Storage News - Page 39

ADATA has just released the world's first durable external HDD with RGB lighting with its new HD770G, offering up IP68 waterproof and dustproof goodness, as well as a shock-resistant triple-layer construction.

While it'll look great on the outside keeping all of your games nice and safely stored, on both the PC and consoles I might add. The HD770G can be submerged in 2 meters of water for up to 120 minutes thanks to its IP68 protection. ADATA provides the ultimate in protection with its HD770G external HDD, with patented port covers that provide the crazy protection from water.

ADATA uses a triple-layer construction on the HD770G with a shock-absorbing silicone casing, sturdy buffer, and a cushioned mounting for the hard drive. This means the ADATA HD770G can take a hit or two, or even a decent fall from your desk, or bag. There's even 256-bit AES encryption to boot.

If you've just purchased or are in the market to grab a new X570-based motherboard and new AMD Ryzen 3000 series CPU then you should match it up with a PCIe 4.0-capable SSD for those insane up to 5GB/sec speeds.

ADATA has just added its name into the pile of PCIe 4.0 SSDs with the release of its new XPG GAMMIX S50 PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive offers some blistering speeds. We're looking at 5GB/sec reads and up to 4.4GB/sec writes, and is backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0 if you don't have the write board.

ADATA provides its new XPG GAMMIX S50 SSD with an aluminum heat sink, which will reduce temps of the SSD by up to 10C and keep it operating at those up to 5GB/sec speeds. There's also SLC caching, a DRAM cache buffer, and up to 750K IOPs for random read/write operations.

Innodisk has just been granted the patent for its fire-proof external SSD by the USPTO, with the new Fire Shield SSD able to survive in direct flames at 800C for over 30 minutes.

The company ran comparison tests before and after the Fire Shield SSD was dunked in flames, with 100% data accuracy results. Inside, what Innodisk has done with the Fire Shield SSD is take inspiration from the black boxes used in planes and other vehicles, which are built to be secure to survive a major crash or explosion.

Innodisk uses triple-layer protection between the outside of the Fire Shield SSD, and the SSD itself. The company is using layers of flame resistant copper alloy, drive-protecting connector design, and heat-isolating lining material. There are over 20 heat-resistant materials used in total.

TEAMGROUP today announced its new T-FORCE CARDEA Liquid Cooled SSDs, with an integrated 'self circulating' liquid cooling block to increase performance. The CARDEA Liquid Series are PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 based SSDs with up to 3400 MB/s read speeds.

The new TEAMGROUP T-FORCE CARDEA Liquid SSDs utilize a patented liquid cooling implementation to reduce operating temperatures by up to 10° C.

See below for more spec details on the new T_FORCE CARDIA Liquid series M.2 SSDs from TEAMGROUP.

AMD's new Zen 2 processors have opened up a totally new era for PC hardware, with companies tripping over themselves with new PCIe 4.0 capable SSDs. The latest company to jump into the crazy-amounts-of-bandwidth bandwagon is GALAX with its new HOF Pro SSD.

GALAX's new HOF Pro SSD utilizes the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 for insane speeds of up to 5GB/sec versus 3.5GB/sec on PCIe 3.0, while write speeds can hit 4.4GB/sec which is up from 2.5GB/sec on PCIe 3.0. Meanwhile, 4K random read IOPS burst to 750K compared to 500K IOPS on PCIe 3.0 while 4K random writes hit 700K IOPS versus 480K IOPS on PCIe 3.0.

This is all thanks to the impressive Phison PS5016-E16 controller.

The day for PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs is here, with our recent look at the Sabrent Rocket PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD offering 1TB for $230 and now the GIGABYTE-made AORUS PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD is being rolled out after its debut during Computex 2019.

I have one of the new AORUS PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs here with me in the 2TB flavor and it is glorious, with GIGABYTE offering up to a huge 5GB/sec in reads and up to 4.4GB/sec writes. The 1TB version will cost $260 while the larger 2TB drive will cost $480. GIGABYTE will be shipping out its new AORUS PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs on July 8, the day after AMD unleashes its new Zen 2 processors and PCIe 4.0-capable X570 chipset on July 7.

You'll want to match the new AORUS PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD with a high-end X570 motherboard and next-gen Ryzen 3000 series CPU, which both drop in a few days time.

We are mere days away from AMD's new X570 platform launching alongside the next-gen Ryzen 3000 series CPUs which are based on the new Zen 2 CPU architecture, so PCIe 4.0-enabled SSDs that pump up to 5GB/sec are now a reality. Sabrent is one of the first to market with its new Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Sabrent's new Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD is on Amazon right now and comes in two sizes: 1TB and 2TB which will cost you $230 and $430, respectively. It is powered by the Phison PS5016-E16 SSD controller that has power management support for APST/ASPM/L1, as well as SMART and TRIM commands, advanced wear leveling, bad block management, error correction code, and over-provision.

Sabrent is using Toshiba's BiCS4 96L TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash memory that provides the Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD to truly act like a rocket with transfer speeds of up to 5GB/sec reads and 4.4GB/sec writes. Yeah, considering normal 2.5-inch SSDs max out at around 500MB/sec having 10x the speed on tap thanks to PCIe 4.0 is hugely impressive.

Toshiba and Western Digital were hit with a 13-minute power outage on June 15, and we're now looking at somewhere between 6-15 exabytes of NAND flash being affected. The companies are expecting to swing into standard manufacturing rates sometime in mid-July, a couple of weeks from now.

First off we have Toshiba with a reported 6-9 exabytes in NAND flash gone, while WD announced it lost nearly 6 exabytes of NAND flash during the power outage. The big problem is that 35% of the world's NAND flash production is made in the joint manufacturing facilities of Toshiba and WD in Yokkaichi, Japan. So this small 13-minute power outage will have huge flow on effects for global markets, and will surely change SSD pricing going forward.

Q3 and Q4 orders have been settled and paid for, so we could expect small price increases in the meantime before larger prices are seen in 2020.

Seagate just announced three to models to the popular Guardian Series. The Exos, IronWolf, and IronWolf Pro lines now scale to 16TB with the help of Helium and a new 9-platter design.

On paper, the new 16TB variants show identical performance to the 14TB and 12TB models previously released. We expect to see some performance variation in testing . That should start as early as this week with reviews to follow soon after.

The biggest change, besides capacity, comes to the IronWolf Pro product line. With previous models, Seagate recommended the IronWolf Pro for systems with up to 16 HDDs. With the new 16TB model, Seagate now recommends the series for systems with up to 24 drives. Seagate still recommends the IronWolf for systems with up to 8 drive bays.

As the world moves away from physical storage, HDD makers are selling less and less and according to Japanese motor manufacturer Nidec, HDD shipments will only continue to drop this year and more so in 2020 and beyond.

Nidec has been supplying spindle motors for HDDs for a very, very long time and now the company is predicting HDD sales will drop as much as 50% this year, and more so in 2020. Nidec adds that their spindle motors are found inside of around 85% of products on the market, so their predictions hold some merit and talk about growth in other areas like home appliances, automotive, and 5G technologies.

Nidec's own data shows that HDD sales dropped from 650 million to 375 million between 2010 and 2018, a big drop of 43% but sales will continue to drop this year with revised shipment forecasts for 2018 down to 309 million. 2020 is even worse according to Nidec's shipment forecasts, with just 290 million HDDs expected to be shipped.