Synology today announced the release of the 4-bay Synology DiskStation DS423+, the latest in its lineup of all-in-one storage solutions for home office and small business use. Powered by the versatile Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system, DS423+ offers comprehensive solutions to protect and manage business data, facilitate collaboration on documents, provide remote file access, and serve as the core of an IP camera-based surveillance system, all within a compact desktop format.

"The new DS423+ offers exceptional value to users with limited storage requirements," said Anya Lin, Product Manager at Synology. "It boasts 21% faster photo indexing over its predecessor, among other performance improvements, and continues to offer the comprehensive and robust features that our customers have come to rely on."

Pure Storage, a maker of various storage solutions and custom enterprise-grade SSDs, claims the company will produce SSDs with up to 300 TBs of capacity by 2026. In an interview with Pure Storage CTO Alex McMullan, Blocks & Files got exclusive information that the company targets SSD capacities of up to 300 TBs in 2026. Pure Storage creates proprietary Direct Flash Modules (DFM) SSDs which use 3D NAND chips controlled by a custom SSD controller, are used in the FlashArray systems, and run on a custom FlashBlade operating system. This level of customization allows Pure Storage to create SSD drives with remarkable capacities in the future as the 3D NAND technology advances.

In the coming years, 3D NAND flash manufacturers will switch from the current 200-layer chips to the 400/500-layer chips, driving storage density to new highs. As manufacturers update their technology, so does Pure with its DFM cards that use regular U.2 NVMe connectors in a custom ruler-style format made explicitly for Pure FlashArray systems. Compared to upcoming HDDs that Toshiba and Seagate will use, Pure Storage DFM SSDs will have much higher capacities and read/write speeds, especially as higher-density 3D NAND arrives. You can see the comparison of Pure's estimates for the future 300 TB SSDs with future HDD technology.

Synology today announced the addition of RackStation RS2423+ and RS2423RP+ to the versatile and cost-effective Plus series systems. The 2U 12-bay RS2423(RP)+ are ideal data management and backup solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as branch offices. "With strong performance out of the box and flexible configuration and expansion options, these servers are the perfect on-prem storage solution for growing businesses," said Peggy Weng, Product Manager at Synology.

Offering a performance increase over its predecessor with sequential read/write speeds of over 3,500/1,700 MB/s, the RS2423(RP)+ packs a punch. This device features built-in 10GbE connectivity along with 2 x 1GbE ports with support for additional 10/25GbE networking. The 12-bays of RS2423(RP)+ support up to 216 TB of total storage capacity and can be expanded to 24 bays with a RX1223RP Expansion Unit for up to 432 TB of storage.

Sabrent introduces our new USB Type-C Flat Docking Station (DS-UFNC) for normal use and cloning. The USB Type-C Flat Docking Station (DS-UFNC) is designed to make your life easier with a dual-drive, tool-free installation. It supports an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD and a 2.5"/3.5" SATA SSD/HDD in single- or dual-drive mode for data transfer and offline cloning with clear LED indicators. The M.2 drive is kept cool during operation to prevent throttling with an integrated M.2 heatsink and includes a thermal pad. No matter your storage, this docking station has you covered.

The included power adapter improves reliability during operation with 3.5" HDDs and high-power SSDs. Transfers are possible over a 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2) backward-compatible interface. Type-C/Type-A to Type-C USB cables are included to work with a wide range of devices, and the docking station is designed for Windows and macOS machines. SSDs are fully supported with TRIM and UASP for the best performance and reliability. Easy, convenient, and backed by Sabrent.

To help consumers preserve their ever-growing digital world, Western Digital's WD brand is expanding its trusted My Book Desktop Storage lineup. Built upon a legacy of technology innovation, the company has released its highest capacity consumer drive ever with the 22 TB My Book Desktop Hard Drive, giving people greater flexibility to store more of what they love.

"Consumers continue generating data at a rapid pace. In 2022 alone, the average household worldwide generated more than 20 TB of data and we expect this number to continue to rise as people continue to consume and create more data," said John Rydning, research vice president, Global DataSphere at International Data Corporation (IDC), a global market intelligence firm. "While many people rely on the cloud, we know consumers are looking for local storage at their fingertips to help them preserve and readily control their growing amount of personal and business data."

