Lexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar ARMOR 700 Portable SSD makes its entry as the new flagship in the 20 Gbps PSSD segment.

Despite its flagship positioning and rugged nature, the ARMOR 700 is reasonably priced thanks to the use of a native USB flash controller - the Silicon Motion SM2320. Similar to the SL500, the product uses YMTC 3D TLC NAND (compared to the usual Micron or BiCS NAND that we have seen in SM2320-based PSSDs from other vendors). Read on for a detailed look at the ARMOR 700, including an analysis of its internals and evaluation of its performance consistency, power consumption, and thermal profile.

UPDATE 5/17, 6 PM: Western Digital has confirmed that the new 2.5-inch T GB HDDs uses 6 SMR platters

The vast majority of laptops nowadays use solid-state drives, which is why the development of new, higher-capacity 2.5-inch hard drives has all but come to a halt. Or rather, it almost has. It seems that the 2.5-inch form factor has a bit more life left in it after all, as today Western Digital has released a slate of new external storage products based on a new, high-capacity 6 TB 2.5-inch hard drive.

WD's new 6 TB spinner is being used to offer upgraded versions of the company's My Passport, Black P10, and and G-DRIVE ArmorATD portable storage products. Notably, however, WD isn't selling the bare 2.5-inch drive on a standalone basis – at least not yet – so for the time being it's entirely reserved for use in external storage.

Consequently, WD isn't publishing much about the 6 TB hard drive itself. The maximum read speed for these products is listed at 130 MB/sec – the same as WD's existing externals – and write performance goes unmentioned.

Notably, all of these 6 TB devices are thicker than their existing 5 TB counterparts, which strongly suggests that WD has increased their storage capacity not by improving their areal density, but by adding another platter to their existing drive platform (which WD has since confirmed). This, in turn, would help to explain why these new drives are being used in external storage products, as WD's 5 TB 2.5-inch drives are already 15mm thick and using 5 platters. 15mm is the highest standard thickness for a 2.5-inch form-factor, and already incompatible with a decent number of portable devices. External drives, in turn, are the only place these even thicker 2.5-inch drives would fit.

WD's specifications also gloss over whether these drives are based on shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. The company was already using SMR for their 5 TB drives in order to hit the necessary storage density there, and WD has since confirmed that this is exactly the case. Which is likely why the company isn't publishing write performance specifications for the drives, as we've seen device-managed SMR drives bottom out as low as 10 MB/second in our testing when the drive needs to rewrite data.

Depending on the specific drive model, all of the external storage drives use either a USB-C connector, or the very quaint USB Micro-B 3.0 connector. Though regardless of the physical connector used, all of the drives feature a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) electrical interface, which is more than ample given the drives' physically-limited transfer speeds.

Wrapping things up, according to WD the new drives are available at retail immediately. The WD My Passport Ultra and WD My Passport Ultra for Mac with USB-C both retail for $199.99; the WD My Passport and WD My Passport for Mac are $179.99; the WD My Passport Works With USB-C is $184.99; the gaming-focused WD_Black P10 Game Drive sells for $184.99, and the SanDisk Professional G-Drive ArmorATD is $229.99. All of Western Digital's external storage drives are backed with a three-year limited warranty.

Sabrent tends to get into news when it launches ultra-high-performance SSDs for enthusiast-grade desktops, but this week the company introduced a completely different type of product: a small form-factor M.2-2242 SSD aimed at Lenovo's Legion Go handheld and ultra-thin laptops that don't accomodate M.2-2280 drives. And even though it's not an enthusiast-grade drive, the Rocket Nano still boasts with quite decent performance and capacity.

The Sabrent Rocket Nano 2242 (SB-2142) drive is based on the Phison E27T platform, a PCIe 4.0 x4 controller that is that is designed for mainstream DRAM-less SSDs, and in the case of the Rocket Nano, is paired with 3D TLC memory. The SSD is available in a single 1TB configuration, and is rated for read speeds up to 5 GB/s. Interestingly, the Phison E27T controller itself is rated for read speeds up to 7 GB/s, so it appears that the petite Rocket Nano isn't making full use of the controller's performance.

Sabrent positions its Rocket Nano 2242 SSD as drives for upgrading Lenovo's Legion Go portable game console, select Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, and other M.2-2242-sized PCs that can't accomodate larger 2280 drives. Keeping in mind that most devices shipping with M.2-2242 SSDscome with pretty slow stock drives, Sabrent solution seems to be a viable product for such upgrades. All the while, Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 will also work in systems with a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, so the market for these drives is pretty wide.

Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 SSD 1 TB (SB-2142-1TB) SSD has a recommended price of $99.99, which is more or less in line with other 1 TB drives in the same form-factor and offering comparable performance. The SSD is currently available at Amazon for $101.

Sources: Tom's Hardware, Sabrent

Seagate Technology has reportedly notified its customers abouts its plans to raise prices on new hard drive orders and for demands that exceed prior agreements, echoing a similar move by Western Digital, which increased its prices earlier this month. These changes come in response to a surge in demand for high-capacity HDDs and constraints in supply due to decreased production capabilities of both Seagate and Western Digital, reports TrendForce.

According to industry insights reported by TechNews, the sector anticipates that the scarcity of high-capacity HDD products will persist throughout the current quarter and possibly extend over the entire year. It is forecasted that HDD prices will rise by 5% to 10% in Q2 2024 alone and could increase further as a reault of the ongoing challenges faced by the storage industry.

The primary driver behind Seagate's decision is increased demand for high-capacity HDDs, which are used to train AI models. This demand spike, coupled with a reduction in production output from hard drive makers, has created a significant supply-demand imbalance. As a result, Seagate has decided to adjust their pricing strategy to manage the situation. Further exacerbating the issue are global inflationary pressures which continue to inflate costs across the board, which also contributed to the company's decision to increase prices, Seagate said in a message to clients published by TrendForce.

Seagate emphasized that its reduced production capacity has been a major challenge, hindering the company's ability to fulfill customer demands fully and promptly.

"As a result, we will be implementing price increases effective immediately on new orders and for demand that is over and above previously committed volumes," the alleged memo from Seagate reads. "Supply constraints are expected to continue and as such we anticipate that prices will continue to increase in the coming quarters."

Earlier this month Western Digital also informed its customers about price hikes for its HDD and SSD products. This notification was based on similar issues — higher than anticipated demand across the whole product range and additional supply chain challenges affecting the electronics sector. Western Digital's announcement made it clear that these disruptions are likely to continue, prompting further price adjustments.

Sources: TrendForce, TrendForce, TechNews

As Seagate ramps up shipments of its new heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR)-based Mozaic 3+ hard drive platform, the company is both in the enviable position of shipping the first major new hard drive technology in a decade, and the much less enviable position of proving the reliability of the first major new hard drive technology in a decade. Due to HAMR's use of temporal heating with its platters, as well as all-new read/write heads, HAMR introduces multiple new changes at once that have raise questions about how reliable the technology will be. Looking to address these matters (and further promote their HAMR drives), Seagate has published a fresh blog post outlining the company's R&D efforts, and why the company expects their HAMR drives to last several years – as long or longer than current PMR hard drives.

According to the company, the reliability of Mozaic 3+ drives on par with traditional drives relying on perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), the company says. In fact, components of HAMR HDDs have demonstrated a 50% increase in reliability over the past two years. Seagate says that Mozaic 3+ drives boast impressive durability metrics: their read/write heads have demonstrated capacity to handle over 3.2 petabytes of data transfer over 6,000 hours of operation, which exceeds data transfers of typical nearline hard drives by 20 times. Accordingly, Seagate is rating these drives for a mean time between failure (MTBF) 2.5 million hours, which is in-line with PMR-based drives.

Based on their field stress tests, involving over 500,000 Mozaic 3+ drives, Seagate says that the heads of Mozaic 3+ drives will last over seven years, surpassing the typical lifespan of current PMR-based drives. Generally, customers anticipate that modern PMR drives will last between four and five years with average usage, so these drives would exceed current expectations.

Altogether, Seagate is continuing aim for a seamless transition from PMR to HAMR drives in customer systems. That means ensuring that these new drives can fit into existing data center infrastructures without requiring any changes to enterprise specifications, warranty conditions, or form factors.

Lexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar SL500 Portable SSD is one of the moderately priced 20 Gbps PSSDs in that set.

The SL500 is able to achieve its price point thanks to the use of a native USB flash controller - the Silicon Motion SM2320. The unique aspect is the use of YMTC 3D TLC NAND (compared to the usual Micron or BiCS NAND that we have seen in previous SM2320-based PSSDs). Read on for a detailed look at the SL500, including an analysis of its internals and evaluation of its performance consistency, power consumption, and thermal profile.

