Items tagged with Storage
The Steam Autumn sale kicked off yesterday, and you may be buying a few more games that you want to try out. The biggest problem you could encounter is not knowing what games to uninstall so you have room to install others. However, Western Digital has you covered this Black Friday with some stellar deals on storage, so you can install and play the games you want, without having to sacrifice those that you already have, in order to free up storage space. Western Digital 1TB WD_Black SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Today, the top deal we have for you is this WD_Black 1TB M.2 SSD coming in at a whopping 54% off, bringing the price down to $115. If you need to store some games, this is...
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At the beginning of September, Sabrent announced its Rocket 4 Plus solid state drive, which is rated to deliver delightfully fast sequential read speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and write speeds up to 6,850MB/s. This is large part due to Phison's next-gen PS5018-E18 controller. As enticing as that is, it appears the E18 can push even further. The controller chip is basically what drives an SSD, managing the data flow from the NAND flash memory chips and I/O. Phison has been pressing the pedal to the metal, with its E18 controller rated to deliver read and write speeds of up to 7,000MB/s, and long with 4K random read and writes of up to 1 million IOPS. Here's a breakdown... Those are some impressive...
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Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled the privacy-minded Portable SSD T7 Touch. This external USB-C storage device delivered high capacities up to 2TB and impressive read-write speeds over USB 3.2 Gen 2. Its headlining feature, however, was an integrated fingerprint reader to effortlessly unlock the drive’s AES 256-bit encryption. Not everyone needs this one-touch access to their files though, and would prefer a more straightforward external storage solution. For these users Samsung has released a non-touch variant of the T7 to shed some cost, but keep the rest of the goodness intact. Samsung Portable SSD T7 Specifications & Features The simply named Samsung Portable SSD T7 lacks the...
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We first caught a glimpse of the Samsung SSD 980 Pro all the way back at CES in early January. The highly-anticipated drive was tucked away in a display case in Samsung’s massive booth on the show floor, but other than the branding, some early claimed performance data, and the fact that drive had a native PCIe 4.0 interface, details were scant. All that changes today, though. We’ve gotten our hands on a couple of shiny, new Samsung SSD 980 Pro drives – in 250GB and 1TB flavors – and are finally able to give you the full scoop. The Samsung SSD 980 Pro series of solid state drives not only support the PCI Express 4.0 interface, but they are outfitted with a completely new...
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By now, everyone with even the vaguest of interest in PC technology can tell you how much snappier solid state drives are than even the fastest of spinning disks of yesteryear. There have been some interesting wrinkles recently, like ultra-high speed drives that ride the PCI Express 4.0 bus, but in test after test, regardless of drive type, just having a modern SSD offers enough of a boost to make an older PC feel new again. Similarly, it's basically a necessity to slap an SSD like one of the ADATA drives we'll be showing you here, into a new system build to not make any big sacrifices in responsiveness. Today, we're going to look at a pair of 1 TB SSDs from ADATA: the Swordfish and the Falcon....
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Kingston recently released its DC1000M series of solid-state drives for data center applications, capped off by a massive 7.68TB model. The DC1000M series leverages a hot-pluggable U.2 (2.5”, 15mm) form factor, that’s compatible with U.2 backplanes and the drives target mixed-use, data-intensive workloads, including Cloud computing, web hosting, high-performance computing (HPC), virtual infrastructures, and AI and deep learning applications. There are four drives in the initial Kingston DC1000M family, bookended by a 960GB model and the aforementioned 7.68TB behemoth. We’ve got a 3.84TB model on hand, which we’ll be showing you here. If you peruse the drives’ main...
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Although much of the excitement in the solid state storage market revolves around the latest, bleeding-edge NVMe-based drives, there is still a massive need for SATA-based solutions. Not only are there a myriad of legacy systems ripe for upgrades that rely on SATA, but owners of current-gen systems often want more affordable, higher-capacity -- but still fast -- solid state storage to pair with their NVMe boot drives. Samsung has traditionally been a leader in the space, with a succession of popular drives over the years. The newest members of the family, the Samsung SSD 870 QVO we’ll be showing you here today, builds upon Samsung’s success with higher capacities, strong performance...
