Samsung Unveils Screaming-Fast 960 Pro And 960 EVO NVMe SSDs At Speeds Up To 3.5GB/s

Samsung continues to advanced the company's very successful 900 series family of consumer class SSDs today, with the announcement of the Samsung 960 EVO and 960 Pro NVMe PCI Express M.2 Solid State Drives. Built on Samsung's 3D V-NAND technology and employing the new Samsung Polaris SSD controller, the 960 Pro is Samsung's highest performance, high endurance drive and the successor to last year's 950 Pro. The 960 EVO is the lower cost model and a follow-on to last year's Samsung 950 EVO drive. The 960 EVO is also powered by the same Samsung Polaris controller but employs more cost-efficient Samsung...

Samsung SSD 750 EVO SATA Solid State Drive Review

by Andy Patrizio - Tue, Sep 20, 2016

The Samsung SSD 850 EVO has become somewhat of a yardstick, by which other SATA-based SSDs are measured, and not without good reason. It set a very high bar when we reviewed it more than a year-and-a-half ago and it still holds up against newer products. Samsung has also come out with a newer drive series, the SSD 750 EVO, that sits one step below the 850 EVO in the company's line-up and is meant to be more affordable while still offering competitive performance. And by and large, it holds up in our tests as you'll see a little later. Samsung SSD 750 EVO Specifications & Features Model Code...

Toshiba OCZ VX500 SATA SSD Review: Fast, Affordable Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Sep 13, 2016

Although NVMe PCI Express solid state drives are all the rage as of late, due to their relatively strong performance and inherent feature benefits, manufacturers continue to tune and refine their SATA based offerings as well. Case in point: the brand new OCZ VX500 series solid state drives we’ll be showing you here today. The OCZ VX500 series targets the mainstream computing segment and initially consists of a quartet of 2.5mm SATA SSDs, packing all, in-house, Toshiba made technology. The hook is, even though these new drives are priced aggressively, they eschew less expensive TLC NAND in favor...

Intel SSD 600P Solid State Drive Review: NVMe Performance, SATA Pricing

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Sep 09, 2016

A couple of weeks back, Intel announced a slew of new solid state drives, targeting a wide array of market segments, that leverage 3D TLC NAND. One of those offerings was a new series of M.2 NVMe drives, dubbed the SSD 600P. According to Intel, the SSD 600P series is “designed to deliver PCIe performance at near-SATA prices”. To date, most NVMe PCIe solid state drives are roughly 1.5 – 3x the cost per gigabyte of SATA based drives, due to the inherent performance benefits and likely the added cost of NVMe controllers. But, as the company has done a number of times in the past dating all the way...

EMTEC Speedin X600 External SSD Review: Affordable, Portable Storage

by Andy Patrizio - Fri, Sep 02, 2016

Thumb drive makers have managed to cram quite a bit into the pinky-sized drives, but there are limits to capacity and to some degree performance, since there is only so much room to work with. Fortunately, there is a nice middle ground between thumb drives and larger external SSDs that conform to the popular 2.5" form factor. EMTEC, for example, has a new line of external SSDs that use a 1.8" form factor, which offer respectable read speeds, although they won't win any performance contests versus more expensive drives. The EMTEC Speedin' X600 is a USB 3.0-compatible drive available in...

Micron 9100 MAX NVMe PCIe Enterprise SSD Review

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Jul 06, 2016

Micron announced its 9100 Series NVMe enterprise-class solid state drive back in April. The drives come in multiple flavors and form factors, with the Micron 9100 PRO series targeting read-centric environments, while the 9100 MAX targets mixed-use cases. Capacities for the drives in the Micron 9100 series range from 800GB on up to 3.2TB, though all of the drives are outfitted with similar controllers and NAND.Although news of the drives has been circulating for a couple of months now, it was just recently that we got our hands on one for some in-house testing. We’ve been experimenting with a Micron...

Toshiba OCZ RD400 Series High-Performance NVMe SSD Review

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, May 24, 2016

Toshiba OCZ is at the ready with a brand new NVMe solid state drive, targeted squarely at the high-performance enthusiast computing market. We first caught a glimpse of the drive we’re going to be showing you here today, the OCZ RD400, back at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. OCZ had the drive on display – branded the RevoDrive 400 at the time – blazing through some benchmarks at over 2.6GB/s.It took a bit of tweaking and fine tuning to get the drive ready for market, but it’s here now, and as you’ll see on the pages ahead, the RD400 was worth the short wait.Like the last couple of OCZ...

