Storage

A new report from Bloomberg has shed light on a new aspect of the current memory and storage crisis affecting the supply and prices of consumer tech, specifically flash storage. With NAND flash pricing expected to soar by up to 90% this quarter, this will affect the prices of the microSD Express cards required to expand the storage capacity of the Nintendo Switch 2.

As the console ships with only 256GB of internal storage, storage expansion was already a concern before the console launched due to the move to the new (and more costly) microSD Express format. Unlike in the original Switch era, when affordable microSD cards were plentiful, microSD Express cards are much more expensive.

And with the current state of things, in Japan, microSD Express prices have already increased by around 30% since the console's launch, and that number will continue to rise. With storage for the Nintendo Switch 2 set to become much more expensive than on PC or the PlayStation 5, the adverse effect is that gamers will buy fewer games.

Microsoft is working on a new method for storing data, with the goal of developing an ultra-durable archival medium capable of preserving data for hundreds or even thousands of years without degradation.

Currently, Solid State Storage (SSD) and mechanical hard drives generally last 5 to 20 years, with the lifespan of any given drive dependent on how often it is accessed. Instead of improving NAND flash or the mechanical design of a hard drive, Microsoft looked to borosilicate glass, which can withstand temperatures over 500 degrees Celsius, microwaves, water submersion, magnetic interference, electromagnetic pulses, and surface damage such as scratches.

In a new paper, Microsoft reports successfully storing 4.8TB of data on a 120mm-square piece of borosilicate glass measuring 2mm thick. For comparison, a hard drive storage measures typically 63.5 to 88.9mm wide, and can only store 1 or 2GB. To achieve this feat in data storage, Microsoft used femtosecond lasers to write data inside the glass.

Seagate has announced its next-generation Mozaic 4+ storage platform, which leverages the company's heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) based storage technology. Qualified and currently in production, Seagate notes that its latest HAMR drives will support capacities up to 44TB in hyperscale environments.

Although they look like traditional platter hard drives, Seagate's HAMR-based storage opens the door to increased storage density and capacity through a process that uses lasers to heat and cool in nanoseconds. Currently, the 4+ TB of storage per-disk or layer has led to capacities reaching an impressive 44TB, with Seagate's roadmap forecasting a future where 10TB per-disk will enable drives with 100TB of storage.

To achieve higher capacity, Seagate has incorporated a next-gen suspension architecture and an enhanced system-on-a-chip for higher-density recording while maintaining "enterprise-class reliability." The big thing here is that these hard drives present a high-capacity, cost-efficient storage option for data centers and AI models that require and use large volumes of data for training and other purposes.

Sandisk has announced its next-gen lineup of portable SSD and storage solutions for professionals, creatives, and gamers, with the new Sandisk Portable SSD, Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD, and Sandisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD. The latter is, of course, the pro-grade model and is designed to deliver the performance and speed required for demanding workloads, such as creatives working with 4K, 8K, and even 12K video, with capacities of up to 8TB.

The Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD is also for creatives, photographers, videographers, and professionals who need a lot of storage capacity. With "nearly twice the speed of its predecessor and enhanced durability," the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD range offers read speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s, which is enough bandwidth to transfer 1,000 high-def photos in under a minute.

Available in three capacities, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB (with a 500GB model coming in the second half of 2026), the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD is available now with pricing for the 1TB model starting at $259.99. The full line-up of Sandisk Portable SSDs and Sandisk Extreme PRO Portable SSDs is set to begin rolling out later in the year.

UFS 5.0 is set to become the new standard for embedded flash storage in next-gen mobile devices, including high-end smartphones. Delivering the speed and performance required for on-device AI and other hardware-intensive workloads, UFS 5.0's new M-PHY version 6.0 introduces a new mode that can theoretically support speeds of up to 46.6 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) per lane.

And with that, compact next-gen devices with UFS 5.0 flash storage should be able to achieve read/write performance of around 10.8 GB/s (10,800 MB/s) across two lanes. And with that, even though UFS 5.0 is still being standardized by JEDEC, KIOXIA has begun shipping evaluation samples of UFS 5.0 flash memory to chipset vendors.