SK hynix is one of the few vertically integrated manufacturers in the flash-based storage market. The company is well-established in the OEM market. A few years back, they also started exploring direct end-user products. Internal SSDs (starting with the Gold S31 and Gold P31) were the first out of the door. Late last year, the company introduced the Beetle X31 portable SSD, its first direct-attached storage product. In February, a complementary product was introduced - the Tube T31 Stick SSD.

The Beetle X31 is a portable SSD with a Type-C upstream port and a separate cable. The Tube T31 is a take on the traditional thumb drive with a male Type-A interface. The size of the Beetle X31 makes the use of a bridge solution obvious. Our investigation into the Tube T31 also revealed the use of the same internal SSD, albeit with a different bridge. Read on for a detailed look at the Tube T31, including an analysis of its internals and evaluation of its performance consistency, power consumption, and thermal profile.

Western Digital this week is previewing the industry's first 4 TB SD card. The device is being showcased at the NAB trade show for broadcasters and content creators and will be released commercially in 2025.

Western Digital's SanDisk Extreme Pro SDUC 4 TB SD card complies with the Secure Digital Ultra Capacity standard (SDUC, which enables up to 128TB). The card uses the Ultra High Speed-I (UHS-I) interface and is rated for speed Class 10, therefore supporting a minimum speed of 10 MB/s and a maximum data transfer rate of 104 MB/s when working in UHS104 (SDR104) mode (there is a catch about performance, but more on that later). WD's SD card is also rated to meet Video Speed Class V30, supporting a minimal sequential write speed of 30 MB/s, which is believed to be good enough for 8K video recording, above and beyond the 4K video market that Western Digital is primarily aiming the forthcoming card at.

For now, Western Digital is not disclosing what NAND is in the SanDisk Extreme Pro SDUC 4 TB SD card. Given the high capacity and relatively distant 2025 release date, WD may be targetting this as one of their first products to use their forthcoming BiCS 9 NAND.

And while not listed in WD's official press release, we would be surprised if the forthcoming card didn't also support the off-spec DDR200/DDR208 mode, which allows for higher transfer rates than the UHS-I standard normally allows via double data rate signaling. Western Digital's current-generation SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC 1 TB SD card already supports that mode, allowing it to reach read speeds as high as 170 MB/s, so it would be surprising to see the company drop it from newer products. That said, the catch with DDR208 remains the same as always: it's a proprietary mode that requires a compatible host to make use of.

Western Digital has not disclosed how much will its SanDisk Extreme Pro SDUC 4 TB SD card cost. A 1 TB SanDisk Extreme Pro card costs $140, so one can make guesses about the price of a 4 TB SD card that uses cutting-edge NAND.

Nowadays highest-capacity hard drives are typically aimed at cloud service providers (CSPs) and enterprises, but this does not mean that creative professionals or regular users do not need them. To cater to demands of more regular consumers, Western Digital has started shipments of its Red Pro 24 TB HDDs, which are aimed at high-end NAS use for creative professionals with significant storage requirements.

Western Digital's Red Pro 24 TB hard drives come approximately 20 months after their 22 TB model hit retail in 2022, offering an incremental improvement to WD's highest-capacity NAS and consumer hard drive offering. The platform uses conventional magnetic recording (CMR), feature a 7200 RPM rotating speed, are equipped with a 512 MB cache, and use OptiNAND technology to improve reliability as well as optimize performance and power consumption. The HDDs are rated for an up to 287 MB/s media to cache transfer rate, which makes them some of the fastest hard drives around (albeit, still a bit slower compared to CSP and enterprise-oriented HDDs).

Just like other high-end network-attached storage-aimed HDDs, the Red Pro 24 TB hard drives use helium-filled platforms that are very similar to those designed for enterprise drives. Consequently, the Red Pro 24 TB HDD are equipped with rotation vibration sensors to anticipate and proactively counteract disturbances caused by increased vibration and multi-axis shock sensors to detect subtle shock events and automatically offset them with dynamic fly height technology to ensure that heads to not scratch disks.

UPDATE 4/2/2024: Western Digital has notified us that WD Red Pro fully support ArmorCache capability, even though it is not listed in datasheets.

What these drives lack compared Apparently, just like WD Gold and Ultraster 22 TB and 24 TB drives for enterprises and cloud datacenters, WD Red Pro HDDs fully support the ArmorCache feature that provides protection against power loss when write-cache is enabled (WCE mode) and enhances performance when write-cache is disabled (WCD mode).