Samsung Portable SSD T3 Review: Fast, Sleek USB-C Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Feb 22, 2016

Samsung leveraged its extensive NAND flash and storage IP and took aim at the high-performance portable storage market last year when it launched its impressive Portable SSD T1 external drive. There are countless portable flash drives and a multitude of external storage enclosures on the market that can house any standard 2.5” SSD. However, the Samsung Portable SSD T1 was something a little bit different. The T1 was somewhat of a tweener product that was significantly lighter and more compact than a typical external back-up drive, while offering performance closer to an internally-connected SSD....

OCZ Trion 150 SSD Review: Affordable, Fast Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Feb 12, 2016

The last time we saw OCZ, there were tearing up CES with an upcoming NVMe solid state drive that could transfer data at upwards of 2.7GB/s that was featured alongside a few new SATA-based solutions, like the Trion 150 series we’ll be showing you here today.The OCZ Trion 150 is an update to last summer’s Trion 100, which was the first drive from OCZ to feature TLC NAND and all in-house, Toshiba-built technology. The Trion 100 series of drives proved to be good performers overall, especially considering their relatively affordable price points. As its branding suggests, the new Trion 150 kicks things...

Netgear ReadyNAS RN212 Network Attached Storage Review

by Josh Norem - Tue, Jan 26, 2016

Netgear has released a new line of high-end-yet-consumer-friendly Network Attached Servers (NAS) dubbed the RN210 family. They are available in both two-and-four bay models, and this time around we’ll be examining its two-bay model, the RN212. Keep in mind, however, that almost everything we cover here applies to the four-bay model as well, which goes by the moniker RN214. The big deal with this NAS is that, according to Netgear, it’s the “only ARM-based NAS that delivers full HD 1080p to 480p transcoding,” with the purpose being the ability to stream content from the NAS to your smart phone...

OCZ RevoDrive 400 NVMe SSD Rips Through CES 2016 At 2.7GB Per Second

by Dave Altavilla - Fri, Jan 08, 2016

Solid State Drive technology continues to make big strides in performance, reliability and cost. And of course, at CES 2016 there were a number of storage manufacturers on hand showing off their latest grear, though none made quite the splash that Toshiba's OCZ Technology group made with the annoucement of their new RevoDrive 400 NVMe PCI Express SSD. With this new drive, OCZ is tapping on Toshiba's NVMe controller technology to deliver serious bandwidth in this consumer-targeted M.2 gumstick style drive that also comes with a X4 PCI Express card adapater. OCZ didn't offer much detail on the controller...

Samsung SSD 950 PRO M.2 Review: Affordable, Ultra Fast Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Oct 22, 2015

The rapid pace of innovation in the solid state storage market shows no signs of letting up. In only a few generations, the industry bumped up against the limits of the legacy SATA interface, and began leveraging PCI Express for additional bandwidth with some passable, though somewhat clunky bridged solutions (in retrospect). Then some ultra-fast, native PCI Express offerings hit, and have since evolved into multiple form factors, including slotted and gumstick models, with varying physical interfaces.Some of the more recent introductions, like the excellent Intel SSD 750, feature many of the latest...

Intel SSD DC P3608 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive Review

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Sep 23, 2015

Major players in the solid state storage business continue to innovate at a breakneck pace, especially now that the market has begun a shift away from the lowly SATA interface towards higher performing alternatives like PCI Express. For a while, manufacturers were bolting multiple SATA controllers together on single devices, in RAID configurations, to boost performance beyond what a single SATA-based drive could do. But with the advent of NVMe, that’s no longer necessary for most applications. Though, pairing up multiple NVMe devices can also be a means to increase performance, of course.Just to...

Intel SSD 750 Series PCIe SSD Review: NVMe For Desktop Performance

by Dave Altavilla - Tue, Sep 22, 2015

Today, Intel is taking the wraps off new NVMe PCI Express Solid State Drives, which are the first products with these high speed interfaces that the company has launched specifically for the enthusiast computing and workstation crowds. Historically, Intel's PCI Express-based offerings, like the SSD DC P3700 Series, have been squarely targeted for datacenter or enterprise applications, with price tags to match. However, today Intel is throwing performance enthusiasts another bone with the launch of the Intel SSD 750 series. We've historically been big on PCI Express SSDs here, because they get around...

Crucial MX200 1TB and 500GB SSD Reviews: Affordable And Fast

by Paul Lilly - Tue, Aug 25, 2015

Prices for solid state drives have fallen precipitously over the past year. This is especially true when shopping 2.5-inch form factor SATA SSDs, which is where some of the best values in solid state storage are currently found. That's certainly true of Micron's Crucial brand MX200 line, two of which we have in for review here. First announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this year, the MX200 series debuted in three capacities -- 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB, each priced at under 50 cents per gigabyte. Crucial set the MSRPs at $140 for the 250GB model, $250 for the 500GB...

