Today, CDRLabs brings you a review of SanDisk's new Extreme PRO solid state drive. Designed with gamers, enthusiasts and media professionals in mind, this high-performance SSD is powered by Marvell's 88SS9187 "Monet" controller and is equipped with SanDisk's new 1Ynm eX2 ABL MLC Toggle NAND flash to deliver up to 550 MB/s sequential read and 520 MB/s sequential write speeds. The Extreme PRO also features a tiered caching system which combines a sizeable DRAM cache with the latest developments in SanDisk's nCache Pro technology. To deliver consistent high performance, nCache Pro uses a large non-volatile SLC cache to accumulate small writes at high speed and then flushes them to the larger MLC sections of the NAND flash memory array.

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in connected storage solutions, today unveiled My Passport Wireless, an easy to use Wi-Fi enabled storage drive that allows consumers to save, access and share stored content wirelessly with any smartphone, tablet, computer or other device. For the frequent business traveler to the family on a road trip or creative professional working in the field, the My Passport Wireless drive is a simple way to connect all computing and mobile devices to content without any wires or Internet connection. Additionally, when users need to transfer large amounts of data, the My Passport Wireless drive provides the option of using a high speed USB 3.0 connection.

“As we celebrate its 10th anniversary, the success of WD’s My Passport line of portable hard drives is unprecedented,” explains Jim Welsh, executive vice president, WD Content Solutions Business and worldwide sales. “Our new My Passport Wireless drive continues the evolution, resolving a common problem for today’s mobile consumer; too many devices with limited storage and no way to offload their content and free up space on-the-go. Now, consumers will have one drive to easily store content from all their devices and enjoy that content anywhere they go.”

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Synology today launched DiskStation DS115j, a compact, energy-saving, and quiet 1-bay NAS server dedicated to serving as your private cloud and smart network video recorder.

“With DS115j, home users can now enjoy the rich data sharing and multimedia streaming features offered by Synology at an entry-level price point,” said Nicole Lin, product manager of Synology Inc. It delivers read speeds at 103 MB/sec in a Windows® environment, a 28% increase compared to its predecessor. With the built-in Floating-Point Unit (FPU) CPU, DS115j enhances the performance of multimedia applications, such as speeding up thumbnail generation of photos, and thus ensures optimal multimedia experiences. DS115j comes at a budget-friendly price tag, but makes no compromise in its performance.

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Since the PCIe SSD was adopted by Apple as a standard accessory in MacBook Air in 2013, its excellent flash storage performance featuring high-speed transmission has led the competition to follow, including the fully PCIe SSD-supported Microsoft Windows 8.1 operating system and the new generation Intel CPU chip. According to a survey conducted by the global market research firm TrendForce, the transmission speed of PCIe G2 (PCIe Generation 2.0) surpassed that of SATA III SSD in 2014. Moreover, several high-end notebooks are expected to replace SATA III SSD with PCIe SSD since Apple and Microsoft are boosting the market demand. With the price gap between them shrinking, PCIe G2 will potentially become the mainstream specification in the PC SSD market in 2015.

As a quick response to market demand, Apacer launches two PCIe-interface products, including an mPDM+ and an M.2 PCIe SSD. The mPDM+ is a mini PCIe SSD with the dimensions in line with that of mSATA products. The 50.8x29.8mm size can be a perfect substitute for the storage device of mSATA attached to the motherboard. M.2 PCIe SSD, on the other hand, is about 40% smaller than the mSATA SSD module in dimensions of only 22x42mm. As M.2 SSD module has been included in standard interface, and supports both the transmission signals from SATA and PCIe. PCIe boasts transmission bandwidth and speed far beyond that of SATA, achieving higher transmission efficiency than that of SATA 6Gbps. With high compatibility, both these two PCIe SSDs match AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface), which ensures their competitive edge.

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