Samsung today announced a new lineup of 2.5-inch quad-level cell SSDs that will all be part of the 870 QVO series. Storage options for these drives start out in familiar territory with 1TB, 2TB, and even 4TB models, but for the 870 QVO, Samsung is rolling out the big guns, announcing that the series will be home to an 8TB drive as well. Expect that to cost a pretty penny when it releases later this year.
Western Digital, one of the biggest names in the data storage industry, got dragged into a rather complicated controversy regarding hard disk technology and marketing. That drama also dragged others like Seagate and Toshiba, though all three companies have, by now, made their official statements and clarifications. WD, however, is still working to clarify its position and its product line and it is doing so by introducing a third category in its Red family of NAS drives.
It looks like SD Express is in for a fairly big improvement to transfer speeds, as today the SD Association announced what the SD 8.0 specification will do for the format. According to the SDA, the next generation of SD Express cards will potentially reach transfer speeds of up to 4GB per second, which blows even earlier SD Express generations out of the water.
Samsung's newest SSD is now available, with the Samsung T7 announced back at CES 2020 finally ready to slip into your pocket. Smaller and cheaper than the T7 Touch Samsung already launched - and which has a fingerprint sensor along with its solid-state drive - the regular T7 opts for simplicity instead.
An interview with Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney suggested the next-gen console PS5 will keep gaming consoles alive for at least another generation. Where devout PC gamers would seem to always have an edge on gaming consoles due to their ability to upgrade all parts at will, Sony appears to be keying in on storage optimization. This bit could - and likely will be - vital to the console's success.
You might think that buying and using a hard drive is a simple matter of picking one from a catalog and connecting it inside a computer. That may be true fro the simplest of desktops but when you factor in devices like NAS products, the selection process can be quite daunting, especially when data storage manufacturers aren't so forthcoming with critical details. To dispel any lingering doubt and confusion, Toshiba and Western Digital have released the list of hard drives that use the now somewhat controversial SMR technology and which ones don't.
![WD, Seagate, Toshiba allegedly sell SMR drives without telling buyers [UPDATE]](https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/wd-red-nas-1280x720.jpg)
People might take hard drives for granted these days. After all, their use of moving parts makes them less suited for mobile devices and their bulky sizes give off an "old school" vibe. Hard disks and their magnetic plates and moving read/write heads, however, still trump Flash NAND technology when it comes to capacity, which is why they are still the go-to for large storage devices like NAS. Unfortunately, picking out a hard drive is harder than you might think, especially when manufacturers themselves aren't being upfront about the technologies they use.
Smartphones have become powerful enough to support new multimedia experiences, both in creation and consumption. Smartphone cameras are capable of recording videos in 8K resolution while smartphone screens can fit even up to 4K videos. Those activities, however, also require not just a beefy processor or spacious RAM. They also require high-speed storage that can keep up with all the data transfer demands they entail, which is what Samsung's latest smartphone data storage solution is promising to provide.
Despite being marketed as Google's best Pixel ever, the Pixel 4 has its fair share of disappointed critics that perhaps all boil down to one thing. There are those that feel that Google has not done enough for the price it was asking for and the things it did work on, like Motion Gestures, isn't something fans are really falling in love with. That might be part of the interest that the Pixel 4a is generating, seemingly offering a more affordable Pixel experience without the cruft. And based on one leak, it will definitely be an upgrade to the Pixel 3a in more ways than one.
The mobile lifestyle now no longer just applies to smartphones. It's no longer unusual to see people carrying laptops around and working anywhere there's a Wi-Fi connection or a power outlet or both. The change in lifestyle and work habits has also changed the way we store and access data or even the volume of data we accumulate in a short amount of time. That means that portable storage, even usually expensive SSDs, has become more common and so is the risk of theft or loss. Samsung is coming to the rescue with a portable SSD that offers an additional layer of security on top, literally.
The way we create and consume media these days has pretty much changed the way we store and retrieve data. Large hard drives with their moving heads and spinning disks still have a home in desktops and data centers but regular consumers would prefer more durable and more portable storage devices for the modern lifestyle. At CES 2020, Western Digital is showing off a few new products to address that need, including a portable SSD with an 8 TB capacity and 20 Gbps SuperSpeed.
Glass might not be the first material you think of when it comes to long-term resilience, but Microsoft's new Project Silica could turn it into the storage method of choice for saving data you really don't want to degrade. Brainchild of the company's Microsoft Research team, Project Silica encodes information on a super-strong slice of glass - and to prove it works, they stored a classic movie on there.