storage

Samsung Starts Mass Producing World's First PCI-Express SSDs for Skinny Laptops

Paul Lilly — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:38:21 +0000

Slim design, big performance.

Samsung has ramped up production of what it claims is the industry's first PCI-Express solid state drive (SSD) for next generation ultra-slim notebooks. Dubbed XP941, these new drives come in the new M.2 form factor and measure just 80mm by 20mm. They weigh a scant 6g, which is about 9 times less than a standard 2.5-inch SSD, Samsung says. Though they're small and light, these drives kick out some heavy-hitting performance numbers.

Sequential read performance is as high as 1,400MB/s. To put that into perspective, Samsung says its new drive can read 500GB of data or 100 HD movies as large as 5GB in just 6 minutes, or 10 HD movies at 5GB in 36 seconds. A typical hard drive would need 40 minutes to perform the same task.

"With the Samsung XP941, we have become the first to provide the highest performance PCIe SSD to global PC makers so that they can launch leading-edge ultra-slim notebook PCs this year," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung plans to continue timely delivery of the most advanced PCIe SSD solutions with higher density and performance, and support global IT companies providing an extremely robust computing environment to consumers."

While the drives are just now going into mass production, Samsung said it's been supplying the parts to major notebook players with 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacity SSDs since earlier this quarter. New and thinner laptops that use these drives should start showing up soon.

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Intel Announces S3500 Series Solid State Drives for Data Centers

Paul Lilly — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:40:33 +0000

Available in 80GB to 800GB capacities.

Intel this week announced a new line of solid state drives for data centers and cloud computing servers. Dubbed DC S3500, the new series of SSDs are designed for read-intensive applications such as web hosting, cloud computing, and data center virtualization, the Santa Clara chip maker says. The S3500 line is also being billed as a cost-effective replacement for traditional hard drives.

"The Intel SSD DC S3500 Series breaks through barriers – like the need for high throughput/low latency storage with a low total cost of ownership – to deliver the storage solution that meets the needs of the cloud, and its demand for storage, which has exploded in recent years," said Rob Crooke, Intel corporate vice president and general manager for the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "Intel's data center family of SSDs helps make cloud computing faster and more reliable, enabling more transactions and richer experiences."

Intel's new drives combine 20nm NAND flash memory technology with support for SATA 6Gbps, resulting in sequential read speeds of up to 500MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 450MB/s. The drives are available in both 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch form factors in 80GB, 120GB, 160GB, 240GB, 300GB, 400GB, 480GB, and 800GB capacities. Prices range from $115 to $979.

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Intel's Thunderbolt Thumb Drive is Twice as Fast as USB 3.0

Paul Lilly — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:08:21 +0000

World's fastest thumb drive uses Thunderbolt, not USB 3.0.

At the Computex trade show in Taipei, Intel was showing off a prototype thumb drive that it claims is the fastest in the world. Intel can make that claim because unlike most other thumb-size flash drives, it plugs into a PC's Thunderbolt port rather than a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port. In true thumb drive fashion, it plugs in without the aid of a cable, giving users fast access to 128GB of flash storage.

PCWorld snapped a pic of the prototype drive, which is in the shape of a key. It looks like it's been dropped a few times, as the black paint is worn off a bit on the edges, though it's still a neat looking drive with Intel's logo displayed prominently on the device's head.

Looks aside, the drive can transfer data at 10Gbps, or double the theoretical maximum of USB 3.0, which is 5Gbps. The High Speed USB 2.0 spec tops out at 480Mbps.

The data on Intel's drive is stored on a SanDisk SSD nestled inside the chassis. What's also neat about the drive is that the speed will go up over time as advances are made to Thunderbolt technology, such as the recent announcement of Thunderbolt 2.

