Storage News - Page 65

CES 2015 - Corsair is a company that never disappoints, so when we visited them at CES 2015, we walked away with a great look at what they've been working on lately.

One of the stand out things at CES 2015 for Corsair was their really quite stunning orange and black setup, using a Hydro Series CPU cooler, some Dominator DDR4 RAM and a GIGABYTE motherboard which all matched. The Hydro Series cooler had a tweak to it however, as that orange ring is not standard - maybe Corsair should look into providing different colored rings with their coolers from now on?

This is one of Corsair's newer products, the Neutron XT series SSD.

Samsung announced today that they have begun mass production of their high-performance, low-powered PCIe solid state drives. The SM951 is designed with ultra-slim notebooks in mind, with Jeeho Baek, Samsung's Senior Vice President of Memory Marketing, commenting "we are helping to accelerate growth of the ultra-slim notebook PC market with the introduction of this energy-efficient, high-speed PCIe SSD. We will continue to introduce next-generation high-density SSDs with improved performance and increased differentiation, as we further strengthen our business competitiveness in global SSD market."

Supporting both PCIe 3.0 and PCI 2.0 interfaces, Samsung claim their product can read and write at sequential speeds of 1,600 MB/s and 1,350 MB/s respectively. Being three times faster than SATA SSD technology and 30 percent faster than the Samsung XP941, these products are set to be a real winner.

The SM951 is also the first SSD to utilize the L1.2 low power standby mode, allowing all high-speed circuits to be turned off when a PC is sleeping or in hibernation, marking a 97 percent decrease from the 50mW consumed previously - this new device uses under 2mW of power to function.

CES 2015 - Performance hardware company Mushkin has announced its STRIKER series of solid state drives, with read and write speeds up to 565MB/s and 550MB/s.

The drives will be available in storage capacities ranging from 240GB up to 960GB, but pricing details weren't released. Utilizing the Phison PS3110-S10 controller, the STRIKER SSDs have the following specifications: quad-core, 8-channel, 256-bit AES encryption, SATA 3.0 support, high-speed MLC NAND, 2.5" 7mm form factor, and user-upgradeable firmware.

The Mushkin STRIKER SSD series will launch during Q1 2015 in all size capacities.

CES 2015 -Seagate has managed to fit 500GB into an amazingly slim external hard drive. The aptly-named Seven is only 7mm thick, and is intended for users on the go who require plenty of storage capacity. The Seven connects via the speedy USB 3.0 interface, and is manufactured from premium steel to withstand the rigors of portable use. Even with its rugged exterior the Seven manages to be aesthetically pleasing and feather light.

The Seven is thin even in comparison to a modern smartphone, and below we can see the size of one of the first 500GB HDDs. Storage has certainly came a long way, and with SSD manufacturers beginning to encroach upon the external storage market Seagate is upping their game to compete by offering the highest capacity available in external storage devices, and now also the thinnest.

Storage Visions 2015 -Chris Bross from DriveSavers stopped by the TweakTown booth to discuss the latest in data recovery technology. Increasing HDD capacity presents numerous problems, both with storing data and with recovering it. We also recently had the opprutunity to tour DriveSavers labs, and covered the data recovery process in our DriveSavers Data Recovery Site Tour - Your Data, Recovered article.

New drive technologies, such as helium drives and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recovery), add another layer of complexity that DriveSavers has to master to continue to offer data recovery services. New types of software layers and filesystems also present more hurdles, but DriveSavers maintains close contact with all storage vendors to enhance their data recovery services.

Storage Visions 2015 -Dinesh Bahal from SanDisk stopped by the TweakTown booth to discuss SanDisk's latest offering, the SSD Plus. The SSD Plus is an entry-level SSD based upon second-generation 19nm NAND.

The SSD Plus comes in 120 and 240GB capacities, and is geared specifically for the entry-level market with a price of $70 and $110. SanDisk also announced the mSATA variant of the Ultra II. The mSATA Ultra II comes in capacities of 128, 256, and 512GB. It will retail for $74, $116, and $221 and will reach the market this quarter. Both SSDs also come wich SanDisk's toolbox, which eases data migration and simplifies drive management tasks.

Following suit of their high performance/high capacity flash drives, Patriot are extending their SSD series - launching the Ignite.

The Patriot Ignite SATA III SSD is claimed by Patriot in their latest press release as "one of the fastest drives available, the Ignite has record shattering speeds and impressive capacities to boost PC performance at a cost efficient value." Being released in 480GB and 960GB versions, these SSDs are Patriot's largest offerings yet.

To help you fill your spacious drive and access your programs as fast as possible, the "Patriot Ignite utilizes the new Phison S10 controller to reach a maximum sequential read and write speeds of up to 560MB/s and 545MB/s respectively and backed by a SATA III 6.0 Gb/s interface." This speed and storage comes at a price however, with the 480GB edition set to cost you $214.99 on release this month alongside it's bigger brother, the 960GB, which will cost users $404.99.

If quick and easy storage is on your mind, Patriot have just announced the release of their next-generation Supersonic Magnum and Rage USB flash drives. Both of these products feature USB 3.0 capabilities and massive storage options.

First off the rank is the Supersonic Magnum 2, 3.0 USB Flash Drive - boasting read and write speeds reaching 400MB/s and 300MB/s. As quoted in a recent press release, "it's the fastest high capacity/high performance USB flash drive on the market". They aren't joking about high capacity either, with 256GB and 512GB options to be released all wrapped up in their study matte black industrial grade metal housing.

Said to be able to withstand forces of 15Gs, this product also comes with a handy detachable cap to help keep everything clean - however you'll likely lose it as always seems to happen with these products.

CES 2015 - Hardware manufacturer Corsair launched its Neutron Series XT line of high-capacity solid state drives, with the 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB capacities shown off.

The Neutron XT line provides sequential read speeds of 560MB/s and sequential write speeds of 540MB/s, utilizing every inch of the SATA 6GB/s interface. Corsair's speed advantage over traditional hard disk drives and low-end SSDs is a major selling point among gamers and PC enthusiasts. The 7mm casing allows it to be installed into PCs or laptops supporting a 2.5-inch drive bay.

The Corsair Neutron XT line of SSDs are available now - Neutron XT 256GB ($149.99 MSRP), Neutron XT 512GB ($269.99 MSRP), and Neutron XT960GB ($539.99).

Richard Leonarz, the Senior Marketing Manager at Samsung, stopped by the TweakTown booth at Storage Visions 2015 to speak about the new external Samsung USB 3.0 SSD. The Samsung Portable SSD T1 features Samsung's exclusive 3bit V-NAND and is designed to provide the ultimate storage performance for external drives.

The T1 comes in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. The Portable SSD T1 provides 450 MB/s sequential read/write speeds, along with 21,000 random read IOPS and 8,000 write IOPS. The SSD also supports AES 256-bit encryption to provide data security. With a lightweight design off roughly one ounce the Portable SSD is good for on-the-go applications. Like all SSDs, the Portable SSD is shock resistant. This is an important consideration for both causal and professional users alike.