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...
Plextor's M5M mSATA SSD
In addition to the 2.5" SATA M5 Pro Xtreme, Plextor is bringing an mSATA version of the drive to market in the first half of this year as the...
4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/8/2013Hands On with Plextor's NGFF SSDs
The Next Generation Form Factor for SSDs is designed to bring standardization to the wild west of Ultrabook SSD form factors. We reported on the standard at IDF, but...
8 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/8/2013Plextor Introduces M5 Pro Xtreme SSD
Shipping at the end of this month is Plextor's new M5 Pro Extreme SSD, an update to the M5 Pro that we reviewed not too long ago. The M5...
10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/8/2013SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD Review (256GB)
SanDisk is a household name as far as NAND storage is concerned. You can’t walk into an electronics retailer and not be bombarded with SanDisk made CompactFlash and SD...
38 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/7/2013Corsair Neutron & Neutron GTX: All Capacities Tested
Corsair surprised us all at Computex this year when they announced their Neutron and Neutron GTX SSDs based on a so-far relatively unknown Link A Media Devices (LAMD) controller...
44 by Kristian Vättö on 12/19/2012Samsung Acquires SSD Caching Company NVELO
This came out of the blue. Samsung announced their intent to acquire NVELO, known for their Dataplex SSD caching software. Price or specific timeframe of the acquisition have not...
16 by Kristian Vättö on 12/16/2012Plextor Updates The Firmware on M5 Pro: Promises Increased Performance, We Test It
Plextor released their M5 Pro SSD in August, which we reviewed shortly after the release. Now nearly four months later, Plextor has released an updated firmware (v1.02) for the...
46 by Kristian Vättö on 12/10/2012Samsung Explains The Firmware Bug Causing The Failures of SSD 840/840 Pro
We've been covering the issues surrounding Samsung's SSD 840/840 Pro lately. The issue was first discovered when Anand's pre-production review sample died during testing and we also noted that...
56 by Kristian Vättö on 12/7/2012Mushkin Announces First 480GB mSATA SSD
We're seeing a true shift in the mobile market to including SSDs in more of the market spectrum. What was once the domain of $1500+ laptops is now being...
27 by Jarred Walton on 12/6/2012Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs
When we reviewed Intel's SSD DC S3700 I started looking at consistency of IO latency, an area that Intel's latest controller specifically targeted for significant improvement. In our review...
134 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/4/2012Update on Samsung SSD 840/840 Pro Failures
In our review of Samsung's SSD 840 Pro I noted that my drive died shortly after I completed testing. Samsung sent me a replacement, which also stopped working (although...
45 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/28/2012TRIM & RAID-0 SSD Arrays Work With Intel 6-Series Motherboards Too
A few months ago, Intel brought TRIM support to RAID-0 SSD arrays but limited it to its latest 7-series chipsets. As 7 and 6-series chipsets are very similar, there...
36 by Kristian Vättö on 11/28/2012OCZ Vector (256GB) Review
Times are changing at OCZ. There's a new CEO at the helm, and the company is now focused on releasing fewer products but that have gone through more validation...
151 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/27/2012Crucial v4 (256GB) Review
As with virtually all consumer electronics devices, there is market for various types and levels of SSD. Not everyone is ready to pay the premium for the fastest possible...
44 by Kristian Vättö on 11/22/2012SandForce TRIM Issue & Corsair Force Series GS (240GB) Review
SandForce and TRIM—that has always been a tricky combination. SandForce SSDs have always behaved a bit differently when tortured and TRIM'ed due to their internal design. When a non-SandForce...
56 by Kristian Vättö on 11/22/2012The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 10
We've made it to 10 episodes of the AnandTech Podcast! As promised, this week's episode is a bit more PC focused as we discuss the future of AMD. Intel's...
32 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/21/2012Intel Explains 20nm NAND Endurance Concerns on the SSD 335
It's common knowledge by now that as NAND cells shrink in size (thanks to smaller process nodes), their endurance and program/erase latencies both suffer. Consumers wouldn't really be happy...
31 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/17/2012AnandTech/Intel S3700 Roundtable Discussion & Webcast Videos Live
Intel invited me to attend SC12 and participate in a webcast for the launch of its new DC S3700 SSD. I joined Roger Peene from Intel's SSD Solutions and...
33 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/16/2012Samsung SSD 840: Testing the Endurance of TLC NAND
NAND endurance is something that always raises questions among those considering a move to solid state storage. Even though we have showed more than once that the endurance of...
48 by Kristian Vättö on 11/16/2012AnandTech/Intel SSD Webcast Live Today at 9AM PST/12PM EST
We are live at SC12 from Salt Lake City, Utah this morning and are preparing to answer your SSD, NAND and Intel SSD DC S3700 questions. In about two...
14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/13/2012