Toshiba may have spun off its flash memory business into Kioxia, but the company still makes mechanical hard-drives and derivative products such as portable HDDs. At the 2023 International CES, the company showed off its Canvio Gaming line of portable HDDs. These USB 3.1 portable hard drives come in capacities of up to 4 TB, and support both Xbox and PlayStation consoles, where they can be used to store entire libraries of games that can be made ready to play faster than fetching the game from the Internet.

The Canvio Advance series targets professionals on the move providing storage of up to 4 TB, with auto-backup both to itself and the cloud (though your PC), and data-encryption. The Canvio Ready and Canvio Flex target consumer use-cases. The latter in particular has a broad device compatibility spanning PCs, Macs, tablets, and handhelds, with USB-C and type-A interfaces. Lastly there's the N300 line of enterprise hard drives targeting NAS applications, which come in capacities of up to 18 TB, with up to 7,200 RPM spindle speed, and CMR recording (no SMR). These drives are designed for 24x7 operation, come with up to 1.2 million hours MTTF at 300 TB/year workload, and are backed by 5-year warranties.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, announces the launch of the T9-450 and T12-450 high-speed network storage server featuring 10 GbE networking capabilities which are designed for professionals that require high-speed, large-capacity for applications like virtualization, databases, image and video content creation, and others.

TerraMaster T9-450 and T12-450 come in a compact design for its class making it ideal for small- and medium-sized businesses with limited space for professional data storage devices. The T9-450 and T12-450 are also designed for high-capacity storage configurations, supporting up to 20 TB HDD models and a total capacity of 180 TB and 240 TB, respectively. Its compact design and high capacity support makes the TerraMaster 450 Series ideal for creative professionals and growing businesses.

Client SSDs constituted a major driver of demand bit growth in the NAND Flash market for the past two years as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were spurring procurement activities related to working and studying from home. TrendForce currently projects that the attach rate of client SSDs among notebook computers will reach 92% in 2022 and around 96% in 2023. However, the demand surge related to the pandemic is subsiding, and the recent headwinds in the global economy have caused a demand freeze in the wider consumer electronics market. Hence, among the major application segments of the NAND Flash market, client SSDs are going to experience the most significant demand slowdown. This, in turn, will constrain demand bit growth as well. TrendForce projects that for the period from 2022 to 2025, the YoY growth rate of NAND Flash demand bits will remain below 30%.

The average NAND Flash content of client SSDs has already surpassed 500 GB this year. Quotes for 512 GB SSDs have fallen sharply and come to a level that is roughly comparable to the quotes that were given for 256 GB SSDs half-a-year ago. In fact, quotes for 512 GB SSDs are also near the level for HDDs with the same capacity. On the other hand, upgrading to 1 TB or higher for notebook SSDs could be challenging for PC OEMs mainly because the licensing fee for the Windows OS has a positive correlation with device specifications. Therefore, an increase in SSD capacity will raise the cost of a whole notebook computer. With PC OEMs being less keen on adopting SSDs that are 1 TB or higher, growth in the average NAND Flash content of client SSDs will also be more limited in the future.

Here's one of the first pictures of a mechanical HDD with NVMe interface. Seagate is apparently in production of an Exos-series Enterprise HDD featuring U.2 NVMe interface where one would expect SAS 12 Gbps. We seriously doubt if the HDD is fast enough to take advantage of U.2 NVMe (at least 32 Gbps per direction), but the move to NVMe probably has to do with the decline of older interface standards such as SAS 12 Gbps and SATA 6 Gbps in the enterprise space for cold-storage, and that future generations of rackmount DAS and NAS enclosures could increasingly feature U.2 backplanes, phasing out SAS and SATA. This is like when optical drives switched over to SATA despite not needing the bandwidth SATA had to offer (optical discs barely move a few dozen MB/s, for which even ATA33 IDE was sufficient). We don't know how the Seagate Exos drive handles NVMe internally—whether there is a new native NVMe controller, or whether this is really just a SAS 12 Gbps drive with a PCIe-to-SAS bridge chip.

