Seagate, who are making strides in both storage density and performance of traditional HDDs with their HAMR and Multi-actuator technologies aren't going to let themselves be left dry in the SSD race. To that effect, the company, via a blog post, has just announced the introduction and availability of their barracuda SSDs, available in capacities up to 2 TB (in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB additional tiers).

Like most recent SATA III SSDs, the Barracuda SSDs max out the data channel with maximum sequential read and write speeds reaching 540 and 520 MB/s respectively. There's a five-year warranty on these SSDs, which is in line with industry standards, and Seagate is asking $74.99 for the 250 GB SSD; $119.99 for the 500 GB one; and $229.99 for the 1 TB capacity. The 2 TB model will be available at a later date.

Intel today released their mainstream answer to users' fast, NVMe-based storage needs, the SSD 760p. We've already covered this new consumer, mainstream SSD series in our news pieces; however, information and press decks have now come directly from Intel, allowing us a clearer picture of how Intel sees its products to fit into the consumer market - and hopefully, in consumer's choices.

Toshiba Memory Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, has enhanced its line-up of client SSDs with the launch of premium models in its XG5-P series. The new NVM Express (NVMe) client SSDs improve on the performance of the current XG5 series models and double the maximum capacity to 2 TB. Sample shipments to OEM customers start today in limited quantities, and Toshiba Memory Corporation will gradually increase shipments from the first calendar quarter of 2018.

The XG5-P series also utilizes a PCI Express (PCIe) Gen3 x4 lane and NVM Express Revision 1.2.1 interface, and delivers performance of up to 3000 MB/s sequential read and 2200 MB/s sequential write, and up to 320,000 IOPS random read and 265,000 IOPS random write. Its random read/write performance in full access range is approximately 55% better than that of standard XG5 series products. At the same time, low power consumption is maintained at less than 60 mW during operation.

Western Digital and SanDisk have updated their Blue and Ultra line of consumer SSDs with the latest 3D BiCS FLASH NAND technology. Capacities will range from 250 GB capacities through 500 GB and up to 1TB at launch, with a 2 TB SanDisk Ultra 3D SSD "coming soon." The hardware powering each drive is exactly the same, save for the difference in available storage: the controller used is a Marvell 88SS1074, protocol is SATA 6Gbps / AHCI, and even warranty stays the same through all WD and SanDisk models, at three-years (limited.)

The WD Blue line of SSDs will be available in both 2.5" and M.2 2280 single-sided models. Sequential read speed starts at 550 MB/s for both WD Blue 250 GB and SanDisk Ultra 3D, with sequential write speeds at a rated 525 MB/s and read/write IOPS being set at 95,000/81,000 respectively. All other (higher) capacities deliver slightly more performance: 560 MB/s sequential read speeds, 530 MB/s sequential writes, 95,000 random read IOPS, and 84,000 random write IOPS. Pricing is as follows: WD Blue 3D 250 GB ($89); Blue 3D 500 GB ($149.99), Blue 3D 1 TB ($279.99); SanDisk Ultra 3D 250 GB ($99.99), Ultra 3D 500 GB ($164.99), Ultra 3D 1TB ($279.99) and Ultra 3D 2TB ($549.99, currently unavailable.)

Adding to their SSD lineup, Mushkin, which makes some really interesting, good price-performance ratio products has recently announced the upcoming availability of their Helix line of M.2 2280 SSDs. Based on Silicon Motion's SM2260 controller paired with 3D MLC NAND, Mushkin positions the Helix line as a premium, high-performance offering for desktops and laptops alike. Models will vary from a 250 GB entry-level offering thorugh a 2 TB high-end SKU, with the 2 TB version offering sequential read performance at up to 2.5 GB/s and write performance at up to 1.1 GB/s, when Silicon Motion's pseudo-SLC caching technology is used to its best effect.

Seagate has officially updated their FireCuda line, the solid-state supported, high-capacity hybrid drives. The new, 5th Gen models sport a thinner form-factor (2.5"), rocking the company's multi-tier cache technology as well as 1 TB SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) plates. The SMR plate's difference compared to conventional, perpendicular recording HDD technology allows these hybrid drives to increase storage density by up to 25%, by allowing newly-written magnetic tracks to partly overlap previously-written ones, reducing the amount of platter real-estate occupied.

The caveat with this technology is that the overlapping-tracks architecture may slow down the writing process, since writing to one track overwrites adjacent tracks, and requires them to be rewritten as well. However, according to Seagate, the large, multi-tier cache technology and large NAND caches are enough to offset any performance loss incurred by the SMR technology employed on these drives, and then some.

Patriot, a leading manufacturer of high performance computer memory, SSDs, gaming peripherals, consumer flash storage solutions and mobile accessories, today introduced a 2 TB addition to its performance solid state drive (SSD) line, the Ignite. Patriot looks to fulfill the ever-growing demand for increased amounts of storage in consumer PCs.