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ASUS TUF Gaming Alliance has teamed up with TEAMGROUP to design some new storage products that are available for gamers. The new storage products include the T-FORCE CARDEA II TUF Gaming Alliance M.2 SSD and the T-FORCE Delta TUF Gaming Alliance RGB Gaming SSD. Both of the storage devices have been certified and tested by the TUF Gaming Alliance. Both SSDs have an exterior design that looks very cool and interesting complete with a TUF Gaming camo logo. The T-Force Delta SSD has complete RGB lighting on the outside that can be synchronized with the ASUS AURA SYNC motherboard lighting control software. The drive is also etched with military-style camouflage to take a boring storage product and...
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It's been nine months since AMD unleashed its Zen 2 processors and, more importantly as it related to this article, the X570 chipset with its PCI Express 4 connectivity, into the world. In the time since then, there hasn't been a torrent of extra-fast flash released by all that many storage vendors; even at launch, we only had Gigabyte's Aorus PCIe 4 SSD on hand to test. Considering that Gigabyte's drive could far outstrip the bandwidth available in PCI Express 3.0 x4 drives, while putting up some solid IOPs figures, it seems that those who feel a need for speed would want these drives, assuming they had a motherboard with a processor and chipset capable of pushing it to the limit. That seeming...
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Samsung on Tuesday announced it has started mass producing the industry's first 512-gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage 3.1 (eUFS 3.1). It will find its way into future flagship smartphones, bringing with it much faster sequential write speeds, along with better random read and write performance compared to 512GB eUFS 3.0. "With our introduction of the fastest mobile storage, smartphone users will no longer have to worry about the bottleneck they face with conventional storage cards," said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics."The new eUFS 3.1 reflects our continuing commitment to supporting the rapidly increasing demands from global...
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Over the last few years the USB connectivity has gone through some major changes. We've been through USB 3.0, USB 3.1, and now USB 3.2. And that's not even taking into account all the different generations that were released. Like USB 3.1 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 2, and now USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. Oh, and don't forget, Gen 4 is coming soon as well. If just going through the names is enough to make your head spin, try keeping track of all their respective bandwidth and throughput specs. The reason we wanted to start with the USB interface is because there's going to be a handful of people out there that assume just because they have a high-end system, they'll be able to use the Crucial...
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Samsung has been at the forefront of the solid-state storage market for a number of years now. We’re not just talking about its mainstream internal SSDs either, which have been popular amongst enthusiasts. Samsung offers a wide array of solid-state storage solutions, ranging from miniscule microSD cards, all the way on up to monstrous, high-capacity enterprise-class drives meant for big-iron servers. The company has also put considerable focus into its an array of portable storage solutions, to cater to a wide range of users. We’ve shown you many of Samsung’s portable SSDs in the past, including the excellent T5 and super-fast X5 with its Thunderbolt 3 interface. Today we’re...
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Only somewhat recently has pricing on solid state drives (SSDs) become attractive to the point where buying a mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) only makes sense for backup duties and other secondary storage configurations (like in a NAS box or for a surveillance system). However, SSD pricing could see a steep rise this year, due to rising costs of NAND flash memory chips. The timing is unfortunate because even NVMe SSDs with faster speeds than SATA-based SSDs have dipped in price. Here are some examples... Crucial MX500 1TB NVMe SSD: $107.99, Amazon Kingston 500GB NVMe SSD: $59.99, Amazon Silicon Power 256GB NVMe SSD: $36.99, Amazon Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB NVMe SSD: $219.99, Newegg Pricing in the...
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Addlink isn't a particularly well-known manufacturer in the PC storage space, but the company has been in the business for a little over a decade. Online shops carry all sorts of flash memory products from Addlink, from micro SD cards to PCI-Express 4.0 solid state drives, and all points in between. However, just because you may not be as familiar with a certain brand or product doesn't mean it's not worth paying attention to. At the risk of giving away the conclusion in the first paragraph of this review, we dare say that Addlink's S70 M.2 SSD is one of those situations. As you'll see in the features and specifications list below, the S70 targets some pretty lofty theoretical figures for a drive...
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Kingston recently expanded its portfolio of solid state drives, with a new family of products targeting high-performance desktop and workstation applications. The Kingston KC2000 series of drives feature a PCI Express Gen 3.0 x 4 controller, 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and boast of peak transfer speeds north of 3GB/s. The drives are offered in an array of capacities, ranging from 250GB all the way on up to 2TB, and they support a number of security-conscious features as well. All told, the Kingston KC2000 series drives try to cater to a myriad of use cases, from mainstream consumer desktops, to gamers and enthusiasts, and workstation users. Whether or not Kingston pulled it off remains...
