SSDs
Samsung Electronics has started mass production of its 9th generation of V-NAND memory. The first dies based on their latest NAND tech come in a 1 Tb capacity using a triple-level cell (TLC) architecture, with data transfer rates as high as 3.2 GT/s. The new 3D TLC NAND memory will initially be used to build high-capacity and high-performance SSDs, which will help to solidify Samsung's position in the storage market. Diving right in, Samsung is conspicuously avoiding to list the number of layers in their latest generation NAND, which is the principle driving factor in increasing capacity generation-on-generation. The company's current 8th gen V-NAND is 236 layers – similar to its major competitors – and word on the street is that 9th gen V-NAND ups...
Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) Review
Samsung is in a unique position in the SSD market. It’s the only company in the consumer SSD business with a fully vertically integrated business model and zero reliance...
65 by Kristian Vättö on 1/9/2014Mushkin CES 2014: SF-3700 SSDs
USB sticks and memory are fine, but the more interesting products at Mushkin are their upcoming SSDs. We’ve already discussed their new line of enterprise class SSDs, but Mushkin...
8 by Jarred Walton on 1/8/2014Mushkin Launch ProSpec SSDs for Enterprise: SF-2582
All aboard the press release train and up next is Mushkin, launching their new range of ProSpec Enterprise SSDs based on the SandForce SF-2582 controller. Available in capacities...
5 by Ian Cutress on 1/6/2014LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2: Mini Review
LaCie was among the first on the scene to support Intel (and Apple's) Thunderbolt specification with the Little Big Disk. The original Little Big Disk combined two 2.5" HDDs...
11 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/5/2014Avago to Acquire LSI
Within the last year, there have been several major acquisitions in the storage industry. Western Digital acquired STEC, Virident, and Velobit; SanDisk acquired SMART; and now Toshiba is taking...
14 by Kristian Vättö on 12/16/2013Mushkin Atlas mSATA (240GB & 480GB) Review
The retail mSATA SSD market doesn't have too many players. Most OEMs, such as Samsung, Toshiba and SanDisk, only sell their mSATA SSDs straight to PC OEMs. Out of...
27 by Kristian Vättö on 12/16/2013Intel Gaming System Giveaway - Holiday 2013: Part 1, Gaming Core i5
Earlier this year Intel came to us with an interesting proposition: using Haswell CPUs and Intel SSDs, we had to come up with four of our best system builds...
4055 by Anand Lal Shimpi, Jarred Walton & Ian Cutress on 12/13/2013OCZ Releases Intrepid 3000: First In-House Enterprise SSD
The last few weeks have been tough for OCZ. The company filed for bankruptcy and a week later OCZ announced that Toshiba will be acquiring their assets. While there...
22 by Kristian Vättö on 12/12/2013Samsung SSD News: 1TB 840 EVO mSATA, RAPID for 840 Pro & eDrive for 840 EVO
Today has been a busy day for Samsung's SSD department with three releases/announcements. With three different topics, I've separated this article into three, so let's begin with the hardware. Samsung...
35 by Kristian Vättö on 12/9/2013Toshiba Acquires OCZ's Assets for $35 million
Following last week's news of OCZ's bankruptcy filing, it's now official that Toshiba is acquiring OCZ's assets for $35 million cash. The agreement includes all of OCZ's client and...
43 by Kristian Vättö on 12/3/2013OCZ Files for Bankruptcy - Toshiba Offers to Buy the Assets
OCZ has just issued a press release announcing their filing for bankruptcy, which was expected since Nasdaq had halted the trading of OCZ stock earlier today. OCZ has had...
68 by Kristian Vättö on 11/27/2013Best SSDs: Holiday 2013
Since the holiday shopping season is going at full speed and Black Friday is only a few days away, we are doing a bunch of product recommendation posts to...
54 by Kristian Vättö on 11/27/2013Western Digital Releases Black^2: 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive in 2.5" Form Factor
To date all the hybrid storage solutions we have seen have been rather limited. Seagate got the idea right with the Momentus XT but having only 8GB of NAND...
66 by Kristian Vättö on 11/25/2013LSI Announces SandForce SF3700: SATA and PCIe in One Silicon
This is an announcement we have eagerly been waiting for. LSI gave us a short overview of their third generation controller at CES 2012 but it was merely a...
22 by Kristian Vättö on 11/18/2013Intel SSD 530 (240GB) Review
The consumer SSD market is currently at a turning point. SATA 6Gbps is starting to be a bit long in the tooth but SATA Express support is still very...
60 by Kristian Vättö on 11/15/2013OCZ Vector 150 (120GB & 240GB) Review
The holiday season is one of the busiest shopping seasons of all year. As it can be the lifesaver (or destroyer) of company's financials, having a competitive product lineup...
59 by Kristian Vättö on 11/7/2013Corsair Force LS (240GB) Review
Like many manufacturers without a NAND fab or controller technology, Corsair's SSD portfolio has focused a lot on SandForce based SSDs, but lately Corsair has been exploring other options...
30 by Kristian Vättö on 9/25/2013SanDisk Announces Optimized iNAND Extreme eMMC for Bay Trail
We've started looking more closely at the embedded storage used in smartphones and tablets, and have mostly come away disappointed. Thankfully there appears to be some progress being made...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/19/2013Intel's SSD Pro 1500: SF-2281 with vPro Support, Aimed at OEMs/SIs
IDF 2013 is almost upon us, and Intel's NSG (NAND Solutions Group) is kicking off the pre-show with a new SSD announcement. The drive in question? Intel's SSD Pro...
19 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/9/2013Analyzing the Price of Mobility: Desktops vs. Laptops
Computers have been getting faster over the years, and with the increased performance we eventually passed the point where most systems were “fast enough” and the various features and...
110 by Jarred Walton on 9/7/2013