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Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt 500GB Review

Josh Norem — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:50:39 +0000

Designed for Mac users and priced accordingly

PC users have been in a bit of a quandary about the new Thunderbolt interface from Intel. On the one hand, we’re all about maximum performance, so given its sizable speed advantage over USB 3.0, at least on paper, we’re eager to adopt it. On the other hand, there are three issues that have prevented us from jumping on the Thunderbolt bandwagon with both feet. The first is the fact that it debuted on the Apple platform. Granted, we’re a bit sensitive, but this just rubbed us the wrong way. Second, Thunderbolt doesn’t exist on LGA2011 due to a requirement for integrated graphics. And finally, we already have USB 3.0, so do we really need Thunderbolt? Sure, it’s twice as fast on paper (10Gb/s versus 5Gb/s), but will we see that benefit in the real world, and is it worth the cost? To help us answer all these nagging questions we snagged a very special hard drive, the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt, which has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports, allowing us to test both interfaces back-to-back and make an apples-to-apples comparison.

The MiniStation has a belly-mounted white LED that “breathes” when there’s drive activity; we dig it.

Upon first glance, it’s apparent this is a Mac-oriented drive, both in its Thunderbolt support as well as its aluminum exterior and rounded edges. It doesn’t help that the documentation for the drive states that it comes preformatted for Macs, but don’t prejudge the drive just yet—that’s our job. In addition to shipping with both T-bolt and USB 3.0 interfaces, the drive also includes both cables, which is amazing since a Thunderbolt cable costs $50 alone. Inside the enclosure lies a 5,400rpm Samsung hard drive with 8MB of cache. The drive includes a 3-year warranty, is also offered in 1TB capacity, and includes no software whatsoever.

To test the drive, we performed real-world and synthetic tests, and came to a somewhat unsurprising conclusion—in this iteration, with a 5,400rpm hard drive inside of it, this device is hamstrung by the drive itself, not the interface. In every test we ran, the drive performed exactly the same regardless of the interface we used, making the benefit of Thunderbolt in this instance primarily one of convenience rather than performance. For example, it would be useful if you are a person who owns both a Mac with Thunderbolt and a PC with USB 3.0, or an older MacBook with just USB 2.0 ports. Or you could be a PC user who wants the flexibility of using Thunderbolt and USB for file-sharing with buddies. Either way, the drive isn’t any faster on either interface in its current form. Not only did it score the exact same write times down to the second when we copied 30GB of data, but it scored the same read and write speeds in HD Tune and ATTO, as well. For example, HD Tune clocked the drive at 80.7MB/s read speeds via Thunderbolt, and when using USB 3.0 it ran at 80.8MB/s.

Now for the bad news: This drive costs $200 for 500GB, which is wildly expensive since you can get a Toshiba Canvio 1.5TB drive that is just as fast as the MiniStation for just $110. Thunderbolt could one day be the bitchin’ interface we’re all using, but for now it’s too exotic and overpriced compared to USB 3.0.

$200, www.buffalotech.com

SanDisk's Extreme II SSD Uses "Two Tier Caching" to Improve Performance

Paul Lilly — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:07:09 +0000

Sequel is faster than the original.

SanDisk today unveiled its Extreme II SSD series, a follow-up to the original Extreme SSD that we reviewed last year (we evaluated the 240GB model). The Extreme II SSD line is supposedly faster than the original in most instances, part of which is due to the use of a select amount of single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory for what SanDisk describes as a "two tier caching" setup.

"The SanDisk Extreme II SSD supports a unique feature to improve random write performance and ensure a very positive user experience," SanDisk explains. "Studies show that modern operating systems mostly access the storage device using small access blocks, with the majority being 4KB access blocks. The small logical access blocks conflict with the physical block structure (>1MB) for the nwer generation flash memory technology. Therefore, to bridge this different SanDisk SSDs employ three storage layers."

The first of those layers is volatile cache, or DDR DRAM cache. Next up is nCache, a non-volatile flash write cache, which is where the SLC NAND flash memory comes into play. And the third is mass storage, your typical MLC NAND flash memory chips. SanDisk says the nCache (SLC NAND flash) is used to acculmulate small writes, called segments, at high speed and then flush and consolidate them to larger MLC sections.

