We happened upon an odd display while touring the Seagate Suite at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas, as part of CES 2015 this week.  Displayed below is what appears to be an ADATA SSD that contains the typical MacBook MBA/MBP SSD connector, along with a LSI SandForce controller that is definitely not the newest SF3700. As odd as we …

Perhaps the most noticeable features that solid state storage has brought to the table in recent years are massive performance advance and higher capacities in a smaller footprint.  Looking at where we have come with SSDs, ultrabooks today can be found containing 1TB SSDs only 2mm thick, yet capable of speeds up to 1.4GB/s.   Similarly, external storage devices have …

Following in the footsteps of Samsung, Intel will begin its development of proprietary 3D NAND flash memory in the upcoming year, at least proprietary in terms of its IMFT partnership with Micron.  This announcement was made by Rob Crooke, VP and GM of Intel NVM Group today at the annual 2014 Investor Group Meeting.  Just as good was the news …

If we were to look at the flash controller hierarchy, Phison has typically placed as a mid-tier company.  We met with Phison at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, this past August and they spoke of a new controller that might move them up in the stack, the Phison Quad-Core PS3110 6Gbps controller.  Capable of 550MB/s read, 530MB/s …

A few weeks back, Zotac sent us a ZBox Pico PI320 Mini PCS and, for the life of me, I could find a place to start.  At 115.5mm x 66mm x 19.2 mm, this mini-PC is just about the size of two iPhones on top of one another and has to be the smallest full feature PC available. No matter …

If you could load a motherboard with absolute killer features, what would you include?  Intel’s new X99 chipset opens the door a bit where, with the right X99 CPU, our PCIe lanes increase to 40 allowing us the leverage to stack our systems much more than we ever could have before.  Can you imagine a triple SLI/Crossfire graphics card layout …

If you are going to introduce a new motherboard to the world, perhaps the best marketing feat one could achieve would be to set a new overclocking world record for that board close to the time of its release.  Nick Shih of ASRock did that with the new ASRock X99 OC Formula recently by overclocking the latest Intel i7-5960X chip …

In examining the flash industry over the past eight years, I don’t think many would argue that there has been insurmountable growth, paired with enough growing pains and obstacles along the way to frustrate even the best in the business.  Flash technology has grown so fast that today it would be seemingly impossible to find anyone not tied to flash …

Our review of the SPYRUS WorkSafe Pro Windows To Go Secure Flash Drive marks the world’s first independent report of the SPYRUS encrypted flash drive, a flash drive that would most definitely suit the likes of James Bond.  It brings to end a period of over two years of discussions and final agreement on exactly what could (or could not …

SSDs have been around for several years now, but some could argue that they have yet to hit mainstream.  When you compare SSD sales today to the hard drive, we could make a case when we state that they are still in their infancy.  The biggest reasoning for this, of course, has been industries lack of ability to find that …