Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced that its popular award-winning Backup Plus family of external storage offerings will now include 200GB of OneDrive cloud storage, an unmatched value for the category, and the addition of Lyve’s photo and video management app. Seagate Backup Plus drives come equipped with Seagate Dashboard software for easy plug-and-play PC backup as well as the addition of mobile and social media backup. Seagate also announced a new high capacity for its Backup Plus portable at 4TB in a sleek 20.5mm form factor using a single platter portable drive.

“Seagate Technology continues to innovate at a fast pace based on the ever changing needs of its customers,” said Jingwen Li, research analyst, storage systems for IDC. “With features such as OneDrive cloud storage, Lyve app, and the new 4TB capacity point, Seagate Backup Plus family addresses the growing needs for data storage and backup with flexible data access and simple data management in the personal storage market.”

With the rapid development in cinematography, the audience has also increased their demand for image quality. Transcend, a worldwide leader in storage and multimedia products, is proud to announce the launch of its CFast 2.0 CFX650 Memory Cards. Featuring the fastest transfer speeds available on the current market, Transcend's CFX650 memory cards support high-end cameras and recorders such as Blackmagic URSA and Atomos Ninja Star, and are best suited for the professional cinematographers shooting high-resolution 4K and Full HD videos.

Unprecedented Transfer Speeds and Capacities
Supporting the next generation CFast 2.0 specification with a SATA III interface, CFX650 memory cards boast the remarkable read and write speeds of up to 510MB and 370MB per second, more than three times faster than today's CompactFlash cards. Saving 4K Ultra High Definition and Full HD video recordings requires a massive storage space; Transcend's CFX650 cards fix the problem by offering the vast capacities of up to 256GB. With such space, the professional cinematographers can record all the high resolution videos at ease, saving the trouble to switch memory devices.

Samsung HDD, a division of Seagate Technology, today announced 4TB M3 Portable and the P3 Portable external hard drives, which are the first 4TB USB-powered single drive solutions to come in 2.5” cases in the world.

“Previously only attainable in desktop or bulky multi-drive internal designs, we can now achieve a 4TB capacity in a compact drive thanks to the latest Samsung HDD technology,” said Dave Klenske, director of product line management, Samsung HDD. “By going to a single drive solution, we can power the drive through just a USB connection while fitting it into a case that is only a 1/10 of an inch thicker than our 2TB drive. They are the perfect lightweight drives for notebook computer owners who need to access media collections too large to fit on traditional internal storage options.”

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced a new 4-bay TS-431U Turbo NAS that offers optimal price/performance in a 1U network storage server chassis for file sharing, backup, synchronization, and more. Featuring an advanced Freescale dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB DDR3 RAM, the TS-431U delivers exceptional multi-tasking performance as a business NAS, enhancing productivity and providing a private cloud for easily and securely accessing data.

“The TS-431U provides an ideal solution for small businesses and workgroups who want high-performance networked storage with low acquisition costs but without compromising reliability and features,” said Jason Hsu, product manager of QNAP.

The TS-431U is a reliable and affordable yet high-performance network storage solution, providing up to 148 MB/s read and 119 MB/s write throughput with dual Gigabit LAN ports. The TS-431U supports dual IP settings, port-trunking modes and enables users to set up fault tolerance or link aggregation for increased data throughput.

Synology today launched the new DiskStations DS715 and DS215+. DS715 is a scalable NAS server equipped with a quad-core processor, while DS215+ is a dual-core 2-bay NAS server. Designed to provide an all-in-one and compact NAS solution, both servers are equipped with a hardware encryption engine to help SMBs safely store, protect, and share data.

"Small business workgroups expect a reliable and high performance storage solution for their increasing needs, while minimizing the initial investment. DS715 and DS215+ provide performance, reliability, and data encryption at a competitive price." said Chad Chiang, Senior Product Manager at Synology Inc.

Today, CDRLabs brings you a review of Crucial's new MX200 solid state drive. Powered by Marvell's 88SS9189 controller and available with up to 1TB of Micron's 16nm 128gb NAND, the drive delivers 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write speeds on both compressible and incompressible data. The MX200 also offers a long list of features including AES 256-bit encryption, thermal and power loss protection, TRIM support and active garbage collection. The drive is also equipped with Crucial's new Dyamic Write Acceleration technology, which uses an adaptable pool of high speed, single-level cell flash memory to enable faster saves and file transfers. Additionally, it uses technologies like Data Defense and Redundant Array of Independent NAND (RAIN) to increase security and protection of data to a level that’s not typically found in consumer-class SSDs.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, today announced that its SM2256 SATA (6Gb/s) client SSD controller now supports Micron's new 16nm 128 gigabit (Gb) TLC NAND flash, enabling high-performance and unprecedented reliability for a new class of cost-effective TLC-based SSDs.

SM2256, the world's first SSD controller supporting Micron's 16nm TLC NAND, offers the best performance and cost-optimized four channel SATA 6Gb/s client SSD controller in the market.  Using Micron's 128Gb 16nm TLC NAND, the SM2256 delivers up to 540MB/s sequential read performance and 460MB/s sequential write, as well as up to 90,000 random read IOPS and 80,000 random write IOPS.  Leveraging Silicon Motion's proprietary NANDXtend™ error-correcting code (ECC) technology, the SM2256 enhances the endurance and retention of TLC NAND, delivering more than three times better reliability for TLC SSD as compared to the existing BCH ECC schemes.