SanDisk isn't saying how much SLC NAND flash memory it's equipping its drives with, though the end result is faster read and write speeds in most real-world and synthetic applications. Furthermore, SanDisk claims its Extreme II SSDs are the highest performing retail SSDs to date.

The new drives will be available in 120GB ($130), 240GB ($230), and 480GB ($440) capacities.

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Western Digital's 1TB WD Blue 7mm Hard Drive is the Thinnest Terabyte HDD Ever

Paul Lilly — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 15:46:21 +0000

Super thin and capacious.

Bulky hard drives, be gone! Western Digital today announced it's begun shipping what it claims is the world's thinnest 1TB-class hard drive, the new 2.5-inch WD Blue 7mm. The WD Blue hard drive family is available in smaller capacities too, down to 320GB, all of which measure 7mm in height. They're designed to usher in increasingly slimmer and lighter notebooks, though they're also compatible with industry standard 9.5mm drive slots, WD says.

"Users with large portfolios of content no longer need an Ultrabook or upgrading to a thin and light notebook," said Matt Rutledge, Vice President and General Manager for client storage products at WD. "This most compact 1TB hard drive to-date offers manufacturers of systems an upsell path for their customers who will now be able to choose systems offering both sleek design and high capacity.

Despite its small stature, WD didn't skimp on features. The Blue family is equipped with WD's ShockGuard technology to protect the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks, StableTrac technology, and a few other proprietary bits.

WD says the drive is shipping now through select distributors and resellers. The 1TB model runs $139 and is covered by a two-year warranty.

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OCZ's Vertex 450 Solid State Drive Family Runs Barefoot

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:00:25 +0000

New SSD line gets its kicks from the Indilinx Barefoot 3 Series controller.

One thing OCZ had yet to do up to this point was deploy in-house ASIC technology on its Vertex family of solid state drives. That changes with the introduction of the Vertex 450 Series, which OCZ is marketing as a mid-range performer that sits between its value offerings and flagship Vector line. The Vertex 450 Series uses OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 controller, essentially a newer iteration of the Barefoot controller found in the Vertex 4.

In comparing the two, the Barefoot 3 M10 has a lower clockspeed and supports 20nm NAND flash memory. It also boasts AES-256 encryption, sustained performance across all file types, and a power-optimized clock generator that helps improve yield and drives down cost, the combination of which translates into better overall availability and value for consumers, OCZ says.

The Vertex 450 Series pipes data through a SATA 6Gbps interface at various rates, depending on the capacity. Here's a breakdown of each one's performance:

128GB: 525MB/s read, 290MB/s write, 75,000 4KB random read IOPS, 70,000 4KB random write IOPS
256GB: 540MB/s read, 525MB/s write, 85,000 4KB random read IOPS, 90,000 4KB random write IOPS
512GB: 540MB/s read, 530MB/s write, 85,000 4KB random read IOPS, 90,000 4KB random write IOPS

All three drives come with a 3-year warranty, Acronis cloning software, and a 3.5-inch adapter. MSRPs have been set to $130 (128GB), $235 (256GB), and $500 (512GB).

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Store More Than Just Photos in Flickr's 1TB Bucket

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:38:00 +0000

An end-around solution to storing common files in Flickr.

In the process of overhauling Flickr, Yahoo announced that photographers would be allowed to upload up to 1TB of photos and videos for free, the only restrictions being the size of each individual file (200MB for photos and 1GB for 1080p videos) and length of clips (up to 3 minutes long). Other than those caveats, it's a generous storage container that's big enough to hold half a million photos shot at 6.5 megapixels. But what if you could also upload common files? There's a way you can do that.

Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek discovered a piece of interesting Ruby code posted to Github called flickr-store. Developer Ryan LeFevre came up with the code, which lets users encode any file as a PNG so that arbitrary data can then be uploaded to Flickr.

