 Datacenter SSD
Kingston has announced that their latest and fastest datacenter SSD is now available. The new DC1000M is a 2.5" U.2 NVMe SSD, taking over the top spot in Kingston's...
3 by Billy Tallis on 3/2/2020What's TLC is SLC Again: MEMXPRO Introduces PC32 Full-Drive Pseudo-SLC SSDs
Pseudo-SLC caches for TLC-based SSDs are almost as old as TLC NAND itself, serving as a simple and practical solution to TLC's lower sustained throughput. But like all caches...
40 by Anton Shilov on 2/21/2020ADATA Releases SE760 USB 3.2 Gen 2 External SSD: Up to 1000 MB/s
High-performance external storage devices are gaining popularity these days as many mobile PCs come with a relatively low-capacity SSD that cannot be upgraded. To that end, ADATA this week...
9 by Anton Shilov on 2/20/2020Plextor Unveils M9P Plus SSD: A Proven Design Gets 96L 3D TLC & Up to 3.4 GB/s
Plextor has introduced its new flagship consumer SSD lineup, the M9P Plus. The new drives continue to use Marvell’s proven "Eldora" controller, but come equipped with Kioxia’s 96-layer BiCS4...
2 by Anton Shilov on 2/20/2020Kioxia Releases First PCIe 4.0 SSDs: CD6 & CM6
Following through on their roadmap for transitioning to PCIe 4.0, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) has announced the availability of their first two PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The CD6 and CM6...
4 by Billy Tallis on 2/20/2020ATP Unveils N600S-Series Industrial SSDs w/ MCU-Based Power Loss Protection
ATP has revealed its new N600S-series SSDs for industrial and commercial applications. The industrial-grade SSDs are designed to offer high performance and write endurance while also offering extreme physical...
10 by Anton Shilov on 2/19/2020Patriot Releases Cheap P300 M.2 PCIe SSDs: Two Products, Same Name
Patriot has launched its new family of entry-level NVMe SSDs with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface designed for budget PCs. Patriot’s P300 drives come in capacities ranging from 128...
29 by Anton Shilov on 2/18/2020Enterprise NVMe Round-Up 2: SK Hynix, Samsung, DapuStor and DERA
Nine enterprise NVMe SSDs suffer through our updated test suite to show who's who for high-end storage.
33 by Billy Tallis on 2/14/202028 TB of Storage in a Laptop? Eurocom Has It
Proving that where there's a will, there's a way, these days higher-end desktop replacement laptops can beat mainstream gaming desktops on general-purpose computing performance, graphics performance, and even RAM...
38 by Anton Shilov on 2/14/2020Mobile M.2 with Full Speed: The ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB720M2K-B
High-performance SSDs are often difficult to transfer them from a system to a system, which is sometimes needed. Removable U.2 drives are easier to use, but they are more...
16 by Anton Shilov on 2/12/2020Enterprise SATA SSDs: Can Budget 2020 beat Top Line 2017?
Today we're looking at two wildly different enterprise SATA SSDs: the Kingston DC450R entry-level server SSD with the latest controller and 96L 3D NAND, and the Micron 5100 MAX...
21 by Billy Tallis on 2/4/2020