Today, Star Wars fans have another way to feel the power of the Force with three new collectible Seagate Hard Disk Drives (HDD) inspired by heroes and villains of the Star Wars galaxy. Featuring Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Han Solo, the latest additions to the company's line of licensed special edition storage devices bring speed, capacity, and striking appearance to the battle stations of Star Wars collectors and tech enthusiasts.

The special edition FireCuda external hard drives represent the famed characters with three unique aesthetics: the courage of Luke Skywalker, the raw power of Darth Vader, and the confidence of the galaxy's favorite smuggler, Han Solo. The drives offer customizable RGB LED lighting and each design features a default custom character light out-of-the-box: a forceful blue for Luke Skywalker, a wrathful red for Darth Vader, and a white glow reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon for Han Solo. With built-in and customizable lighting options, all three of the drives enable Star Wars enthusiasts and gamers to awaken the powers of the Force at home.

Seagate announces three all-new external hard disk drives (HDD) featuring designs inspired by the stories and characters of Marvel Studios' Black Panther. The officially licensed HHDs are available this month and join the company's line of special edition storage devices. Paying homage to T'Challa (aka Black Panther), Shuri, and Okoye, these special edition HDDs deliver one-of-a-kind pieces of Marvel artwork to fans and highlight traits of the characters with customizable RGB LED lighting: magenta to honor Black Panther, cyan for the innovative style of Princess Shuri, and yellow for the elite strength of the warrior, Okoye.

With up to 2 TB of capacity, the FireCuda external HDDs are compatible with PC, Mac, PlayStation, and Xbox so tech enthusiasts can capture and access a wealth of media, files, and games, regardless of operating system. USB bus-powered and designed with USB 3.2 Gen 1 connection for universal compatibility and quick transfer speeds, the lightweight drives make it easy for Black Panther fans to take their whole library on the road.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal first quarter 2023 financial results. "I am pleased to see the Western Digital team work together to deliver revenue at the upper half of the guidance range and operating income at the upper half as implied by the midpoints of our guidance, in the midst of an incredibly dynamic and challenging macroeconomic environment," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "Overall, the organizational and portfolio improvements we have made over the past few years have equipped us to effectively manage through this consumer-led downturn, which is showing signs of stabilization. As we remain focused on innovation and execution, I am optimistic that Western Digital will emerge stronger as we continue to ramp multiple new products into data centers worldwide and market conditions improve."

Cloud storage provider Backblaze is one of the industry players providing insightful reports into the health and reliability of the storage mediums they invest in to support their business. In its most recent report, the company shared data that may finally be pointing towards the general perception (and one of SSD's call to fame upon their introduction): that they boast of higher reliability and lower failure rates than HDDs.

The company's latest reports shows that SSDs have entered their fifth operating year without an escalation in failure rates: something that seems to plague HDDs pretty heavily starting from year 4. The idea is simple: SSDs should be more reliable because there are no moving part (no platters and no read/write heads that can fail). However, SSDs do have other points of failure, such as NAND itself (the reason there's TBW ratings) or its controller. Backblaze's data does however show that those concerns may be overrated. Of course, there's a chance that SSDs employed by Backblaze will hit a "reliability" wall of the sort that HDDs seem to enter in year four of their operation, where failure rates increase immensely. More data throughout a larger span of time will be welcome, but for now, it does seem that SSDs are the best way for users to keep their data available.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched the 2-bay TS-253E and 4-bay TS-453E NAS. The TS-x53E series are powered by an Intel Celeron J6412 quad-core processor (burst up to 2.60 GHz), which will be available and supported by QNAP for an extended period (up to 2029). The TS-x53E series are ideal for managed service providers, system integrators, and other IT-related businesses requiring matching NAS models for long-term projects.

"Over the years QNAP has received many requests from businesses that require NAS with long-term availability," said Andy Chuang, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "the TS-x53E series, which will be available and supported by QNAP for an extended period, is a perfect fit for these businesses and other users who require the reassurance of long-term availability."

LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology Holdings plc, today announced the latest evolution of its popular mobile HDD storage line - LaCie Mobile Drive and LaCie Mobile Drive Secure. Trusted by design enthusiasts and creative professionals since its inception, LaCie consistently delivers iconic storage solutions in which form and function fuse into holistically enjoyable user experience.

