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...

LaCie Portable SSD and WD My Passport SSD Capsule Review: 2TB SATA SSDs Behind a USB Bridge

The emergence of 3D TLC flash has enabled a new class of budget-friendly bus-powered external SSDs. Flash memory has also seen a recent drop in prices, and this has...

5 by Ganesh T S on 4/19/2019

The Western Digital WD Blue SN500 SSD Review: Moving The Mainstream To NVMe

Western Digital's latest generation of WD Blue SSDs jumps from SATA to NVMe, making some sacrifices in the process but still meeting the everyday needs of the typical consumer.

51 by Billy Tallis on 4/19/2019

OWC Launches Aura Pro X2 NVMe SSD Upgrade For Macs

Other World Computing (OWC) has launched a new line of NVMe SSD upgrades for several Mac models that used Apple's custom not-quite-M.2 form factor. The new Aura Pro X2...

17 by Billy Tallis on 4/16/2019

Intel Releases Optane Memory H10 Specifications

Intel's Optane Memory H10 SSD will begin shipping soon in pre-built systems from major OEMs, so Intel's ready to unveil more detailed information about the drive first previewed earlier...

23 by Billy Tallis on 4/10/2019

The GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 SSD Review: Nothing Is Too Small For RGB LEDs

GIGABYTE entered the SSD market last year somewhat timidly with entry-level SATA drives, and they've been working their way up the market since. Their new Aorus RGB SSDs are...

23 by Billy Tallis on 4/10/2019

Lexar SL100 Pro Portable USB 3.1 Gen 2 External SSDs: Fast and Up to 1 TB

Lexar this week introduced its first external SSDs featuring a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C interface. The SL100 Pro drives are lightweight, miniature, and offer a read speed of...

3 by Anton Shilov on 4/5/2019

Intel Announces New Optane And QLC Enterprise SSDs

Slipped in to the briefings for Intel's mountain of announcements today are two new enterprise SSDs at opposite ends of the product line: a new Optane SSD and a...

27 by Billy Tallis on 4/2/2019

SilverStone Launches MS10: a 10 Gbps USB-C Adapter for SATA M.2 SSDs

As SATA SSDs slowly give way to M.2 SSDs, so too have the SSDs' use cases. Besides internal storage, of course, SATA SSDs have also commonly been used as...

20 by Anton Shilov on 4/1/2019

Intel Extends Optane Memory Support to Celeron & Pentium CPUs

When Intel launched its Optane Memory caching SSDs two years ago, it limited their support to mainstream and higher-end platforms essentially considering them premium products. Whether or not hybrid...

30 by Anton Shilov on 4/1/2019

Patriot Launches Viper VPN100 SSDs: Up to 2TB, Massive Heatsink

Patriot this week started sales of its top-of-the-range VPN100-series SSDs. Prototypes of these drives based on the Phison PS5012-E12 controller were demonstrated at CES 2018, but it took the...

31 by Anton Shilov on 3/29/2019

GALAX Launches 2TB Hall Of Fame SSDs with Pre-Installed Heatpipes

Palit Microsystems, which owns a number of GPU brands, entered SSD market a little more than two years ago with entry-level offerings to simplify product development and avoid competition...

22 by Anton Shilov on 3/28/2019

Micron Introduces 2200 Client NVMe SSD With New In-House Controller

Micron has announced the first product based on their new in-house client NVMe SSD controller. The Micron 2200 doesn't boast performance sufficient to compete with the top enthusiast-class NVMe...

14 by Billy Tallis on 3/18/2019

Kingston Launches New Enterprise SATA SSDs

Kingston is making a renewed effort in the enterprise storage market this year, starting with the launch of their DC500 family of enterprise SATA SSDs. The new DC500R and...

8 by Billy Tallis on 3/18/2019

New WD Blue SSD Switches To NVMe

In the process of assimilating SanDisk, Western Digital has been re-using their hard drive branding on consumer SSDs: WD Green, Blue and Black can refer to either mechanical hard...

15 by Billy Tallis on 3/14/2019

The Reality of SSD Capacity: No-One Wants Over 16TB Per Drive

One of the expanding elements of the storage business is that the capacity per drive has been ever increasing. Spinning hard-disk drives are approaching 20 TB soon, while solid...

86 by Ian Cutress on 3/13/2019

The Memblaze PBlaze5 C916 Enterprise SSD Review: High Performance and High Capacities

The Memblaze PBlaze5 high-end enterprise SSD product line has been refreshed with 64-layer 3D NAND, allowing for better power efficiency and more affordable top-tier performance. The PBlaze5 C916...

13 by Billy Tallis on 3/13/2019

Micron Announces 1300 Client SATA SSD With 96L TLC

Micron's line of client SATA SSDs for the OEM market is making the jump to 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory with the new Micron 1300 SSD. This replaces...

6 by Billy Tallis on 2/28/2019

The Silicon Power P34A80 SSD Review: Phison E12 With Newer Firmware

Today we're looking at Silicon Power's P34A80 high-end NVMe SSD, another drive based on the Phison E12 controller and Toshiba 64L 3D TLC NAND, but with newer firmware than...

13 by Billy Tallis on 2/28/2019

The Samsung 983 ZET (Z-NAND) SSD Review: How Fast Can Flash Memory Get?

Samsung's 983 ZET is a high-end enterprise SSD and the first retail drive to feature Samsung's low-latency SLC Z-NAND flash memory. Designed for highly performance-bound workloads that favor IOPS...

46 by Billy Tallis on 2/19/2019

Western Digital’s RISC-V "SweRV" Core Design Released For Free

Western Digital has published a register-transfer level (RTL) design abstraction of its in-house designed SweRV RISC-V core. The SweRV core is one of several RISC-V projects the company as...

14 by Anton Shilov on 2/15/2019

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