These samples feature a custom in-house controller for UFS 5.0 alongside KIOXIA's groundbreaking 8th-generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory, with CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology to boost power efficiency, performance, and density. With a compact 7.5 x 13mm size and capacities of 512GB and 1 TB, these samples are all about flexibility and suitability for a wide range of devices and applications.

Western Digital has said that it has run out of HDD capacity, while its consumer share has dropped to just 5% as enterprise and AI eats up storage as if it were oxygen in a tiny room.

We all know about the insane AI demand that has been eating up all of the DRAM supply, but we've been warned for months that mechanical HDDs would be affected... where we wrote a story just a few months ago that HDD prices surged to their highest point in 2 years with demand coming out of the US and China alone.

WD CEO Irving Tan said during the Q2 earnings call: "As we highlighted, we're pretty much sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm POs with our top seven customers. And we've also established LTAs with two of them for calendar 2027 and one of them for calendar 2028. Obviously, these LTAs have a combination of volume of exabytes and price".

Micron has started mass production of the world's first PCIe Gen6 SSD, offering an eye-watering 28GB/sec read speeds and in both air, and liquid-cooled models.

The new Micron 9650 Gen6 SSD features its in-house G9 NAND flash, aimed at high performance and low latencies for data center servers. Micron's new family of three SSDs uses vertical integration and its in-house G9 NAND, DRAM, and firmware to ensure that its new SSDs pack leading performance for servers, high capacity, high speeds, lower latencies, all while consuming less power.

Micron's new 9650 Gen6 SSD has up to 28GB/sec of sequential read speeds -- twice that of the 14GB/sec capable in Gen5 SSDs -- and up to 14GB/sec in sequential writes. This means that Micron's new 9650 Gen6 SSD has the fastest speeds out of the box, but does it with 25% improved efficiency at random writes, and up to 67% better efficiency at random reads.

There's another tale of bargains to be had in Walmart's clearance aisle, and this time rather than snagging GPUs at ridiculously low prices, it's SSDs that were bought.

Tom's Hardware noticed that a Redditor managed to secure a haul of multiple SSDs with yellow sticker reductions in clearance, spending a total of $210 for three high-end drives and a 1TB SSD upgrade kit.

The actual total value of these SSDs is over a staggering $1,300, so the buyer has got more than a grand off with these models.

Western Digital just hosted its Innovation Day 2026 event, unveiling new consumer-focused roadmaps that will see the reinvention of the HDD for AI, and reinforcing the company's position as a strategic storage infrastructure partner for the new AI-driven data economy.

The company laid out plans to unveil a gigantic 100TB+ HDD by 2029, reinforcing its dual ePMR and HAMR technologies, announcing a new 40TB UltraSMR ePMR HDD in its qualification with two hyperscaler companies and volume production coming in the second half of 2026.

WD plans to extend ePMR to 60TB by using HAMR innovations, all without increasing power consumption, while HAMR will be scaling to the lofty heights of 100TB by 2029. WD is using a dual-path approach as both ePMR and HAMR are built on a common architecture, something that the company says enables greater manufacturing efficiencies, yields, and a smoother customer product transition.

A user on Reddit purchased a fake 2TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD, ending up with a fake SSD that performed like a USB stick from 2005 at just 20MB/sec... instead of what it's actually capable of at 7000MB/sec+ (7GB/sec) reads.

The drive detected normally at first, with Windows detecting it as the Samsung 990 PRO 2TB SSD, but the link speed showed PCIe 3.0 x4 instead of PCIe 4.0... the first clue. After that, the Redditor experienced super-slow file transfers, with large copies only hitting 20MB/sec reads and 9-10MB/sec writes, with CrystalDiskMark noting the same numbers... where he should be getting 7000MB/sec reads... much, much faster.

The Redditor started off with "A few days ago, a friend of mine (who's a PC peripherals distributor and someone I've bought legit stuff from before) posted that he had Samsung 990 PRO 2TB units for sale at just 19,000 INR ($205 USD). Official price right now is usually 30,000+ INR (even more on Amazon/Flipkart sometimes), so yeah way too good to be true. But since I know the guy and have history with him, I didn't overthink it. Messaged him, booked one, paid, and it arrived the next day".