LaCie Mobile Drive lives up to its LaCie pedigree with a design and construction built to last. Encased in an all-new innovative design by Neil Poulton, each drive features sturdy aluminium to bring strength to the enclosure. This new generation of LaCie drives includes important sustainability improvements by using post-consumer recycled (PCR) aluminium and plastic. Packaging in the box is also made from recycled cardboard.

With the great power of the hard drive comes the great responsibility to securely store and quickly access data. Inspired by the world of Marvel's Spider-Man, Seagate Technology plc today introduced three all-new officially licensed Marvel limited-edition Spider-Man external hard disk drive (HDD) designs joining the company's line of special edition storage devices.

Commemorating Spider-Man, Ghost-Spider (aka Gwen Stacy), and Miles Morales, these special edition HDDs deliver the Spider-Man fan an opportunity to own three unique drives featuring one-of-a-kind Marvel artwork. Each drive also features customizable RGB LED lighting, making it the ultimate accessory to Spidey-themed or other gaming set ups.

The new Stream S05 from Silicon Power (SP) was designed to be the perfect portable hard drive for saving on the go. The Stream S05 will be your new favorite 2.5" portable hard drive. Intended for everyday use, its compact and lightweight design comfortably fits in your hand for ultimate portability. Bring it with you wherever you go to back-up everything from important documents to irreplaceable memories, reliably and securely. Photos, videos, songs, documents - whatever you need to back-up, the Stream S05 has space for tons of it with up to 5 TB of storage capacity. Plus, a super-speed USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A interface delivers rapid transfer rates to cut the time needed for storing your files in a safe place.

When it comes to data, everything is growing - quantity, size, format, resolution, use cases, applications, value and more. As people and businesses look for solutions to effectively and efficiently store their data in the zettabyte era, Western Digital HDDs continue to play a critical role in delivering massive capacity, performance and reliability.

Extending its innovation and technology leadership across its portfolio, Western Digital today announced that it is now shipping new 22 TB HDDs targeting three key segments: WD Gold HDDs for IT/data center channel customers; WD Red Pro for network attached storage (NAS); and WD Purple Pro for smart video/surveillance. As highlighted in its What's Next Western Digital Event, these new drives are loaded with industry-firsts, including OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal to deliver the industry's highest areal density at 2.2 TB per platter, delivering 22 TB CMR HDDs for its customers.

Kanguru announces a new FIPS 140-2 Certified External Solid-State Drive with enhanced security. The new Defender SSD350 hardware encrypted solid state drive series provides organizations with data protection at its best. The TAA Compliant, Defender SSD350 family of solid-state drives is ideal for high-security environments, including government, defense, healthcare, financial institutions, energy/utilities and other security-conscious organizations that rely on benchmark FIPS 140-2 Certification and military-grade, hardware encryption to meet strict security demands. Designed and built under the independent and rigorous testing verification process conducted by the National Institute of Standards for Technology (NIST), the Defender SSD350 provides organizations with exceptional data security and value.

Packed with military grade security features for both MacOS and Windows, it can also be remotely managed for a complete data security solution. Security/IT Administrators can monitor their organization's Kanguru Defender drives anywhere in the world with the Kanguru Remote Management Console (KRMC), which allows Admins to enforce security policies, locate lost or stolen drives, manage security settings remotely and much more.

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation announces the DT02 7200 RPM 2 TB HDD, designed for desktop, PC computing, gaming and storage applications where performance and reliability are critical. The new DT02 7200 RPM 2 TB HDD delivers higher performance than Toshiba's predecessor and leverages Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) Technology. The DT02 7200 RPM 2 TB HDD has a SATA 6 Gbit/s interface and a 2 TB capacity.

The DT02 7200 RPM 2 TB HDD has a 19% increase in data transfer speed compared to Toshiba's current "DT02 series," achieving a maximum of 210 MiB/s, equipped with a 256 MB buffer, making it suitable for desktop, PC computing, gaming and storage applications. The DT02 7200 RPM 2 TB HDD is available from this month.