Western Digital Expands WD Red Pro And WD Black Hard Drives To Bodacious 5TB and 6TB Capacities

by Jason Evangelho - Tue, Aug 18, 2015

If you’re still rocking a 1TB or even 2TB hard drive on your PC, you’re probably starting to feel squeezed by that capacity ceiling sneaking closer and closer. Game download sizes are swelling with the addition of ever-increasing detail and 4K textures (Star Citizen is rumored to exceed 100GB) and content producers can never have enough space to store and edit their digital creations. If you’re looking for a seriously roomy new hard drive or three, Western Digital has you covered with today’s launch of the WD Black 6TB HDD and the NAS-friendly WD Red Pro 6TB. They're also launching 5TB versions...

Intel And Micron Jointly Unveil Disruptive, Game-Changing 3D XPoint Memory, 1000x Faster Than NAND

by Jason Evangelho - Tue, Jul 28, 2015

"This is something many people thought was impossible," exclaimed Intel Senior Vice President Rob Crooke. During an invite-only press conference, Crooke along with Micron CEO Mark Durcan revealed a radically new class of storage and memory architecture called 3D XPoint (pronounced "Cross Point"). To say this is a game-changer would be the understatement of the year. Tangible products based on the technology will debut in 2016, but today's event was focused on the development partnership between Intel and Micron. Frankly, what they've accomplished is astounding. Even though we’re finally on the...

OCZ Trion 100 Series SSD Review: Driving Cost Out Of Solid State Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Jul 09, 2015

OCZ is launching a brand new series of solid state drives today, dubbed the Trion 100. Early prototypes of the drives were shown off at CES a few months back, but the drives are now ready for primetime. We should note that the Trion 100 series breaks some new ground for OCZ. Not only are they the first drives from the company to use TLC NAND, but they’re also the first to use all in-house Toshiba technology with the drive's Flash memory and controller both designed and built by Toshiba.The OCZ Trion 100 series is targeted at budget conscious consumers and users still contemplating the upgrade from...

Synology DiskStation BeyondCloud Mirror 3TB NAS Review

by Josh Norem - Fri, Jun 26, 2015

Anyone who follows the NAS game will likely recognize the name Synology, but we’d wager most home users aren't quite as familiar with them. That’s simply because Synology storage devices have typically targeted a more advanced crowd, such as readers of this website. If you had ever met someone who was running a Synology NAS at home, you knew right away they were an enthusiast, advanced user, neckbeard, etc. Newbies use more mainstream products, but hardcore guys and gals use Synology--or something like that. Well, times are changing, and Synology is trying to get in on the “cloud storage” game...

WD My Cloud EX2100 Dual Bay 8TB NAS Review

by Josh Norem - Fri, May 08, 2015

The WD My Cloud EX2100 is a new prosumer-oriented NAS drive from WD that continues the company's adventures in the realm of "personal cloud" storage. These drives are aimed directly at people who use Cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.com, and others. The marketing speak from WD is that those services require a monthly payment for a small amount of storage, and you have to store your data on someone else's cloud. For example Dropbox charges $10 a month for 1TB of storage, and Google charges the same. WD's pitch is you can get multiple terabytes of storage with one of its drives, and...

Kingston HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe SSD Review

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Apr 17, 2015

Solid State Drives continue to be one of the more sought after (and effective) upgrades for both desktop and mobile systems. But as drives have matured, and newer generations have been released, the bandwidth limitations of the legacy SATA interface have become increasingly more apparent. Even relatively affordable, mainstream solid state drives are bumping into the SATA bandwidth limit right alongside more expensive flagship drives, which makes it difficult to differentiate between them based on performance alone.The answer to eliminating the bandwidth limitations of the SATA interface is PCI...

Samsung SSD 850 EVO mSATA and M.2 Drives Reviewed

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Mar 31, 2015

Samsung is introducing a number of new members to their SSD 850 EVO line-up of Solid State Drives, based on different form factors than the standard 2.5” drives we showed you here. The brand new mSATA and M.2 Samsung SSD 850 EVO drives being announced today, however, leverage all of the same technology. The last few generations of Samsung’s 2.5” Solid State Drive utilized PCBs that barley filled up half of their encloses, and a large portion of those PCBs were dedicated to the standard SATA power and data cable connectors, so it’s no shock to see these new, smaller variants arrive with mSATA and...