"This is mostly proof of concept right now. Don't do anything beyond tinkering with it yet," LeFevre warns.

If it works as intended, then it's a pretty slick workaround that could come in handy for backing up certain files, though we wouldn't recommend using it to store critical data. The biggest reason is that it's not immediately clear whether such a method runs afoul of Flickr's terms of service.

"I'm sure they frown upon it, but they claim you cannot upload anything that interferes with the services and I don't believe this does," LeFevre told InformationWeek.

In other words, caveat emptor.

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Yahoo Overhauls Flickr, Ups Free Storage Ante to 1TB

Paul Lilly — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:53:46 +0000

Let the free storage wars begin.

Yahoo wasn't just content to spend $1.1 billion acquiring Tumblr, it also went out and revamped its Flickr photo sharing service in a significant way. The first thing you'll notice is a tiled interface with larger size images. Users are able to upload full resolution photos, and to make sure you have plenty of online space to store your photography, Yahoo is offering 1TB of online storage for free in an attempt to make the service "awesome again."

That trumps Google's 15GB of free storage, which the sultan of search allows you to distribute however you wish across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google+. Yahoo limits photo uploads to 200MB each on its free tier and 1080p video uploads to 1GB each, up to 3 minutes long. You can upload and download in full original quality.

"Flickr’s stunning new desktop design puts photos at the heart of the experience. Built around a new photostream that gives you a vivid and endlessly scrolling gallery, it’s easy to see what your friends are posting and what they’re saying about your photos," Yahoo stated in a blog post. "And because Flickr has always been about exploring photographs from users around the world, we’ve also created a new slideshow that displays the most spectacular Flickr photos in gorgeous full-screen."

For $50 per year, you can sign up for an "Ad Free" account with all the same benefits of the free tier, but without ads (makes sense). Alternately, you can cough up $500 per year to double the storage allotment to 2TB (makes poor fiscal sense).

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HGST Expands Notebook Drive Capacity to 1.5TB

Paul Lilly — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:52:58 +0000

Big storage, little drive.

HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital, announced on Tuesday what it claims is the highest storage density of any hard drive and highest capacity HDD for the mainstream mobile market, the Travelstar 5K1500. The new Travelstar 5K1500 is purportedly the industry's first 9.5mm to offer 1.5TB of storage capacity, though that's not all it brings to the table. High shock protection and low power performance are also traits of HGST's newest HDD.

That's all fine and dandy, but isn't the market shifting towards solid state drives?

"Contrary to popular belief, the mobile hard drive market is not being replaced by SSDs. We continue to invest in and serve both the traditional 9.5mm and 7mm thin and light HDD mobile markets as they offer the best cost-per-GB, performance and proven product reliability for high-capacity, mainstream, Ultrabook and A/V content creation notebook markets," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at HGST. "HGST continues to have a strong share in the 2.5-inch market and the new Travelstar 5K1500 hard drive is the latest addition to our broad line of 5,400 and 7,200 RPM 2.5-inch drives, giving OEMs, ODMs and integrators an opportunity to grow and differentiate their product lines."

The Travelstar 5K1500 serves up its storage capacity on three platters. It has 32MB of cache, a 5400 RPM spindle speed, and a SATA 6Gbps interface. According to HGST, it benches better in PCMark Vantage and PCMark 7 than its currently shipping two-platter 5400 RPM models.

HGST sees a broad market for its new drive, including notebooks, external HDD applications, gaming consoles, and all-in-one (AIO) desktop PCs. Initial drives will be available in June, followed by an optional self-encrypting version in the third quarter of this year. Pricing has not yet been announced.

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Going Full Circle: Google Users Get 15GB Shared Across Gmail, Drive, and Google+

Paul Lilly — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:54:05 +0000

One storage container to rule them all.