Unveiled and showcased at CES 2026, Samsung's PM9E1 M.2 22x42 SSD is the industry's first PCIe Gen 5 SSD in this ultra-compact form factor. Described as an AI-optimized storage solution, it's built for modern, compact AI supercomputers such as NVIDIA's DGX Spark and other NVIDIA GB10-powered devices.

Samsung says that the PM9E1 M.2 (22x42mm) SSD offers over double the performance of its predecessor while also increasing power efficiency, measured in MB/s per Watt, by an impressive 45%.

"While AI accelerators enable systems to harness the vast power of AI," Samsung writes. "Only pairing them with performance-optimized, purpose-built storage technology like the Samsung PM9E1 can provide the massive capacity and blazing access speeds to unleash that power that may lead to the development of tomorrow's killer AI apps."

KIOXIA has announced that it has begun sampling new UFS 4.1 (Universal Flash Storage) embedded memory devices powered by the company's 8th-generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology. With 4-bit-per-cell, quadruple-level cell (QLC) technology, you've got higher bit density for mobile applications that demand higher storage capacity.

KIOXIA notes that advancements in controller technology and error correction have enabled its QLC technology memory to not only offer a more effective high-capacity solution but also deliver competitive performance. According to the company, UFS 4.1 boosts sequential write speeds by 25% and random read speeds by 90% when compared to the previous UFS 4.0 generation.

Compared to UFS 3.1, it offers 2.1 times the sequential read performance and 2.5 times the sequential write performance.

It's not just memory; the current AI boom is also affecting the supply of flash-based storage and SSDs. Sitting down with South Korean media outlet Digital Daily, Shunsuke Nakato, Managing Director of Kioxia's Memory Business Unit, has confirmed that the company has already sold through its production capacity for this year.

"To be honest, this year's production volume is already in a 'sold-out' state," Shunsuke Nakato says (machine translated). Adding that this trend will likely continue through 2027, with prices already increasing by around 30%. Nakato adds that KIOXIA isn't simply selling to the highest bidder, but instead to trusted customers and partners who will work with the company long-term, in what the company calls a 'gentleman's approach.'

"There is a sense of crisis that companies will be eliminated the moment they stop investing in AI, so they have no choice but to continue investing," Shunsuke Nakato responded when asked about the current market trends. "There are risk factors such as power shortages in the United States and foundry supply constraints, but NAND demand itself will not decrease next year."

TerraMaster's new fanless external SSD enclosure is built to tap into 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 speeds with the M.2 NVMe D1 SSD Pro enclosure delivering transfer speeds of up to 7,061 MB/s. This is enough to transfer a 6GB file in around 1 second, making it one of the fastest portable external storage solutions currently available.

With this level of speed, it's an SSD enclosure capable of handling even the most demanding workloads, including editing both 4K and 8K video and high-resolution images. Internally, the TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro includes a dual-chip setup with an Intel JHL9480 Thunderbolt controller paired with the JMS583 USB bridge. This makes it compatible with Thunderbolt 5, 4, and 3, as well as supporting full USB4 and USB 3.x standards for broad compatibility.

As an SSD enclosure, the D1 SSD Pro also supports a wide range of M.2 2280-form-factor SSDs, including PCIe 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0. TerraMaster notes that its recorded 7,061 MB/s read speed and 6,816 MB/s write speeds for the D1 SSD Pro were captured with a Samsung 990 Pro SSD.

Minisforum showed off its new N5 MAX NAS at CES 2026, where we got some hands-on time with the new AMD Strix Halo APU-powered NAS. Check it out:

The new Minisforum N5 MAX takes up to 5 x M.2 SSDs and 5 x HDDs for a total of 40TB of SSD storage (5 x 8TB drives) and up to 150TB of HDD storage (5 x 30TB drives) for a grand total of 190TB of storage. It's powered by up to the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU, giving you 16 cores and 32 threads of power.

