SSD Drives

Intel Corp. produces very advanced solid-state drives for various applications, but its market share is below 10 per cent. A media report claims that Intel plans to significantly boost shipments of its SSDs in the future and will significantly increase market share next year. According to TrendFocus, Samsung Electronics controlled …

Nearly one third of modern notebooks are set to use solid-state drives as their primary storage systems in 2015, according to a new research. Thanks to major decreases of NAND flash memory pricing in the recent years, SSDs are now more affordable than ever, which means that mobile PCs will …

Zotac, a leading maker of graphics cards that belongs to PCPartner, has been gradually expanding its business for several years now. In addition to Nvidia GeForce-based graphics adapters, the company also offers mainboards, tablets as well as small form-factor PCs. This week the company quietly started to sell solid-state drives under …

We had a chance to take a look at ASRock's USB 3.1 implementation with the company's excellent X99E-ITX/ac motherboard and a custom USB 3.1 RAID testing card. How does ASRock's 10Gbps USB 3.1 solution fare? USB 3.1 has been a huge talking point for the past few months. We have …

Plextor produces one of the best solid-state drives available today. However, Plextor’s drives are pretty expensive and are designed for premium market segment. Apparently, Plextor is working on an inexpensive SSD based on cost-effective triple-level-cell NAND flash memory, which will be available later this year. Not a lot is known …

Chillblast, a well-known maker of enthusiast-class personal computers from the U.K., offers rather substantial discounts on Samsung Electronics’ 850 Evo and 850 Pro solid-state drives for a limited time. For less than two weeks, Samsung’s latest family of solid-state drives will be available with £10 – £50 discounts at Chillblast. …

Even as fast as SATA III SSDs are, the new battleground for the storage performance crown lies with PCIe drives, as the potential read and write times with that interface blow everything away. Which is why Plextor has been showing off its own PCIe solutions at Computex this year, but …

Shipments of solid-state drives increased in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of the year, according to analysts from TrendFocus. Samsung Electronics remained the world’s largest supplier of SSDs, followed by Micron Technology and SanDisk. In the first quarter of 2015 sales of solid-state drives for client PCs …

Want to have a high-performance external storage device with USB 3.1 interface, but consider commercially available products too expensive? Sharkoon, a leading maker of PC peripherals, may have a solution! Sharkoon has introduced a special DIY [do it yourself] kit for an external storage device with USB 3.1 interface. The …

OCZ Storage Solutions, a maker of solid-state drives controlled by Toshiba Corp., is working on a new family of client SSDs powered by triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory. The new solid-state storage devices will be aimed at inexpensive PCs, they will provide performance comparable to that of advanced SATA-6Gb/s …

JEDEC, a leading stanard setting organization, this week announced the first standards for support of “hybrid” memory modules that fit into DDR4 DRAM memory slots, but contain NAND flash memory. Such non-volatile dual in-line memory modules (NVDIMMs) will be used for ultra-high-performance storage devices as well as for ultra-secure DRAM …

Super Talent Technology, a well-known producer of various NAND flash-based storage devices, has unveiled one of the world’s first external solid-state drives with USB 3.1 interface. The new product combines portable sizes, high storage capacities and very high performance. The Super Talent USB 3.1 portable RAIDDrive consists of two M.2 …

OCZ Storage Solutions has officially announced its new Z-Drive 6000- and 6300-series solid-state drives for high-performance computing systems, such as servers, workstations and ultra-high-end desktops. The drives offer various capacity points, different performance and PCI Express x4 3.0 interface. The new SSDs fully support non-volatile memory express (NVMe) 1.1b protocol …

Hot off the heels of Intel’s SSD 750 series launch, and with NVMe-based SSDs beginning to gain momentum in the consumer marketplace, MSI is preparing to launch an adapter card to provide support for SFF-8639 drives to its X99 motherboards. Intel’s SSD 750 series drives utilise four lanes of PCIe …

