SSDs
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...
Asus Intros GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Video Card With Integrated M.2 SSD Slot
Asus this week formally introduced its ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD OC Edition 8 GB graphics card, an unusual video card that also offers an M.2 SSD...
25 by Anton Shilov on 11/24/2023Corsair Releases MP700 Pro SSDs: Up 12.4 GB/s With Three Cooling Options
Corsair has introduced its MP700 Pro-series solid-state drives with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface that offer sequential read speed of up to 12.4 GB/s. The new high-end drive family...
15 by Anton Shilov on 11/15/2023Samsung T5 EVO Portable SSD Review: QLC Sets Sane Expectations, Insane Pricing
The market for portable SSDs (PSSDs) has seen rapid growth over the past decade. Samsung is one of the active tier-one flash vendors in the space, with their popular...
12 by Ganesh T S on 11/14/2023Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD Review: 20 Gbps Performance in a Budget Offering
The portable SSD market has seen rapid growth over the last decade. Almost all of the tier-one NAND flash manufacturers have jumped in with multiple offerings, presenting consumers with...
18 by Ganesh T S on 11/10/2023Western Digital to Split HDD and NAND Businesses
Western Digital has announced its decision to split its hard disk drive and NAND memory businesses, creating two separate public companies. According to the company, the change is aimed...
12 by Anton Shilov on 10/31/2023Crucial T500 Gen4 NVMe SSD: New Flagship Melds Micron 232L 3D TLC and Phison E25
Crucial is unveiling its latest addition to its Gen4 consumer NVMe SSD lineup today - the T500 PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD. It takes over flagship duties from...
19 by Ganesh T S on 10/31/2023Solidigm Lays Off Employees Due to Industry Downturn
The solid state storage industry has been in a well-documented slide for the better part of the last year now. With storage product demand from both the client and...
18 by Anton Shilov on 10/25/2023Seagate Releases Game Drive PCIe 4.0 SSDs for PlayStation 5
Western Digital's WD_Black SN850P was the first officially PlayStation 5-licensed SSD to hit the market. Seagate wants a piece of that and has hopped on the PlayStation 5 train...
4 by Zhiye Liu on 10/3/2023Samsung T9 Portable SSD Review: A 20 Gbps PSSD for Prosumer Workloads
Samsung's portable SSD lineup has enjoyed significant market success since the launch of the T1 back in 2015. Despite the release of the Thunderbolt-capable X5 PSSD in 2018, the...
15 by Ganesh T S on 10/3/2023eMMC Destined to Live a Bit Longer: KIOXIA Releases New Generation of eMMC Modules
While the tech industry as a whole is well in the middle of transitioning to UFS and NVMe storage for portable devices, it would seem that the sun won't...
11 by Anton Shilov on 9/27/2023Crucial Unveils X9 Portable SSD: QLC for the Cost-Conscious Consumer
Crucial entered the portable SSD market relatively late, with their X6 and X8 PSSDs being the mainstay for many years. Based on QLC NAND, they were marketed for read-intensive...
1 by Ganesh T S on 9/27/2023Solidigm Introduces D7-P5810: 144L SLC NVMe Drive for Write-Intensive Workloads
Solidigm's datacenter SSD offerings have been clearly delineated into different categories - the D3- SATA offerings for legacy servers, the D5- QLC-based offerings (with different models offering different tradeoffs...
3 by Ganesh T S on 9/25/2023Sabrent Ships 8TB SSD for PlayStation 5: High Capacity for a High Price
Although Sony's PlayStation 5 game console fully supports off-the-shelf PCIe 4.0 solid-state drives, Sony initially limited the maximum capacity to 4 TB. Recently the company removed that cap as...
19 by Anton Shilov on 9/22/2023Western Digital Releases WD_Black SN770M: M.2-2230 SSD for Consoles
Western Digital has unveiled a compact version of its WD_Black SN770 SSD, tailored mainly for handheld gaming consoles such as the Asus ROG Ally and Valve Steam Deck. The...
10 by Anton Shilov on 9/12/2023Samsung 990 Pro SSD Gets 4TB Model
When Samsung launched its 990 Pro family of SSDs for retail market last year, it only introduced 1 TB and 2 TB models, surprisingly omitting premium high-capacity 4 TB...
15 by Anton Shilov on 8/24/2023OWC Teams Up with Frore for 32TB and 64TB SSD Devices
OWC and Frore Systems demonstrated silent 32 TB and 64 TB solid-state storage devices that use Frore's AirJet Mini coolers at the Flash Memory Summit 2023. Both devices promise...
12 by Anton Shilov on 8/15/2023Samsung 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 8/11/2023Silicon 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 8/9/2023SK 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