Storage News - Page 1

Samsung has just announced that it has started mass production of its 9th-Gen V-NAND flash memory, which offers a chunky 33% performance improvement over the 8th-Gen V-NAND already on the market.

Samsung's announcement concerns the mass production of its 1-terabit (Tb) triple-level cell (TLC) 9th-Gen vertical NAND (V-NAND), which the South Korean giant says solidifies its leadership in the NAND flash market. Samsung has the industry's smallest cell size and thinnest mold, allowing the company to improve the bit density of the 9th-Gen V-NAND by around 50% compared to 8th-Gen V-NAND.

Innovations in areas like cell interference avoidance and cell life extension have been pumped into the new 9th-Gen V-NAND from Samsung, enhancing product quality and reliability while removing dummy channel holes which significantly reduce the planar area of the memory cells.

HighPoint has just unveiled its new Rocket PCIe Gen5 NVMe Switch and M.2 RAID AIC adapters, which support up to a whopping (and wallet-busting) 32 SSDs... with an insane 960TB of Gen5 SSD capacity per PCIe slot. Yes, 960TB of Gen5 SSDs in your system, in a single slot. Whaaaaat.

We've already seen companies like OWC and Apex Storage offer PCIe Gen4 products that support 16 devices per PCIe slot, but HighPoint is the first to market with a PCIe Gen5 solution. It can house 32 SSDs and up to 960TB of Gen5 SSD storage. That's huge.

The new HighPoint Rocket 7600 and Rocket 1600 series will target different markets. The Rocket 7600 series products are designed for edge servers based on Linux and Windows and high-performance PC systems. Meanwhile, the Rocket 1600 Gen5 adapters have been designed for the enterprise market.

The new TEAMGROUP MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD uses the latest 3D QLC NAND with SLC Caching technology. With capacities of up to 4TB, this efficient storage option delivers up to 7,400 MB/s and 6,500 MB/s read and write speeds, respectively. TEAMGROUP has designed the SSD for low power consumption and to be a daily driver for productivity.

The TEAMGROUP MP44Q M. 2 PCIe 4.0 SSD uses the company's patented graphene heat dissipation sticker, which is less than 1mm thick, so it is also compact in size. The graphene layer also works with motherboard heat sinks to improve cooling further.

For those looking for a fast PCIe Gen4 SSD, the TEAMGROUP MP44Q delivers impressive read and write speeds across all capacity options. The 'up to 7,400 MB/s' read speed is found in the 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB models, with the 1TB model dropping the read speed to 6,200 MB/s from 6,500 MB/s.

Spectra Logic has just announced their behemoth Spectra Cube, a modern tape storage library with a frankly insane 75PB of data capacity. 75 petabytes = 75,000 terabytes, or 75,000TB. Mammoth.

The new Spectra Cube will have virtually zero downtime, allowing users to install new tape cartridge drives without powering the Cube off. Spectra Cube also supports Amazon S3 and Amazon S3 Glacier API access, which will be perfect for "storage services by managed service providers and cloud service providers".

The new Spectra Cube uses Spectra's own TeraPack tape cartridges that support LTO-6 through LTO-9, with a maximum storage capacity of up to 30PB (30,000TB) uncompressed. However, when compressed, storage capacity skyrockets to 75PB (75,000TB) with the library also supporting 16 partitions, which will be handy for shared or "multi-tenant" environments.

Garner's new DiskMantler device is an impressive unit. It takes any 3.5-inch hard drive and automatically disassembles it into its various components in seconds. According to the company, the process takes up to 90 seconds per drive (60 seconds on average) and involves "shock, harmonics, and vibration."

It removes the "greenboard" found on older 3.5-inch drives in under 8 seconds. Garner has released a video of the DiskMantler in action, in which you can see a hard drive inserted into the machine like an old VHS tape into a VCR (for those born after 1995, watch this). From there, Garner provides some close-ups of what looks like the hard drive being shaken until it falls apart.