Not only do you have the 16C/32T of Zen 5 CPU power, but up to 128GB of LPDDR5X-8000 memory. The M.2 SSD slots are split between 1 x M.2 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4), 1 x M.2 2230/2280 (PCIe 4.0 x1), and 3 x M.2 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x1). The other 5 slots can take 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch HDDs up to 30TB a drive.

Phison announced at CES 2026 that its flagship E28 controller will power new waves of Gen5 SSDs at a monster 8TB capacity, all enjoying 14.9GB/sec speeds.

The Phison PS5028-E28 supports up to 14.9GB/sec of sequential read speeds, up to 14GB/sec sequential writes, 2600K IOPS random read, and 3000K IOPS random write. Phison unveiled its new E37T Gen5 SSD controller at CES 2026, taking a different path: providing its kick ass performance (14.7GB/sec reads) with crazy power efficiency, and it'll be cheaper.

The new Phison E37T uses a higher-end DRAM-less design, with active power consumption below an uber-impressive 2.3W. The DRAM-less design allows for single-sided Gen5 SSDs that can push 14.7GB/sec without heating up too much, and the 2.3W power consumption will also keep down heat generation.

Phison unveiled its new PS5037-E37T Gen5 SSD controller at CES 2026, with the new offering designed to be more cost-effective, sporting a DRAM-less design. Check it out:

The company says it built the new PS5037-E37T Gen5 SSD controller with 3D NAND to deliver competitive price-to-performance value for customers. Phison says that its new E37T has core architecture refinements over previous generations to support the latest 3D NAND with up to 4800 MT/s speeds, resulting in 38% more performance for maximum value.

Phison's new E37T controller features a DRAM-less design and 4 channels, meaning it's a glorious single-sided SSD that is designed for laptops, gaming handhelds, and small systems without needing additional cooling as there's only one side of chips, the other side doesn't get hot at all.

MSI unveiled its new flagship SPATIUM M571 DLP SSD at CES 2026, powered by the Phison E28 Gen5 SSD controller, and pushes up to 14GB/sec reads.

The new SPATIUM M571 DLP SSD is based on the Phison E28 Gen5 SSD controller, which is fabbed at TSMC on its 6nm process node, with MSI claiming power consumption is lowered by up to 50% while incorporating MSI's in-house Data Loss Protection (DLP) technology, securing critical data during unexpected disruptions to power.

The new MSI SPATIUM M571 DLP SSD will come in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, with a launch in the coming months, while pricing is unknown at the moment.

At CES 2026, Sandisk unveiled its new Sandisk Optimus line of SSDs for consumers. Well, new in the sense that Sandisk Optimus is the new name for the popular SSDs formerly known as WD Blue and WD_BLACK under Western Digital.

The Sandisk Optimus GX line-up represents high-performance SSDs for PC gamers that were previously found under the WD_BLACK brand, such as the WD_BLACK SN7100 NVMe SSD.

The flagship Sandisk Optimus GX PRO line is all about the best of the best and cutting-edge PCIe Gen5 speeds. Built for gamers, creators, and professionals, the Sandisk Optimus GX PRO line includes the lightning-fast WD_BLACK SN8100 NVMe SSD released in 2025.

As the inventor of flash memory and a leader in memory and storage, KIOXIA is bringing its extensive lineup of memory and SSD solutions to CES 2026 in Las Vegas. KIOXIA notes that its lineup covers all corners of the technology market, from intensive AI workloads through to large-scale data centers, automotive systems, and mobile devices.

At CES 2026, KIOXIA will showcase its products and demonstrate its technology. This includes a first-hand look at how the company's groundbreaking, scalable BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology delivers performance, density, and power efficiency across workloads and requirements.

KIOXIA will also showcase how its innovative SSDs leverage open-source software it helped develop to optimize and accelerate AI applications and workloads. Plus, there'll be a closer look at its high-speed Automotive UFS 4.1 solution, alongside the recently announced BG7 Series of NVMe SSDs aimed at the consumer PC OEM market.