flash storage | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Wed, 11 Jul 2018 14:44:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png flash storage | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Production starts on Samsung’s 5th Gen 256Gbit V-NAND https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/ryan-burgess/production-starts-on-samsungs-5th-gen-256gbit-v-nand/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/ryan-burgess/production-starts-on-samsungs-5th-gen-256gbit-v-nand/#respond Wed, 11 Jul 2018 14:44:59 +0000 https://www.kitguru.net/?p=379451 Samsung is often at the very forefront of SSD technology, with the company's NVMe and 2.5″ offerings consistently delivering top performance at decent prices. Given how successful Samsung has been in this market, it should come as no surprise that further investments are being made. Specifically, Samsung kicked off mass production for its 256Gbit V-NAND …

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Samsung is often at the very forefront of SSD technology, with the company's NVMe and 2.5″ offerings consistently delivering top performance at decent prices. Given how successful Samsung has been in this market, it should come as no surprise that further investments are being made. Specifically, Samsung kicked off mass production for its 256Gbit V-NAND this week.

Samsung made the announcement via a press release this week. This 5th Gen 256Gbit V-NAND will utilise a new ‘Toggle DDR 4.0' interface, which increases the speed of transmitting data between storage and memory to 1.4Gbps- a huge 40 percent increase over the previous generation. The data write speed is also the fastest to date, coming in at 500 microseconds, providing a 30 percent improvement over last generation.

This new generation of V-NAND also features more than 90 layers of “3D charge trap flash cells”, the largest currently available. Improvements to the atomic layer deposition process also means that manufacturing efficiency has increased by more than 30 percent. Each cell layer has been reduced by 20 percent, which helps prevent crosstalk and improves efficiency of data processing.

Mass production has kicked off, so we should start to see new SSDs sporting this V-NAND in the not so distant future. If we don't get our first look this year, then perhaps this new tech will make an appearance at CES 2019 in January.

KitGuru Says: If the claims hold up from Samsung, we could be in for some very fast SSDs at affordable prices. That’s if Samsung passes the savings onto consumers. Do you think that 5th Gen V-NAND will be a game changer?

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Third-party flash storage upgrades are finally coming to Retina Macbooks https://www.kitguru.net/lifestyle/mobile/apple/matthew-wilson/third-party-flash-storage-upgrades-are-finally-coming-to-retina-macbooks/ https://www.kitguru.net/lifestyle/mobile/apple/matthew-wilson/third-party-flash-storage-upgrades-are-finally-coming-to-retina-macbooks/#respond Wed, 09 Mar 2016 12:50:35 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=286507 When Apple first introduced the new Retina Macbook Pro line several years ago, it also made the jump to flash storage. However, this also made it much harder for users to buy third-party drives to upgrade their storage down the line as Apple chose to use non-standard parts, meaning that even finding a replacement flash …

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When Apple first introduced the new Retina Macbook Pro line several years ago, it also made the jump to flash storage. However, this also made it much harder for users to buy third-party drives to upgrade their storage down the line as Apple chose to use non-standard parts, meaning that even finding a replacement flash storage device could be a challenge.

In the 2013 and up Macbook Pro Retina and Macbook Air laptops, flash storage is difficult to reach but not impossible. Fortunately, thanks to OWC, users can now upgrade the flash storage on these laptops to either a 480GB drive or a 1TB version.

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These SSDs are designed to work with any Macbook Pro Retina 2013 or Macbook  Air 2013 and newer. The actual process of installing is a little tricky but OWC supplies all of the tools needed as well as instructions to get the job done.

Doing this isn't cheap though, a 480GB SSD will cost you $400 and the 1TB SSD will cost $650, it is a lot of money but if you couldn't spring for more than 128GB or 256GB of storage the first time around, this solution is still cheaper than buying a new Macbook entirely.

KitGuru Says: It is a tad annoying that spending over £1000 on a laptop can sometimes only net you 128GB of storage. Hopefully, more third-party flash storage solutions will begin to pop up for the Macbook Pro and Macbook Air lines following on from this. 

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Western Digital: More and more PCs use SSDs instead of HDDs https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-more-and-more-pcs-use-ssds-instead-of-hdds/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-more-and-more-pcs-use-ssds-instead-of-hdds/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2015 02:13:03 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=233082 For years manufacturers of hard disk drives have been saying that SSDs were too expensive for mainstream PCs. However, at present chief executive officer of Western Digital Corp. has to admit that more and more personal computers utilize solid-state drives instead of HDDs. Moreover, this trend will strengthen this year and will affect performance of …

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For years manufacturers of hard disk drives have been saying that SSDs were too expensive for mainstream PCs. However, at present chief executive officer of Western Digital Corp. has to admit that more and more personal computers utilize solid-state drives instead of HDDs. Moreover, this trend will strengthen this year and will affect performance of the hard drive market.

“We have to contemplate the fact that more and more client units are using solid-state devices versus rotating magnetic storage and so we will see more of a drag than that low single digit in terms of hard drive shift into the PC market,” said Steve Milligan, chief executive officer of Western Digital, during a conference call with investors and financial analysts.

WD now expects shipments of hard drives to drop insignificantly this year as many notebooks transit to solid-state drives. Moreover, virtually all enthusiast-class PCs use SSDs as boot drives. Previously performance-demanding users utilized high-end HDDs.

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Western Digital's HGST solid-state drives for the enterprise market

Earlier this month it was reported that Western Digital is about to start purchasing SSD controllers from JMicron. It is believed that inexpensive solid-state drive controllers from JMicron will be used for affordable client SSDs, which should boost revenue of Western Digital this year.

Western Digital this week reported revenue of $3.9 billion and net income of $460 million for its second fiscal quarter ended January 2, 2015. Revenue of WD’s NAND flash storage business, which includes a portfolio of enterprise class SSDs, totaled $187 million, which is 20 per cent higher than in the same period a year ago.

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KitGuru Says: It is pretty obvious that companies like Seagate and Western Digital need to finally address the growing market of consumer solid-state drives. For some reason, the two firms are pretty reluctant to do so…

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