SSDs
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
OCZ Reveals 7.5mm 2.5" SSDs
OCZ just issued a press release revealing that LG is using OCZ's brand new 7.5mm 2.5" SSD in their P220 laptop. Note that regular 2.5" drives have height of...
9 by Kristian Vättö on 9/13/2011Dell Precision Mobile Workstations: Now with Larger and Faster SSDs
I recently received an email from a reader asking for advice on the "best" laptop Dell has to offer. The reader's work is footing the bill, but with the...
9 by Jarred Walton on 9/8/2011OWC Releases Mac-Compatible SSD Firmware Updater
One thing that SandForce based SSDs have lacked since their introduction has been a Mac supported firmware updater. Updating the firmware has required Windows installation, which is something that...
9 by Kristian Vättö on 9/1/2011Samsung Releases Series 7 Laptops: Aluminum Body and SSD Caching
Samsung has released four new laptops today. They are branded as Series 7 and will be available in October. These are also the first laptops with SSD caching. Read...
55 by Kristian Vättö on 8/31/2011The Crucial m4 SSD Update: Faster with FW0009
When we first reviewed Crucial's m4 SSD we came away with mixed feelings on the drive. In some cases it was the first or second fastest drive we'd reviewed...
45 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/31/2011HighPoint's RocketU 1144A PCIe x4 USB 3.0 Controller: A Big Back-end
Most USB 3.0 controller cards available on the market today utilize the PCIe x1 interface. With a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5Gbps, it is possible that these controllers...
40 by Zach Throckmorton on 8/30/2011Corsair Releases 90GB Force Series 3 and Force Series GT SSDs
Corsair just released two new 90GB SSDs: Force 3 and Force GT. Both drives were released a while ago, this update just adds the 90GB model. Corsair claims up...
5 by Kristian Vättö on 8/18/2011Intel SSD 320 Firmware Posted, Addresses Bad Context 13x Error
How about that for turnaround time? Just two days ago Intel announced that it had found the root cause of the power cycle bug that could leave your SSD...
14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/17/2011Samsung Series 7 GAMER to use Diskeeper's ExpressCache
With its Z68 chipset Intel introduced SSD caching (Smart Response Technology), a feature that would allow you to use an ultra small SSD as a read/write cache in front...
9 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/17/2011Meet the 6Gbps Samsung SSD 830: The Consumer PM830
Last week Samsung announced its PM830, its first SSD with support for 6Gbps SATA. Although the PM830 is shipping to OEMs today, it won't be available directly to consumers...
22 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/17/2011Intel Testing Firmware Fix for SSD 320 8MB Power Bug
Not too long ago Intel officially recognized that its SSD 320 is impacted by a bug that results in the drive's capacity being limited to 8MB. Today Intel announced...
14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/15/2011Two New SATA Specs: SATA Express & µSSD
The SATA IO working group announced one new spec and that it has begun work on another: µSSD and SATA Express, respectively. These two specs span the gamut from...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/11/2011The SandForce Roundup: Corsair, Kingston, Patriot, OCZ, OWC & MemoRight SSDs Compared
It's a depressing time to be covering the consumer SSD market. Although performance is higher than it has ever been, we're still seeing far too many compatibility and reliability...
90 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/11/2011Samsung Announces PM830, Its First 6Gbps SSD with up to 512GB Capacities
With each subsequent generation, Samsung's SSDs have been getting noticeably better. Two years ago its drives were unrecommendable, but just this year we met the Samsung SSD 470. While...
4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/10/2011OCZ Releases Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD
OCZ has updated their enterprise Z-Drive lineup with new fourth-generation R4 PCIe SSD. OCZ had a prototype of this SSD on display at Computex (our article). R4 adapts SandForce's...
7 by Kristian Vättö on 8/3/2011SanDisk SSDs Coming To Your PC
The SSD market gets bigger and bigger and now one of the big guns in Flash memory is stepping into the game. Having previously primarily released OEM SSD products...
3 by Jason Inofuentes on 7/27/20112011 MacBook Air SSD Features the Same Controller as Samsung 470
Like we suspected in April, the Samsung SSD found in some 2010 and 2011 MacBook Airs is indeed using the same controller as Samsung 470 series. The controller carries...
0 by Kristian Vättö on 7/27/2011It's Also the Summer of Storage: Patriot Wildfire SSD Giveaway
What's this - another contest during our Summer of Honeycomb giveaway? Indeed it is. We write about SSDs quite frequently here at AnandTech so it's about time that we...
3147 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/11/2011OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 (480GB) Preview: 200K IOPS & 1.5GB/s for $1699?
Although consumer SSDs are far from a mature technology, PCIe SSDs are even further behind on the growth curve. The upside is huge. As SandForce has already demonstrated with...
38 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/28/2011