Samsung Electronics plans to concentrate on expansion of production capacities used to make its 3D V-NAND memory going forward. A media report claims that the South Korean conglomerate no longer plans to build new manufacturing facilities for production of traditional planar NAND flash. NAND flash was invented by Toshiba Corp. …

SanDisk is one of the leading producers of NAND flash-based devices, could be an excellent acquisition target for Seagate and Western Digital, according to a financial analyst. While at present the takeover of SanDisk is a hypothetical thing, HDD makers may be very interested in acquiring a company with NAND …

Intel Corp. announced its new 750-series solid-state drives this week. The new SSDs are designed for high-performance desktops and the manufacturer calls the drives its “highest-performing client SSDs”. With read speeds up to 2.40GB/s and capacities up to 1.2TB, the Intel 750-series SSD is a dream of any performance enthusiast. …

Phison, once an underdog on the market of controllers for solid-state drives, today is one of the leading independent designers of SSD controllers. In a bid to further strengthen its positions on the market, Phison plans to spend up to $320 million on mergers and acquisitions, build a research and …

The push for greater performance from storage devices is seeing enthusiast drives transition towards PCIe-linked connections for increased bandwidth. While faster hardware is great, on paper, it is of limited use if the surrounding ecosystem is unable to put the performance increases to effective use. That's where the SSD-optimised Non-Volatile …

Micron Technology has announced that it will reduce shipments of its NAND flash memory to the spot market. While the move may have limited effects on the market initially, it could lead to consolidation of makers of NAND flash-based devices, including solid-state drives. In a bid to improve its profit …

When OCZ challenged KitGuru back in December to kill five of its Arc 100 SSDs by writing and rewriting to them constantly for the foreseeable future, nobody could have predicted that four months and several hundred terabytes later we’d still be talking about it. However we need to really, since a …

SK Hynix is about to announce new multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips that are expected to boost performance of solid-state drives in various applications. The new chips also promise better reliability than previous-generation NAND flash ICs [integrated circuits]. The world’s third largest producer of NAND flash memory is …

Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. this week said that they have finished development of vertically-stacked 3D NAND memory devices. The BiCS [bit cost scalable] NAND flash memory from the two companies will be mass-produced in 2016 and will enable new solid-state storage devices with enhanced reliability and performance. Toshiba’s three-dimensional …

Triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory is dramatically less durable than traditional multi-level cell (MLC) or single-level cell (SLC) NAND. However, it has one distinctive advantage over competing technologies: it is more affordable to manufacture. This single advantage drives its popularity among makers of various devices and by the end …

Regular readers of KitGuru will know that OCZ have been making amends to repair their reputation with the enthusiast audience. They feel so confident in their latest technology that they asked us recently to kill 5 of their ARC 100 drives (latest update and links back HERE). Today it is …

Patriot. A name I haven't heard in quite some time. Years ago we reviewed a steady stream of their products, then they seemed to vanish from view to focus solely on mobile accessories. While the recent shift back may only be a cautious toe in the water today we look …

When OCZ challenged KitGuru back in December to kill five of its Arc 100 SSDs by writing and rewriting to them constantly for the foreseeable future, nobody could have predicted that four months and several hundred terabytes later we'd still be talking about it. However we need to really, since a …

In a bid to improve performance and reliability of solid-state drives inside its notebooks, Apple will use SSDs made by Samsung and powered by 3D V-NAND flash memory. This is a major win for Samsung as it gets a major PC maker as a client. The latest MacBook notebooks will …

If you've been a regular KitGuru reader for the past few months, then chances are you'll have spotted at least one of Leo's videos discussing the ongoing challenge from OCZ – to kill 5 ARC 100 SSD's by continually writing data to them, until they cave in. While the warranty …

We hope by now that many of you have been following the ‘Kill x5 SSD Challenge' issued to us by OCZ – this started way back on December 10th last year. Today, the fourth drive has kicked the bucket with only one still ticking away. The warranty data transfer figure …