Building on significant technology innovations cultivated over decades, Western Digital today announced that it is sampling its new industry-leading 22 TB and 26 TB UltraSMR HDDs to select hyperscale cloud customers, further expanding its areal density leadership and delivering customer value by driving TCO lower. Western Digital's HDD technology portfolio and areal density leadership puts it at the center of storage innovation. Leveraging its unique OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA), HelioSeal and now UltraSMR technologies, Western Digital is on a clear path to delivering 30+ TB with ePMR.

"As a longstanding partner of the industry's leading cloud providers, we understand their unique requirements in building next-generation cloud infrastructure and invested in several HDD innovations we developed alongside our areal density technology," said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, EVP and GM, HDD Business Unit, Western Digital. "Our intent with taking this development strategy was not only to address the capacity demands of the world's largest cloud titans but to deliver on a roadmap that would also support the evolving economics of their data centers for decades to come. With ePMR, OptiNAND and now UltraSMR as the foundation of Western Digital's HDD roadmap, our cloud customers can continue rapidly scaling their business by taking advantage of our innovations to lower their storage TCO."

Today, Seagate celebrates Star Wars Day with the introduction of three collectible Hard Disk Drives (HDD) inspired by Boba Fett, Grogu, and The Mandalorian. Released on the fan holiday playing off of the popular Star Wars quote "May the Force be with you," the newest additions to the company's line of licensed special edition storage devices bring a tangible piece of the galaxy to the hands of collectors and tech enthusiasts.

"We are thrilled to announce the latest release in our ongoing collaboration with Lucasfilm, bringing three fresh and iconic designs to gamers and Star Wars fans," said Jeff Fochtman, senior vice president of business and marketing at Seagate Technology. "From the designs to the functionality of the drives, this release brings a force to the battle stations of Star Wars enthusiasts."

Sabrent announces DS-UCTB 10-Bay 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Tray-Less Docking Station (USB 3.2 Type-C And Type-A) (DS-UCTB). This Sabrent SATA Hard Drive Tray-Less Docking Station enables you to access 3.5" hard drives, without the frustration of assembling enclosures. By inserting a 3.5" SATA hard drive directly into this docking station, you can quickly access drive contents and transfer files. Transfer data quickly and easily through USB 3.2 at speeds up to 10 Gbps.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, and Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, announced today plans to expand their SSD portfolio of next-gen high-performance, high-density enterprise NVMe SSDs. The new SSDs will help enterprises lower total cost ownership (TCO) through increased storage density, lower power consumption, and higher performance. The companies also announced that they have entered a long-term partnership that will strengthen the development cycle and distribution of enterprise-class SSDs.

Seagate and Phison have collaborated on Seagate's mainstream SATA SSD products since 2017. That close cooperation has continued through the company's performance-leading line of FireCuda consumer gaming NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSDs and the world's first purpose-built NAS NVMe SSDs. The partnership will now focus on meeting the evolving global enterprise demand for higher density, faster, and smarter storage infrastructure needs that complement HDD storage to enable comprehensive enterprise applications such as hyperscale data center, high-performance computing and AI.

Samsung and Western Digital today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that implies that the two companies will join their efforts to create next-generation data placement, processing, and fabrics (D2PF) storage technologies. The MOU states that the two companies will collaborate on creating Zoned Storage devices, including ZNS (Zoned Namespaces) SSDs and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) HDDs. The ZNS SSD initiative is a challenge of creating entirely new SSDs that work on the ZNS principle instead of traditional block-based drives. Opposite to data in traditional SSDs written in blocks, ZNS SSDs will place data into zones and have software understand where each bit of information is written without excessive read/write action. Another benefit of ZNS is that managing data allows less garbage collection, thus higher efficiency.

Software adoption for ZNS makes it hard, and Samsung's conjoined efforts with Western Digital aim to simplify it. Western Digital notes that "In addition, this collaboration is expected to serve as a starting point to expand zone-based (e.g. ZNS, SMR) device interfaces, as well as future-generation, high-capacity storage devices with enhanced data placement and processing technologies. At a later stage, these initiatives will be expanded to include other emerging D2PF technologies such as computational storage and storage fabrics including NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF)." So, with further development of ZNS, Samsung and Western Digital will collab on more advanced storage options as well.