Storage News - Page 1

ASRock's new Blazing M.2 Gen 5 Fan-Heatsink is an active cooling solution for PCIe Gen 5 SSDs and is compatible with the company's AM5 and LGA1700 motherboards with Gen 5 M.2 slots. There's also a special edition for the XB650E Taichi series.

ASRock's new Blazing M.2 Gen 5 Fan-Heatsink range, image credit: ASRock.

They come in a few different flavors, and ASRock has released a handy guide to know which version is best suited for which motherboard, but the real story here is that we're entering the age of storage that needs active cooling, and that is something with a heatsink and fan.

The reason for this, of course, comes down to the incredible speeds on offer with PCIe Gen 5 SSDs, where it's looking like read speeds of over 10 GB/s are set to become the norm - a two-fold increase over the already fast PCIe Gen 4 SSDs currently available.

Secure Data Recovery has posted an in-depth report on HDD reliability and durability covering all the major brands. A sample size of over 2,000 hard drives covering six manufacturers - Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung, and Maxtor - shows that, on average hard drives spun for 25,233 hours before failing, which is just under three years.

HDD "power-on" hours before failing, image credit: Secure Data Recovery

To borrow a line from a movie, failure is not an option, and these results cover those drives that fail - which also interestingly indicates which HDD brands might be more reliable than others. Of the five brands tested, Maxtor and Toshiba drives offered the most "power-on" hours before failing, with the worst being Hitachi and Samsung.

The number of drives tested was also weighted based on popularity, with 47% of HDDs being Western Digital, followed by 28% of drives being Seagate. These results are for traditional platter-based HDDs, too - and not SSDs. The manufacturer breakdown is interesting because it reflects what most of us are used to seeing when buying a traditional HDD - choosing something from WD or Seagate.

The age of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs is almost upon us, even though it still feels like PCIe Gen 4 SSDs have finally hit their stride in terms of affordability and pushing the tech and speed as far as they can go. But that's the thing, in the world of PC hardware, if you can go faster - you should.

Crucial's new T700 PCIe Gen 5 SSD, image credit: Linus Tech Tips

This is why we're seemingly in the midst of a PCIe Gen 5 SSD arms race, where hardware makers are looking to push read and write speeds to levels that would have seemed impossible a few short years ago. Recently, Linus Tech Tips got their hands-on such a device - the Crucial T700 PCIe 5.0 SSD, based around the Phison PS5026-E26 controller and Micron 3D NAND chips.

As expected for high-speed M2 storage, the sample featured a Crucial-branded heatsink - but the real kicker comes with preliminary results via Crystal Disk Mark storage benchmark software. Here the Crucial T700 PCIe 5.0 SSD manages to hit an impressive read speed of 12,422.43 MB/s with a write speed not that far behind at 11,857.50 MB/s.

The new Superior Pro SDXC UHS-II cards from Silicon Power have been designed for professional content creators, with impressive read speeds of up to 280 MB/s and write speeds of up to 170 MB/s.

Silicon Power's new Superior Pro SDXC UHS-II cards

With that, you can probably conclude that they're more suited for DSLR cameras, drones, and high-end video recorders than a Nintendo Switch for storing all your game downloads. However, you wouldn't be at fault for putting one of these inside a Steam Deck. And with that, the new Superior Pro SDXC UHS-II cards are also waterproof, shockproof, and temperature proof - with operating temps of 0°C to 70°C.

For content creators in the video and cinema space, the UHS-II interface supports the V60 Video Speed Class standard, which guarantees minimum write speeds of 60 MB/s. This ensures that any 360-degree photography, 4K video capture, and continuous, high-quality images are all captured without lag.

With the arrival of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs, we've seen a massive boost in read speeds compared to where PCIe Gen tech was only a couple of years ago. As the first PCIe Gen 5 SSDs hit the market with ratings in the impressive 10,000 MB/s range on the high-end, Sabrent is working closely with Phison to develop a new line of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs that can push read speeds up to 14,000 MB/s.

The in-development Sabrent Rocket X5 Gen 5 SSD has already broken the 12,000 MB/s barrier.

Sabrent is still in the testing and development stage, but it has shared some of the tests it's carried out on its new Sabrent Rocket X5 Gen 5 SSD.

Sabrent has passed the 12,000 MB/s barrier with results from CrystalDiskMark - effectively breaking all current SSD records. It also almost hit 12,000 MB/s write speeds, which is pretty incredible.

