Western Digital has begun sampling the world's first 1.33 Terabit (Tb) four-bit per cell, 96-layer 3D NAND (BiCS4). The die breaks new ground for flash capacity and runs over the 800MT/s Toggle 3.0 interface standard, twice as fast as the company's previous generation 4-bit per cell technology.

Western Digital plans volume production this year with manufacturing partner Toshiba in the Yokkaichi, Japan facility. BiCS4 products will appear later this year under the SanDisk brand. Western Digital expects to utilize BiCS4 in a variety of applications, from SD cards to enterprise SSDs over the lifetime of the product.

Following our weekend review of the Inland Professional SATA III $75 480GB SSD, the drive moves into second place on Amazon's Best-Selling Internal SSD List.

The drive didn't break any performance records in our tests but proved to be a good entry-level SSD. It's not a replacement for most existing SSDs but it a low-cost alternative to hard disk drives.

If you are not familiar with the brand, Inland Professional is a house brand for Microcenter. The company has a number of brick and mortar stores in the United States but is known primarily for discounted CPU and motherboard packages. The SATA III started shipping around March this year but only gained popularity recently when prices fell for all SSDs. The drive ships with a standard 3-year limited warranty honored through Microcenter.

Update: 7/10/18, 16:00 EST

HP returned our message with new information not yet available on Amazon. The warranty remains at 5-years but the endurance extended even more than we first reported.

EX920 1TB - 650 TBW

EX920 500GB - 320 TBW

EX920 250GB - 160 TBW

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HP has one of the best NVMe SSD values shipping today with the EX920. The series performs very well with the Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2262 controller and Micron 64-layer flash memory but many don't like its disproportionate warranty and endurance rating.

The company recently took steps to calm detractors. The EX920 now includes a 5-year warranty, the same as the Samsung 970 Pro and its closest competitor, the Adata SX8200. The endurance rating, the amount of data writes users can put on the drives, also increased but is based on the capacity of the drive purchased.

The 1TB EX920 now supports 400 TBW, up from 300 TBW. Amazon doesn't list the individual endurance ratings for the other sizes. We reached out for more information from HP and will update the report when we hear back.

Samsung began mass production of 5th generation V-NAND flash memory with 96-layers.

Samsung must not like paying second place to Micron's new 64-layer flash memory found in products like the MX500 and SX8200. The company just announced mass production of 5th generation V-NAND memory with a new high-speed memory interface, lower power, and another massive reduction in write latency.

Seagate released its first consumer SSD since 2013 today with a blog post and exclusive Amazon campaign. The new drive carries familiar BarraCuda branding and comes in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB sizes initially. The blog post from Seagate's Marketing and Public Relations Manager, John Paulsen, indicates a 2TB option is on the horizon.

As a global leader in storage solutions for nearly four decades, Seagate understands that read and write speeds play a huge role in the overall performance of your computer. That's why BarraCuda SSD provides maximum sequential read and write speeds, reaching 540/520 MB/s.

 

It starts up in seconds, allowing you to almost instantly access data, load game levels, open applications, and transfer files. You and your computer will be good to go - fast. It's our fastest option for upgrading a PC or a laptop to optimize performance.

ADATA has just revealed its latest SR2000CP, a new enterprise SSD that has storage speeds that will blow your mind, and it's all coming out of a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot.

The new ADATA SR2000CP is available in 2TB, 3.5TB, 4TB, 8TB, and even 11TB capacities that all feature 3D "eTLC" NAND flash that has 3 bits per cell, with endurance cycles that are similar to MLC NAND flash. But it's the read and write speeds of the new ADATA SR2000CP that'll blow your mind.

ADATA has tested the 4TB version of the new SR2000CP which had sequential read speeds of up to 6GB/sec and writes of 3.8GB/sec. The company is also providing enterprise-friendly features like user-configurable over-provisioning, power loss protection that keeps your data safe, native 256-bit AES encryption, and 55C ambient temperature operation that is perfect for the specs Google define for their datacenters.

Samsung has just announced its latest 8TB NVMe SSD, something the company has pushed into the next-generation NF1 form factor that will be sold in datacenters, and enterprise servers.

The new Samsung 8TB NF1 SSDs are both NVMe 1.3 and PCIe 4.0 compliant making them, if I want to say them out loud, future-proof. There, I did it. The new drives are using the latest in flash technology that Samsung makes itself, with a single NF1 stick sporting 16 V-NAND dies to drive the capacity up to 8TB.

Get this: the new NF1 form factor packs twice the density of an M.2 drive, blowing away current-gen NVMe M.2 drives in capacity. This is all thanks to the next-gen NG1, or NGSFF (Next-Generation Small Form Factor). Samsung's new high-performance SSD controller sees speeds reaching up to 3100MB/sec reads, and 2000MB/sec writes with up to 500,000 IOPs and 50,000 IOPs read/write. Hell, there's even 12GB of LPDDR4 as cache on the new NG1 drive.

COLORFUL is mostly known for their monstrous graphcis cards and motherboards, but the company has dabbled in storage for a while, and has now expanded it through the new CN600S 240GB and CN600S 480GB drives.

Both of the new SSDs are in the super-fast M.2 format, powered by Intel 64-layer 3D NAND flash. The COLORFUL CN600S packs the SMI 2263XT controller, with an M.2 2280 design standard and handles up to 2GB/sec reads and up to 1.5GB/sec writes. Both the 240GB and 480GB versions of the M.2 drive push these high speeds.

COLORFUL will be showing off their new range of SL600 SSDs during Computex 2018 next week, where we will go and check them out in person.

Intel and Micron continue their relationship over flash technology, with the two companies announcing the production and shipment of the industry's first step into 4-bits-per-cell 3D NAND flash, AKA as QLC (quad-level cell).

QLC is even denser than triple-level cell (TLC) NAAND flash memory, which means we can expect even larger, faster SSDs in the near future. Micron Executive Vice President, Technology Development, Scott DeBoer explains: "With the introduction of 64-layer 4bits/cell NAND technology, we are achieving 33 percent higher array density compared to TLC, which enables us to produce the first commercially available 1 terabit die in the history of semiconductors".

Micron is the first with a QLC-based SSD with their new 5120 ION SSD that is for the enterprise market, where we'll first see higher capacities before faster QLC-based SSDs arrive. Micron said that their new ION SSD range will be available in massive 1.92TB through to 7.68TB later this year, pretty damn incredible.

GIGABYTE is slowly expanding into new markets with their latest venture being the storage industry with the announcement of their new UD PRO Series SSDs.

GIGABYTE's new UD PRO Series SSDs come in both 256GB and 512GB, with GIGABYTE keeping the Ultra Durable (hence 'UD') branding for these new drives. They're only 2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps standard, so we're looking at up to 530MB/sec reads while writes are 500MB/sec.

The company is offering a 3-year warranty on the drive with a sleek black look that won't stand out too much, thankfully there aren't any RGB LEDs on it... yet.

The new GIGABYTE UD PRO Series SSDs are priced at $68.99 for the 256GB model while the 512GB model will set you back $119.99 with availability penciled in for next week.