CDRLabs has taken an in depth look at Crucial's first portable SSD, the X8. Manufactured to be durable, rugged and compact, this lightweight, pocket-sized SSD is built with a unibody core of anodized aluminum and can withstand accidental drops of up to 7.5 feet. On the inside, the X8 is powered by Silicon Motion's SM2263EN controller and is available with up to 1TB of Micron's 3D QLC NAND flash. It is also equipped with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface which lets users save or load files up to 1.8x faster than most portable SSDs and 7.5x faster than portable hard drives. 

Following the release of 4 microSD cards last year, Silicon Power is unveiling 2 standard SD cards, perfect for those who crave equal or even higher performance for their SDXC-compatible devices, at more cost-effective levels.

Capture Today, Store For A Lifetime: The New V90 SDXC UHS-II Card

• Specifically designed for professional-level high-speed capture of superior-quality images and videos with high-speed continuous shooting.
• UHS-II technology introduces blazingly fast read and write speeds up to 290 and 160 MB/s, respectively.
• Capture footage in breathtaking 8K Ultra HD resolution with recording rates of at least 90 MB/s.
• Write raw files in nearly 1/3 the time compared to UHS-I.
• Dramatically accelerate post-production transfers with an appropriate card reader.
• Up to 256GB storage capacity.

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it has successfully developed its fifth-generation BiCS FLASH three-dimensional (3D) flash memory with a 112-layer vertically stacked structure. Kioxia plans to start shipping samples of the new device, which has a 512 gigabit (64 gigabytes) capacity with 3-bit-per-cell (triple-level cell, TLC) technology, for specific applications in the first quarter of calendar year 2020. The new device aims to fulfill ever-growing bit demands for a wide variety of applications, including traditional mobile devices, consumer and enterprise SSDs, emerging applications enabled by the new 5G networks, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

Going forward, Kioxia will apply its new fifth-generation process technology to larger capacity devices, such as 1 terabit (128 gigabytes) TLC and 1.33 terabit 4-bit-per-cell (quadruple-level cell, QLC) devices.

Western Digital Corp. today announced that it has successfully developed its fifth-generation 3D NAND technology, BiCS5, continuing the company’s leadership in delivering the industry’s most advanced flash memory technologies. BiCS5, built on triple-level-cell (TLC) and quad-level-cell (QLC) technologies, delivers exceptional capacity, performance and reliability at a compelling cost. This makes it ideal to address the exponential growth of data associated with connected cars, mobile devices and artificial intelligence.

Western Digital has commenced initial production of BiCS5 TLC in a 512-gigabit (Gb) chip and is currently shipping consumer products built on the new technology. Production of BiCS5 in meaningful commercial volumes is expected in the second half of calendar 2020. BiCS5 TLC and BiCS5 QLC will be available in a range of capacities, including 1.33 terabit (Tb).

QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the 2-bay TS-251D NAS. Powered by an Intel J4005 dual-core processor, the TS-251D can be used with QNAP’s smart AI photo management application, QuMagie, which integrates AI image recognition to group similar photos together in album “People”, “Things” and “Places”. The 4K media transcoding and streaming capabilities of the TS-251D brings users an excellent and satisfying cross-device multimedia experience. The TS-251D also provides a PCIe slot for expanding its core functionality.

Powered by an Intel Celeron J4005 dual-core 2.0GHz processor (burst up to 2.7 GHz), DDR4 RAM (up to 8GB), one Gigabit LAN port, and supports SATA 6Gbps drives. The TS-251D provides dependable read/write speeds and Intel AES-NI 256 hardware-accelerated encryption to secure sensitive and confidential data on the NAS. The TS-251D also supports snapshots, allowing users to quickly recover data in the event of accidental deletion/modification or ransomware attack.

Today, CDRLabs brings you a review of Plextor's latest PCIe SSD, the the M9P Plus. Designed for PC gamers and prosumers with intensive application requirements, this M.2 form factor drive is powered by Marvell's 88SS1092 "Eldora Plus" controller and is available with up to 1TB of Toshiba's 96-layer BiCS4 3D NAND flash. The M9P Plus features an ultra-fast PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe 1.3 interface and is available with or without a heatsink or as an HHHL add-in card with an extra large heatsink and RGB LED lights.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced the availability of a new data center SSD, the DC1000B M.2 NVMe boot drive. The new drive is ideal for servers shipping with one or two M.2 NVMe slots dedicated for boot purposes and thus preserving valuable front-loading 2.5″ drive bays for additional data storage. DC1000B is designed in a 2280 form factor that includes onboard power-loss protection and is engineered with 0.5DWPD4 endurance for extended service life. Kingston’s DC1000B boasts incredible performance with speeds of up to 3.2GB/s and 205K IOPS and is designed for booting, as well as caching and logging applications.

“While the M.2 form factor was originally designed for client machines, it’s small physical size and high performance make it attractive for server use,” said Keith Schimmenti, enterprise SSD business manager, Kingston. “DC1000B is purposefully built for the latest servers from both white box and Tier 1 server OEMs that utilize M.2 NVMe SSDs for boot purposes, as well as the ability to be configured as a local cache drive.”