Controllers are the heart and soul of every SSD. Without one, an SSD would be a useless PCB with some components slapped on it. It is responsible for everything from garbage collection and wear leveling to error correction and hardware encryption. In simple terms, all these operations can be quite complicated to implement as well as expensive to develop. This …

So I am holding this Samsung Portable T1 1TB SSD in my hand and thinking how far we have come to make possible the actual storage of a quarter million songs, 200,000 pictures, 1 million e-books or 500 hours of video on a device 3/4 the size of a business card and 30 grams in weight. To put that weight …

This morning at CES Las Vegas, we attended the Bellagio where we met with Ryan Smith, Sr. Product Manager of SSD Marketing, Samsung. We got to take a look not only at their current SSD line up, but what should be coming out over the next year or so. The first thing to catch our interest were an M.2 and …

While about the exhibit floor here at Storage Visions 2015, we couldn’t help but notice a small gathering around Chris Geiser, senior memory and storage product manager at Samsung. It turns out that all the commotion was for a sneak peak at a new 3D V-NAND powered external SSD, the Samsung Portable SSD T1! Samsung’s Portable SSD T1 is a …

The Samsung 850 EVO is a third generation TLC NAND SSD, second 3D V-NAND product on the market, and the first SSD in the industry to feature 3-bit 3D V-NAND. At first people were weary of TLC NAND, due to the issues it presents. TLC NAND has much lower endurance and slower performance when compared to MLC and SLC. By …

Don’t miss out on a chance to upgrade your PC on the cheap. If this Thanksgiving and Black Friday wasn’t enough, there is still time to get some great deals on new SSDs this Cyber Monday. SSDs speed up everything from system boot time, to application loading. We’ve seen dramatic differences in old systems with just a simple SSD upgrade. …

It’s that time of the year again, when online retailers are dropping prices on products left and right. Over the past few days there have been some okay deals when it comes to SSDs in anticipation of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, today there are some very good deals on drives from all the big boys in the industry, …

When we reviewed  the Intel SSD DC P3700 earlier this year, it was our first chance to get a really good look at what NVMe could do for storage.  As a quick refresher, Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is a protocol that is set to replace AHCI for storage.  It leverages PCIe as the physical interconnect, specifically PCIe x4 Gen3, which …

Samsung has had a strong track record with SSDs. Their drives offer high reliability as well as high performance for those with a need for speed.  They are one of the few manufacturers that designs and manufacturers every major SSD component in their drives. That alone should tell you about their expertise and strength in the industry. And it is …

At the 2014 Samsung SSD Global Summit, Samsung showcased its latest consumer SSD, the 850 PRO.  Just like the 840 PRO before it, we loved the 850 PRO’s performance and technological advances.  In fact, it is probably the best SATA 3 (6Gbps) drive on the market.  As an enterprise reviewer, I expected the normal 6-12 month wait before the 850 …