A cloud of common sense just landed on Google, and instead of offering users separate storage caps for Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ photos, the sultan of search has decided to offer up 15GB of unified storage for free. In doing so, users are in complete control of how much each of Google's cloud services can hold, which is particularly great if you're deeply invested in Drive and/or Google+ Photos, two services that were previously limited to 5GB combined.

"With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where," Google stated in a blog post. "For example, maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want."

As an added bonus, Google's shared approach means there's no longer a 25GB data cap in Gmail. So, if you pony up $4.99/month for 100GB or $9.99/month for 200GB, you can use as much as of your available storage for any of the three services. There's also a $2.49/month plan that nets you 25GB. All three paid plans include 25GB of Gmail storage, which doesn't count against your cap.

You may not see the plan changes right away, as Google said it will roll them out over the next couple of weeks.

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Seagate's 600 Series Solid State Drive is Its First SSD for Consumers

Paul Lilly — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:33:26 +0000

Welcome to the consumer fray, Seagate.

Seagate, one of the largest suppliers of hard drives in the world, announced on Tuesday a new portfolio of flash-based storage solutions. Among the portfolio of products is a new Seagate 600 Series solid state drive, the company's first client-based SSD and one that's available in multiple z-heights, including an industry first 5mm-high drive that can squeeze into ultra-thin devices and laptops alike.

The 600 Series comes in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB flavors, all of which use multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory and sport a 6Gbps interface. Performance varies by capacity and breaks down as follows:

120GB: 500+MB/s read, 300+MB/s write, up to 80,000 IOPS read, up to 60,000 IOPS write
240GB: 500+MB/s read, 400+MB/s write, up to 80,000 IOPS read, up to 70,000 IOPS write
480GB: 500+MB/s read, 400+MB/s write, up to 80,000 IOPS read, up to 70,000 IOPS write

Seagate didn't mention the controller it's using, but a peek at some reviews that have popped up on the web indicate it's based on Link A Media Device's LM87800 controller, the same as found in Corsair's Neutron and Neutron GTX SSDs.

The storage maker also unveiled a 600 Pro SSD Series billed as a low power server and storage solution that's especially well suited for cloud system builders, hyperscale data centers, content deliver networks, cloud service providers, and virtualized environments. It only uses 2.8W of power (typical).

Finally, Seagate announced a 1200 SSD Series. These drives feature dual-port 12Gbps SAS connectors and are twice as fast as previous generation drives. These are available in capacities up to 800GB in either a 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch form factor.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Western Digital Lays Claim to Industry's First 5mm 2.5-inch Hard Drive

Paul Lilly — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:45:18 +0000

Tiny drives for ultraportables.

Western Digital, a major player in the storage space, today announced it's begun shipping what it claims are the world's first ultra-slim 2.5-inch, 5mm hard drives and solid state hybrid drives (SSHDs) designed for space constrained devices, such as Ultrabooks and ultra-thin laptops. The new drives are nearly half the size of traditional mobile drives and around 35 percent thinner than the most popular smartphones, WD claims.

"With the launch of our new WD Blue 5mm ultra slim hard drives and our WD Black SSHD products, currently shipping to OEMs, WD is delivering to our customers a variety of solutions that maximize storage capacity and volumetric efficiency, as well as performance and system responsiveness, for consumers," said Matt Rutledge, vice president of WD’s client computing business unit. "Our engineering team took a clean-sheet approach with 5mm to deliver an ultra-thin hard drive that enables a world of possibilities and applications for mobile computing and beyond."

WD's Blue 5mm ultra slim hard drives are currently available in 500GB ($90 MSRP) capacities. They offer up to a 36 percent reduction in weight compared to regular 9.5mm mobile drives and are apparently adept at handling shock due to WD's effort to maximize the mechanical sway space.

The upshot of what WD's done here is to provide a means for OEM system builders to offer increasingly thin laptops without sacrificing storage space or cost.

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CPUBoss Creators Launch SSDBoss for Storage Shoppers

Paul Lilly — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:45:24 +0000

A quick and easy way to compare solid state drives.

