The SSD Review The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource |

It is funny how some things come around.  A few years ago Silicon Motion requested our review of their newest SM2708 SD Express Controller and we posted such, displaying the worlds first SD card achieving speeds of 900MB/s.  That was back in 2021.  That controller recently appeared in a Google Alert and it appears the latest Nintendo Switch 2 Gaming …

Disk Optimization is a very simple process by which your PC  physically removes deleted and unnecessary data from your SSD in order to allow for better performance and longevity.  You can do this manually as we will demonstrate, but thankfully your PC has already set this up.  Drive Optimization is a beneficial and background process that occurs automatically with PCs.  …

Our last ‘Quick Hit’ in our Learning to Run With Flash 2.0 Series was titled, ‘Where is My New SSD?‘ and it did just that.  It explained why some appear to lose their SSD on installation and how to get on the right track once again.  In that, we tackled how to initialize ones disk, but not the specifics of …

You most likely arrived here one of two ways; sheer interest or you just installed your new SSD and cannot find it.  The latter is more common than most think and usually the after effect of installing a secondary SSD in your system.  After all, a migration of a former hard drive based system (which we NEVER recommend) wouldn’t cause …

So if I were to speak of the best in PCIe 5.0 SSDs going mainstream, it would have to be the efforts and success in finding a higher performing yet cooler storage solution.  This wasn’t so much the case with Gen4 and I think we seemed to get used to the fact that Gen4 SSDs, for the longest time, ran …

Data storage in NAND flash memory is a complex process that is not only difficult to understand, but also challenging to explain. Humans are good at abstraction, and we use this skill to enhance technology, even if we are not aware of what is exactly going on at the level of matter. In the case of NAND flash, we understand …

The Lexar brand has been around for some time, and in fact, our first mention of Lexar goes all the way back to one of our first Storage Visions meetings in Las Vegas some 14 years ago.  Lexar was originally a Micron brand but was acquired by Longsys Electronics in 2017 and Longsys has built on that brand name since, …

Without a doubt, our biggest takeaway from attending Computex 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan, this year was our introduction to Risteárd McSweeney of 360Technology.io.  We met Risteárd through his representation of KIOXIA at their exhibit and he has been able to accomplish something that we haven’t for several years, our review of  the consumer side of KIOXIA products.  In fact, our …

Last in our latest round of portable SSD reviews is the Crucial X10 8TB 20Gbps Portable SSD, and yes, we have this in our hot little hands.  It is actually quite a feat when you consider this SSD is less than half the size of your smartphone, yet can store all the data, video, music or pictures that you might …

The latest in greatest in portable media storage this season is the implementation of USB4 and it’s 4GB/s transfer speeds.  Without a doubt, this is a breath of fresh air for the media professional and the storage industry as a whole.  Somewhat overlooked,  USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 has become a very affordable, speedy and high capacity solution for those having …

A day or two late but we wanted to complete our testing on the newest Crucial X10 Portable SSD for a more complete picture.  Coming in at just 65mm x 50mm x 9.9mm and weighing just 42 Grams, this SSD is the smallest form factor 8TB SSD on the planet right now… and we haven’t got one in hand… well …

It had to happen sooner or later.  I think we are the first to post such.   A DRAMless Gen5 SSD that reaches 14GB/s, over 2 million IOPS and stands right beside Gen5 DRAM based SSDs.  This is possible thorough BIWIN and the newest release of the Maxiotek MAP1806a 8-channel DRAMless NVMe SSD controller which you will probably be hearing much …

Sure signs of a storage geek… I haven’t been on the ground no more than 36 hours after returning on a 15hr hr flight from Computex Taipei and I am testing storage.  Worse yet… my initial testing for today’s report was only completed at 4:30am this morning… Yup extreme jet lag…  But look at this.  These two SSDs in this …

This week at Computex ADATA introduced three new SSDs aptly named the Mars 980 SSD line.  In common, they are all based on the SMI SM2508 8-channel NVMe SSD controller and all are capable of the expected 14GB/s read and 13GB/s write speeds with up to 2 million IOPS. All are Gen5 x4 (4-lane) form factor 2280 (22mm wide x …

Our visit to Patriot at Computex in Taiwan this morning resulted in two interesting Patriot soon-to-be releases…and just a bit of familiarity.  First off, Patriot has jumped aboard the Silicon Motion train with their newest PV593 which is a Gen5 SSD based on the SMI SM2508 8-channel NVMe SSD controller.  This controller will provide speeds of 14GB/s read and 13GB/s …