SSDs are already getting impressively large, but capacities could leap to truly astounding levels in just a few years - with drives as large as 300TB, albeit with a major caveat.

A FlashBlade storage system from Pure Storage (Image Credit: Pure Storage)

Pure Storage claims that it'll have these mammoth SSDs available by 2026, but the catch is that these aren't traditional solid state drives you can simply whack into your PC.

Rather, the 300TB efforts will be direct flash module (DFM) drives that are sold exclusively with Pure Storage's own storage systems (FlashArray and FlashBlade, which the DFMs are explicitly designed to populate - and a software solution comes bundled on top).

You've undoubtedly come across a memory card or two over the years, with cameras, phones, tablets, and more all using MicroSD storage in 2023.

On the gaming front, something like the Rocket V30 A2 MicroSDXC Memory Card with 1TB capacity from Sabrent would be perfect for a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch for fast and reliable expanded storage. It comes with a three-year warranty and is SDXC compliant; it's ideal for things like 4K video or massive game installs in the tens of GBs.

This is just one of the memory cards on offer from Sabrent, a brand we've come to trust at TweakTown for all our storage needs. Our recent review of the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 2230 1TB SSD is a friendly little reminder that when it comes to something like the Steam Deck, you can swap out the internal SSD with a higher capacity option.

The T-FORCE CARDEA Z540 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD might be a bit of a mouthful in how PC part product names tend to be, but it marks the debut of TEAMGROUP's foray into the brand-new PCIe 5.0 SSD space. It's a tech fully supported by new CPUs and motherboards.

T-FORCE CARDEA Z540 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD

And as we've seen the first few PCIe 5.0 SSDs launch with chunky heatsinks and even tiny little fans for cooling, turns out read and write speeds of up to 12,000MB/s and 10,000MB/s generates a lot of heat, the T-FORCE CARDEA Z540 goes a different route. These rates represent a significant jump over the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs, which will no doubt make loading times a thing of the past.

Using an "exclusive ultra-thin graphene heat spreader" built on TEAMGROUP's custom tech, it is said to rapidly and evenly disperse heat for "top-notch" cooling of 3-5 degrees less than using only motherboard heatsinks. Outside of sounding like an excellent option for those not wanting an M.2 SSD with a chunky heatsink, we're happy to see TEAMGROUP using Aussie slang like "top-notch" to describe cooling. And it's ultra-thin, with a less than 1mm thickness.

The HPE Spaceborne Computer 2 is a cutting-edge piece of computing equipment with AI-enabled systems that can handle complex scientific tasks and help process data without sending all those bits and bytes down to Earth. Yep, the HPE Spaceborne Computer 2 lives up to its name as a computer aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

KIOXIA SSDs are space-travel ready

It's the first in-space edge computing system on the ISS, a remarkable bit of engineering that benefits from the technological advances made in recent years. And with that, HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) has partnered with KIOXIA America, Inc. to provide all required storage in the form of advanced SDD technology for the HPE SBC-2 system, which includes a rugged, compact computer system and a high-performance HPE ProLiant server.

It's the sort of system that has already proven itself by advancing progress in fields like healthcare, 3D printing, natural disaster recovery, and more. Putting something like that into space is another level entirely, with KIOXIA supplying both KIOXIA RM Series Value SAS and KIOXIA XG Series NVMe SSDs for use in space science. Aka complex research. KIOXIA is no stranger to flash memory, the company invented NAND flash as we know it, so it makes sense that its SSDs would be sent into space. Being at the forefront of consumer and enterprise applications for years, it certainly sounds like space is the next frontier for KIOXIA.

When it comes to microSD performance, you're looking at flash memory the size of a fingernail, which means it's the perfect expansion option for devices like cameras. Regarding gaming, both the Nintendo Switch and the Steam Deck support microSD expansion as a cost-effective way to have more games on the ready.

Silicon Power's new High Performance microSD

Silicon Power's new microSDXC UHS-I card is reliable and then and has been designed for 24/7 performance for home video surveillance. That's around-the-clock 4K Ultra HD recording and playback without any issues. Tens of thousands of hours of video "without missing a single second" is very cool.

This 'High Endurance' microSD isn't simply about video surveillance; it's shockproof, waterproof, and even designed to withstand extreme temperatures (the operating temperature range is 0 degrees up to 70 degrees).