On the reliability side of matters, Western Digital's Red Pro 24 TB HDDs are designed for 24/7 operation in vibrating environments, such as enterprise-grade NAS with loads of bays, and are rated for up to 550 TB/year workloads as well as up to 600,000 load/unload cycles, which is in line with what Western Digital's WD Gold and Ultrastar hard drives offer.

As for power consumption, the WD Red Pro 24 TB consumes up to 6.4W during read and write operations, up to 3.9W in idle mode, and up to 1.2W in standby/sleep mode.

Western Digital's Red Pro 24 TB (WD240KFGX) HDDs are now shipping to resellers as well as NAS makers, and are slated to be available shortly. Expect these hard drives to be slightly cheaper than the WD Gold 24 TB model.

SK hynix is set to unveil their first Gen5 consumer NVMe SSD lineup shortly, based on the products at display in their GTC 2024 booth. The Platinum P51 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD will take over flagship duties from the Platinum P41 that has been serving the market for more than a year.

Similar to the Gold P31 and the Platinum P41, the Platinum P51 also uses an in-house SSD controller. The key updates are the move to PCIe Gen5 and the use of SK hynix's 238L TLC NAND. Other details are scarce, and we have reached out for additional information.

Only the peak sequential access numbers were available at the GTC booth, indicating that the drive's firmware is still undergoing tweaks. It is also unclear how these numbers are going to vary based on capacity. Availability and pricing are also not public yet.

This is a significant launch for the Gen5 consumer SSD market, where the number of available options are quite limited. The Phison E26 controller and Micron's B58R NAND combination is already in its second generation (with the NAND operating at 2400 MT/s in the newest avatar), but other vertically integrated vendors such as Samsung, Western Digital / Kioxia, and SK hynix (till now) are focusing more on the Gen4 market which has much higher adoption.

We will update the piece with additional information once the specifications are officially available.

The DNA Data Storage Alliance introduced its inaugural specifications for DNA-based data storage this week. This specification outlines a method for encoding essential information within a DNA data archive, crucial for developing and commercializing an interoperable storage ecosystem.

DNA data storage uses short strings of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) called oligonucleotides (oligos) mixed together without a specific physical ordering scheme. This storage media lacks a dedicated controller and an organizational means to understand the proximity of one media subcomponent to another. DNA storage differs significantly from traditional media like tape, HDD, and SSD, which have fixed structures and controllers that can read and write data from the structured media. DNA's lack of physical structure requires a unique approach to initiate data retrieval, which brings its peculiarities regarding standardization. 

To address this, the SNIA DNA Archive Rosetta Stone (DARS) working group, part of the DNA Data Storage Alliance, has developed two specifications, Sector Zero and Sector One, to facilitate the process of starting a DNA archive. 

Sector Zero serves as the starting point, providing minimal details necessary for the archive reader to identify the entity responsible for synthesizing the DNA (e.g., Dell, Microsoft, Twist Bioscience) and the CODEC used for encoding Sector One (e.g., Super Codec, Hyper Codec, Jimbob's Codec). Sector Zero consists of 70 bases: the first 35 bases identify the vendor, and the second 35 bases identify the codec. The information in Sector Zero enables access and decoding of data stored in Sector One. The amount of data stored in SZ is small and fits into a single oligonucleotide.

Sector One expands on this by including a description of the contents, a file table, and parameters required for transferring data to a sequencer. This specification ensures that the main body of the archive is accessible and readable, paving the way for data retrieval. Sector One contains exactly 150 bases and will span multiple oligonucleotides. 

"A key goal of the DNA Data Storage Alliance is to set and publish specifications and standards that allow an interoperable DNA data storage ecosystem to grow," said Dave Landsman, of the DNA Data Storage Alliance Board of Directors. "With the publishing of the Alliance's first specifications, we take an important step in achieving that goal. Sector Zero and Sector One are now publicly available, allowing companies working in the space to adopt and implement."

The DNA Data Storage Alliance is led by Catalog Technologies, Inc., Quantum Corporation, Twist Bioscience Corporation, and Western Digital (though we are unsure whether Western Digital's NAND or HDD division is responsible for developing the specification). Meanwhile, numerous industry giants, including Microsoft, support the DNA Data Storage Alliance.

Source: SNIA