BICS4

External bus-powered storage devices have grown both in storage capacity as well as speeds over the last decade. Thanks to rapid advancements in flash technology (including the advent of 3D NAND and NVMe) as well as faster host interfaces (such as Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.x), we now have palm-sized flash-based storage devices capable of delivering 2GBps+ speeds. While those speeds can be achieved with Thunderbolt 3, mass-market devices have to rely on USB. This review discusses the performance and characteristics of Western Digital's latest offerings (2020 catalog) supporting USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) speeds. Introduction High-performance external storage devices use either Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.2 Gen 2 for the host interface. Traditional SATA SSDs (saturating at 560 MBps) can hardly take full advantage...

Western Digital Introduces WD Gold Enterprise SSDs

On what would have been the first day of the Open Compute Project's annual Global Summit, Western Digital is bringing out a new line of enterprise SSDs. The WD...

20 by Billy Tallis on 3/4/2020

Plextor Unveils M9P Plus SSD: A Proven Design Gets 96L 3D TLC & Up to 3.4 GB/s

Plextor has introduced its new flagship consumer SSD lineup, the M9P Plus. The new drives continue to use Marvell’s proven "Eldora" controller, but come equipped with Kioxia’s 96-layer BiCS4...

2 by Anton Shilov on 2/20/2020

96-Layer 3D TLC Reaches Embedded & Industrial NVMe SSDs: Transcend Reveals MTE662T

Though, as always, it takes some time for newer technologies to filter down into the conservative embedded/industrial market, the time has finally come for 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. SSD...

5 by Anton Shilov on 2/3/2020

Seagate Announces FireCuda 520 PCIe 4.0 SSD

Seagate is refreshing their consumer SSD lineup with 96-layer 3D NAND, and introducing a new flagship model: the FireCuda 520, Seagate's first PCIe 4.0 SSD. As with every other...

16 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2019

Western Digital Begins Shipments of 96-Layer 3D QLC-Based SSDs, Retail Products

Western Digital announced this week that it has started shipments of its first products based on 3D QLC NAND memory. The initial devices to use the highly-dense flash memory...

28 by Anton Shilov on 11/1/2019

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