flash
OWC has been a key player in the storage industry over the last few decades, particularly for Apple users. Their lineup of portable flash-based direct-attached storage devices has a great reputation in the market, thanks to their focus on performance consistency for professional workloads. The company is also known for being upfront about their products' capabilities under worst-case conditions. Recently, the company resurrected their OWC Envoy Pro Mini lineup - back in 2016, they had a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A thumb drive with capacities of up to 240 GB under the tag. The new version is a complete redesign with USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) speeds and comes with both Type-A and Type-C interfaces in a sleek and compact thumb drive form...
Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD Series Review: New Type-A Thumb Drive Retains NVMe Performance
Kingston's new products in the portable flash-based external storage space have met with good market reception over the last year or so. Two products in particular - the Kingston...
17 by Ganesh T S on 7/11/2022Samsung MUF-256DA USB-C Flash Drive Review: Thumb-Sized Performance Consistency
Portable SSDs have seen great demand over the last few years. Advancements in flash technology and controllers has resulted in compact drives delivering blistering speeds. These advancements have also...
20 by Ganesh T S on 7/6/2022CES 2022: OWC Expands Atlas Series with CFexpress Offerings
OWC is introducing a number of CFexpress products as part of their 2022 CES announcements today. The new Atlas Pro and Atlas Pro Ultra CFexpress cards join the Atlas...
1 by Ganesh T S on 1/4/2022Next Gen NVMe SD Card Review: The SM2708 Controller Serves it Hot and Fast
Flash-based removable media has a host of use cases in products ranging from content capture devices to portable game consoles. Behind the standards of these is the SD Association...
43 by Ganesh T S on 9/9/2021CES 2021: Western Digital's Portable SSDs Get Capacity Upgrades: 4TB of TLC for $680
Western Digital markets portable SSDs under different brands, catering to different market segments. The flagships in each brand make use of of very similar platforms - a M.2 NVMe...
3 by Ganesh T S on 1/11/2021Sabrent Rocket Nano Rugged IP67 Portable SSD Review: NVMe in a M.2 2242 Enclosure
Portable bus-powered SSDs are a growing segment of the direct-attached storage market. The ongoing glut in flash memory (and the growing confidence of flash vendors in QLC) has brought...
11 by Ganesh T S on 10/30/2020Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus SDXC UHS-I 128GB Memory Cards Capsule Review
Samsung had last revamped their SDXC cards lineup back in 2014 to delineate them into the standard, PRO, and EVO categories. Since then, the company slowly phased out the...
21 by Ganesh T S on 10/14/2020ADATA External and HP Portable SSDs Review: Featuring the ADATA SE800 and HP P700
Portable flash-based storage solutions are one of the growing segments in the direct-attached storage market. The emergence of 3D NAND with TLC and QLC has brought down the cost...
13 by Ganesh T S on 9/24/2020China Develops High Capacity QLC 3D NAND: YMTC at 1.33 Tb
Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) has announced that it's developed its new 128-layer 1.33 Tb QLC 3D NAND memory chip, the X2-6070. The new chip is based on its...
64 by Gavin Bonshor on 4/13/2020Western Digital Demonstrates 8TB Portable 20 Gbps SSD, Announces Dual-Connector 1TB Thumb Drive
Western Digital has a history of showcasing cutting-edge technological advancements in the consumer electronics space at CES every year. In 2019, a 4TB thumb drive was demonstrated, and this...
12 by Ganesh T S on 1/6/2020Seagate Expands External Flash Storage Lineup with FireCuda Gaming SSD and BarraCuda Fast SSD
Late last year, Seagate had launched the FireCuda Gaming Dock, a 4TB external hard drive / Thunderbolt 3 dock with a Titan Ridge controller. It stood out in the...
13 by Ganesh T S on 1/6/2020Kioxia: 3D Stacked Storage Class Memory, like 3D XPoint, Isn’t the Future
One of the key battlegrounds of the next decade is going to be storage: density, speed, and demand. Naturally all the major players in the space want to promote...
23 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 12/30/2019Samsung EVO Plus microSDXC UHS-I 512GB Memory Card Capsule Review
As content capture devices are recording ever-higher bitrate videos and higher resolution photos, high capacity memory cards are increasingly in demand. Everything from smartphones to game consoles to PCs...
11 by Ganesh T S on 5/10/2019SanDisk's Mainstream Extreme PRO Portable SSD Goes NVMe
At CES 2019, Western Digital demonstrated a number of direct-attached flash solutions. Out of all the showcased items with imminent retail availability, one deserves separate mention. Under the SanDisk...
8 by Ganesh T S on 1/8/2019SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I 400GB Memory Card Capsule Review
Almost all content capture devices employ memory cards (flash-based removable media) for storage. Hand-held consoles and many other computing systems (PCs as well as smartphones) also employ them for...
3 by Ganesh T S on 12/13/2018FreeTail EVOKE Pro microSDXC UHS-II Memory Card Capsule Review
Almost all content capture devices employ memory cards (flash-based removable media) for storage. Hand-held consoles and many other computing systems (PCs as well as smartphones) also employ them for...
5 by Ganesh T S on 11/20/2018PNY Elite microSDXC UHS-I 512GB Memory Card Capsule Review
High-capacity microSDXC cards have started to appear in the market, thanks to the advent of 3D NAND. In August 2017, the 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card was introduced...
14 by Ganesh T S on 9/18/2018The Samsung Portable SSD X5 Review - Thunderbolt 3 and NVMe in a Premium Enclosure
Samsung is launching their first Thunderbolt 3 SSD, the Portable SSD X5, today. It places an OEM version of their 970 EVO NVMe SSD behind an Alpine Ridge controller...
23 by Ganesh T S on 8/28/2018Flash Memory Summit 2018, Yangtze Memory Technology Keynote Live Blog: Unleashing 3D NAND
The final talk of this session is from Yangtze Memory Technology (YMTC). We published their announcement this week, but they have set a very interesting talk for the show...
5 by Ian Cutress & Billy Tallis on 8/7/2018