The patent-pending DiskMantler has definite value; it provides a way of recycling a hard drive without creating additional waste. The best part is that the hard drive's components are left intact for easy sorting, reuse, and recycling.

Western Digital is known for creating various storage solutions, especially hard drives and SSDs. The new 'Ultrastar Transporter, Edge Storage' device falls into this category (kind of), thanks to its massive 368TB of NVMe flash storage capacity. In reality, it's something of a data center on the go, a briefcase or suitcase with dual-port 200GbE ethernet ports that is TAA compliant for government and remote use.

Western Digital is positioning it as a high-performance server that businesses and organizations can set up in edge and data center locations. Weighing in at 30 pounds, it's definitely portable for something that can store hundreds of terabytes of data.

"The ability to have high-performance, large-capacity storage where you need it is critical in current times of edge use cases and the proliferation of multi-cloud, multi-datacenter infrastructures," the product description reads. "Organizations that can leverage data center or cloud-like storage services even when a network connection may not be feasible due to cost or poor connectivity have a real advantage in getting the job done."

SanDisk has revealed the world's first 4TB SD card, offering a ton of space crammed into a sliver of a storage device.

The manufacturer is set to show off this new 4TB SD card, the SanDisk Extreme PRO SDUC, at the NAB 2024 event (National Association of Broadcasters) which is about to kick off at the weekend in Las Vegas.

SanDisk notes that the SDUC standard (Secure Digital Ultra Capacity) allows for capacities of up to 128TB, and using the UHS-I interface, it's seriously speedy, and ideal for heavyweight work like 4K - or indeed 8K - video recording.

microSD cards are still one of the easiest and most convenient ways to expand the storage of portable devices, from tablets to handheld gaming consoles and PCs like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Nintendo Switch. This week, Samsung has announced its latest iteration of EVO Select and EVO Plus microSD cards, which it states have been designed specifically for handheld gaming consoles.

This means the latest generation of Samsung EVO Select and EVO Plus microSD cards has seen their transfer speeds increase by 23% to 160 MB/s - making them great for storing games, large files, and media like photos and videos.

To double down on the gaming side of these new microSD cards, Samsung adds that it's planning to release 1TB EVO Select microSD cards later this year - perfect for the age of PC games requiring tens of gigabytes of storage to install.

We've covered Seagate's HAMR, or Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording, tech for HDDs, which is set to breathe new life into traditional platter-based storage by dramatically increasing the potential capacities. Last year, the company began shipping its first 32TB HAMR-based Corvault systems to customers, and with HAMR HDDs featuring more than 3TB per platter, that TB number will only increase. Dramatically.

New research from NIMS, Seagate Technology, and Tohoku University shows that multi-level dual-layer HAMR storage is possible, unlocking even more data density. Per the headline, 120TB of storage on a single drive is on track to become a reality - the only catch is that, based on Seagate's HAMR roadmap, it might take a decade to get there.

However, if this new 'multi-level' tech becomes a reality, current HAMR storage capacities will dramatically increase to 60+ TB. Let's examine how it works.

Maxio Technology has just unveiled not one but three new PCIe Gen5 SSD controllers, with speeds hitting up to 14.8GB/sec (14,800MB/sec) reads and capacities of up to 8TB. Chcek them out:

The Chinese firm unveiled its new MAP1802 and MAP1806 consumer-grade Gen5 SSD controllers, as well as the new MAP1803 enterprise-class Gen5 SSD controller, all of which offer over 14GB/sec sequential reads. The new flagship Maxio MAP1802 features the standard NVMe 2.0 specs, with a 4-channel controller and 8 CEs that support up to 4800MT/s NAND flash.

This is damn fast, as the fastest Gen5 SSD controller is the new Phison E26 SSD controller, which features around 3000MT/s (compared to the 4800MT/s on Maxio's new MAP1802 Gen5 SSD controller). This new Gen5 SSD controller supports up to 14.8GB/sec (14,800MB/sec) reads, up to 14.4GB/sec (14,400MB/sec) writes, 3400K IOPS read, and 3500 IOPS write, while capacities will reach up to 8TB.