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Patriot has rolled out a new SSD that is aimed squarely at gamers and enthusiasts looking for the ultimate in performance from their SSD. The drive is called the Viper VP4100 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD and promises sequential read speeds up to 5GB/s and write speeds up to 4.4 GB/s. The SSD is also rated for up to 800k random read and write IOPS, and is optimized for multi-threaded and data-intensive applications with 4K Aligned Random Read and Write tech. The only folks that will be able to take full advantage of this PCIe 4.0 SSD are those with AMD Ryzen 3000 desktop processors and X570-based motherboards. The VP4100 use a Phision PCIe 4.0 controller and has an external thermal sensor...
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Now that SSDs and their components have been substantially cost-reduced and essentially gone mainstream, there are more and more players in the space. What was once a market reserved for but a few top-tier semiconductor manufacturers, is now increasingly crowded by new, lesser-known third-party companies looking to capitalize on the increasing demand for super-fast storage. One such company is Asura Technology. Asura was founded less than a year ago, and has developed a high-end, NVMe SSD with a handful of interesting features, targeted specifically at gamers and performance enthusiasts -- the Asura Genesis Xtreme we will showing you here today. Asura Technology does not have their own proprietary...
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Toshiba on Tuesday announced it has developed a new XFMEXPRESS form factor for "removable PCIe attached, NVMe memory devices," otherwise known as SSDs. These are not like any traditional SSDs, however, but smaller and lower-height ones to enable fast storage in increasingly thinner and lighter devices, including ultrabooks and things like VR headsets. "With a new form factor and an innovative connector, XFMEXPRESS technology delivers an unparalleled combination of features designed to revolutionize ultra-mobile PCs, IoT devices and various embedded applications. Recognizing the need for a new class of removable storage, Toshiba Memory leveraged its extensive background in single-package memory...
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Kingston has been a dedicated stalwart of the memory, storage, and peripheral markets for many years. The company’s products target virtually every type of user, from entry-level first-time PC builders to seasoned sysadmins. The products we’ll be showing you here today, the Kingston DC500R and DC500M solid state drives, target the latter type of user, in need of reliable, high-capacity SSD storage for enterprise and data center applications. At first glance – of both their physical design and specifications -- the Kingston DC500R and DC500M drives appear to be similar. The ‘R’ variant, however, is geared for read-heavy workloads, while the ‘M’ variant...
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A few months back, Samsung launched its SSD 970 EVO Plus series of solid state drives, which featured the company’s latest TLC NAND flash memory and an updated firmware optimized for higher performance. When the line-up initially arrived, capacities up to 2TB were announced, but only the 250GB – 1TB models were made available. The highest-capacity, 2TB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus has just arrived, however, and we got the chance to take one for a spin. At its core, the 2TB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus is virtually identical to the other drives in the line-up, save for a larger DRAM cache and, obviously, more NAND storage capacity. Here’s how the full line-up compares to the original...
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A few weeks back, we took a look at the WD Blue SN500 SSD. That solid state drive is an affordable NVMe M.2 option, that’s targeted at mainstream systems and budget-constrained users. The WD Blue SN500 offers the benefits of NVMe, with pricing that is in-line with legacy SATA devices. The drive we’ll be looking at today, however, the WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink, takes things in a completely different direction. The WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink targets enthusiasts and gamers, and offers much higher performance in some scenarios. It is also priced higher, but not exorbitantly so. The WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink is by no means a mainstream drive, as you’ll see shortly,...
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Like many hardware companies, Intel is using Computex to showcase a bunch of new products and technologies, such as its Core i9-9900KS Special Edition processor, 10-nanometer Ice Lake CPUs, and Project Athena laptops. In addition, Intel has unveiled a new and faster Optane Memory product that improves upon the performance of the previous generation offerings. The new Optane Memory M15 drives consist of Intel's 3D XPoint memory plopped onto an M.2 form factor module, with a PCI Express 3.0 x4 interface. As with the previous generation Optane Memory 10 modules, the M15 is using 128-gigabit (Gb) 3D XPoint built on a 20 nanometer manufacturing process. The major change, however, is the bump from...
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