The same people who brought you CPUBoss and GPUBoss have now launched a similar comparison website for solid state drives. SSDBoss.com is nearly identical in form and function to the other two sites, offering storage shoppers an easy way to compare the performance and value of different SSDs. You can also look up full spec comparisons of various drives, all under the hood of a single site.

"We’re confident that we’ve created a better way to compare SSDs by enabling people to easily sort through a massive amount of product specs and benchmarks, as well as see what people are saying in reviews," CPUBoss product manager Jude Fiorillo told Maximum PC in an email. "Our goal is to make it easier for people to compare SSDs head to head and see the pros and cons of each solid state drive, as well as find the best SSD by criteria (e.g. capacity per dollar or fastest read times)."

Fiorillo tells us he's seeing over a million unique visitors to his CPUBoss and GPUBoss websites since launching over the last three months. Expanding the same functionality over to SSDs was the next logical step.

Give the site a glance and let us know what you think.

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Crucial M500 480GB SSD Review

Josh Norem — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:30:54 +0000

A winning package of low price and high performance

The Crucial M500 is the company’s third-generation 6Gb/s SSD, and the successor to the often-praised M4 SSD, which we named the best Bang for your Buck SSD in December of 2012 due to its well-rounded package of decent performance at a great price. In our estimation, the new drive fulfills the same well-rounded role, though with much improved write speeds and massively increased capacities at lower prices thanks to its move to smaller process NAND flash. Not only does it come in the standard 120GB, 240GB, and the 480GB version you see before you, but it’s also offered in a pant-tightening 1TB version at just $600, making it the market's first truly affordable 1TB SSD. Since the terabyte drive was not available at press time, we’re taking a look at the 480GB version which sports the exact same specs as its big brother.

The move to 20nm NAND has allowed Crucial to bump capacity up to 960GB with the M500

The drive itself comes in a shiny 7mm silver enclosure, so you can jam it into an Ultrabook. A 9.5mm spacer is also included, but there is no 3.5-inch adapter in the box, nor is there any software in the box or online aside from a firmware updating tool, which is disappointing. Inside the M500’s shell we find Crucial has moved from 25nm NAND to 20nm MLC NAND flash. Smaller process NAND offers benefits such as lower power consumption and increased capacities, but also reduces the NAND’s life span somewhat. Still, Crucial offers the drive with a 3-year warranty and says the drive can handle 40GB of data written to it every day for five years, so the drive’s NAND should last long enough even for hardcore data mongers. Crucial is still using a Marvell controller, though this is an updated version of the one used on the M4, and of course it has updated firmware.

In testing we saw the M500 post very respectable scores across the board, though none were the fastest we’ve seen, nor would we expect them to be at this price. The biggest improvement we see over the M4 is its write speeds, which have gone from 193MB/s in CrystalDiskMark to 422MB/s, and that difference shows in the AS SSD compressed data test as well, showing almost a doubling of speed from its successor. The ATTO test mirrors our other results, showing the drive capable of around 500MB/s read speeds and 422MB/s write speeds, which is superb for a "value" drive. Its IOmeter score of 83,354 IOPS is also top-of-its-class as well, as is its PCMark Vantage HDD test score of 71,619. Oddly, its Sony Vegas score is unchanged from the M4 however, so it's possible the Marvell controller still has a tough time with data compression duties when writing huge files, 20GB in our scenario.

Overall the M500 shows just how far value drives have progressed, since this drive is about as fast as the fastest SSDs available a year ago. When compared to its most direct competitor though — the Samsung 840 500GB — the two are pretty evenly matched though the Crucial drive was a little faster in more tests. The Samsung drive costs about $40 less though, has the same warranty and better software support, making it a nail-biter between them.

MSRP: $400, www.crucial.com

Benchmarks

Best scores are bolded. Test system consists of Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 motherboard,

Intel Core i5-3470, 8GB of RAM, Windows 7 64-bit.