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.”

Vinpower Digital (Vinpower), a recognized global manufacturer and distributor of digital duplication equipment and accessories, has worked with Pioneer Corporation (Pioneer) on the BDR-212DBK 16x internal BD/DVD/CD Half Height Optical Disc Drives (ODD). Vinpower partnered with Pioneer, to enhance the DVD±R writing functionality for the BDR-212DBK line, providing increased quality output, especially for the popular single layer DVD5 (4.7GB) media recording.

Vinpower is exhibiting this newly enhanced Pioneer BDR-212DBK drive at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 1st floor, booth # 20439.

“Many of today’s burner drives do not provide the necessary quality when it comes to burning recordable DVD’s, explains Vinpower Digital’s C.E.O., Calvin Chang. The newly enhanced Pioneer BDR-212DBK drive recognizes the importance of the DVD duplication market and in cooperation with Pioneer improved the Blu-ray drive’s DVD capabilities, yet remain competitively priced.”

Samsung Electronics America, Inc., today announced the release of its latest external storage device – the Portable Solid State Drive (SSD) T7 Touch – which combines sleek, compact design with the fastest transfer speeds currently available based on the USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard. The new device also elevates data protection to the next level with an additional hardware security measure in the form of a built-in fingerprint sensor.

“Consumers who are constantly on the go between work, play and passion projects want to be able to securely carry their content with them,” said Dr. Mike Mang, vice president of Brand Product Biz Team, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Now their data is secure thanks to the fingerprint recognition functionality incorporated into the product, which delivers industry-leading transfer speeds in a compact form factor.”

Pioneer Japan sent out a press release today, announcing two new external 16x Blu-ray Disc writers, the BDR-X12J-UHD And BDR-X12JBK. Both drives are equipped with a USB 3.1 Gen.1 interface and are capable of 16x BD-R, 14x BD-R DL, 8x BD-R LTH, 2x BD-RE and 2x BD-RE DL writing speeds and a maximum BD-ROM read speed of 12x. The BDR-X12J-UHD And BDR-X12JBK also write to triple-layer (100GB) BD-R media at 8x, quad-layer (128GB) BD-R media at 6x and triple-layer (100GB) BD-RE media at 2x.

The BDR-X12J-UHD ups the ante even further with its ability to play back Ultra HD Blu-ray content. When connected to a Windows 10 PC with the included PowerDVD software and an i7 or i5 Kaby Lake (or higher) processor, users can play back movies at 4K resolutions. The drive also features Pioneer's PureRead 4+ and RealTime PureRead technologies which improve the reading performance of scratched and dirty discs and reproduce the original sound quality of a CD.