Patriot originally launched the Ignite SSD in January of 2015 with top performing speeds and capacities of 480 GB and 960 GB. Since then, Patriot has added the addition of a 240GB capacity and now a multi-terabyte capacity to tackle even the most taxing data loads. With the Ignite 2 TB SSD consumers can load an entire library of PC games to their rig without having to unload and load games when storage runs out.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it has achieved a major milestone in areal density with a new hard disk that can offer as much as 2 TB of capacity in a slim 7 mm package. This achievement is significant because in final product form it will give OEMs freedom to design a new generation of elegant mobile products that are extremely thin and stylish, light-weight, fast, power-efficient and cost-effective.

"In an industry first, our engineers have been able to boost areal density to 1 TB per platter in a 2.5-inch form factor, which will give OEMs the flexibility to design and build virtually any kind of mobile device they can envision, with plenty of storage to boot," said Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology officer. "Combining new mechanical firmware architectures, with state of the art heads, media and electronic design, this technology is a real game changer- providing four times more capacity than a 0.25 TB SSD at a substantially lower cost."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a market leader in advanced memory technology and an innovator in consumer electronics, today introduced the 2-terabyte (TB) 850 PRO and 850 EVO solid state drives (SSDs). Samsung's 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) based retail SSD lineup now features 20 different products with a wide range of capacity options from 120 gigabyte (GB) to 2TB. Available in 50 countries, the launch of the 2TB drives addresses the ever-increasing consumer demand for high-performance and high-capacity memory solutions.

"Samsung experienced a surge in demand for 500 gigabyte (GB) and higher capacity SSDs with the introduction of our V-NAND SSDs. The release of the 2TB SSD is a strong driver into the era of multi-terabyte SSD solutions," said Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "We will continue to expand our ultra-high performance and large density SSD product portfolio and provide a new computing experience to users around the globe."

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions, today introduced the My Passport X portable hard drive for gamers. When connected to Xbox One or a PC, the sleek 2 TB My Passport X drive provides much-needed storage capacity for gamers to store up to 50 extra game titles, eliminating the need to delete previously purchased games from their Xbox One or PC hard drives and removing those "storage full" warning messages while allowing players to get back to their games. In addition to added storage, gamers can use My Passport X to take saved games to use on friends' systems2 without having to download.

"Game file sizes are expanding to 36 GB per game and upwards, and are projected to continue growing," said Tony Tate, vice president and general manager of WD's Content Solutions unit. "Console gamers are able to store on average only 10 games on the 365 GB out of 500 GB that is available on the onboard hard drive. The My Passport X portable drive delivers a fast and easy way to expand capacity and enables an expanded library of games on the go."

OCZ Storage Solutions -- a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced a new series of SATA III SSDs to add to its Intrepid 3000 enterprise portfolio. The new Intrepid 3700 SSD Series delivers superior performance and I/O latency responses that dramatically improve application performance and I/O efficiencies, and supports higher storage densities up to 2TB representing OCZ's largest capacity enterprise SATA SSDs to date.

"Datacenter customers have asked for larger solid state drives that do not make any sacrifices in performance or endurance to address the need to manage the ever growing amounts of data being generated by today's computing environments," said Daryl Lang, CTO at OCZ Storage Solutions. "Our new Intrepid 3700 Series is designed to meet these market requirements for an easy to deploy solid state solution that delivers the very best balance of features, endurance, and capacity."

With the information-packed digital era, the use of multimedia files, such as documents, photos and videos, has become increasingly common and so is consumer demand for data storage. Riding the popularity of its USB 3.0 2.5" portable HDD AC233 in 500 GB and 1 TB, Apacer announced today the expansion of the AC233 series to include the massive 2 TB capacity.

Sleek and fashionable with a matte and glossy dual-surface finish and a uniquely elaborated surf-line curve shape on the ultra smooth curvaceous back of the body, the 2 TB AC233 is a true rendition of highly efficient, compact, yet fashionably streamlined craftsmanship - and the best storage solution for consumers seeking aesthetic design, super fast transmission and the high data protection.

Silicon Power, the world's leading provider of memory storage solutions, today proudly announces the launch of a great capacity upgrade on its five hot-sale USB 3.0 portable hard drives to 2 TB. Featuring great capacity, SuperSpeed USB 3.0 transfer interface, rugged military-grade protection and various trendy designs, SP 2 TB portable hard drives are designed to be the whole package that satisfies all the needs for function, action and fashion. No more worries about little capacity, SP 2 TB portable hard drives realize the real all-inclusive storage solution that users can easily backup and store great numbers of documents, photos, music and videos in one device only.

2 TB Upgrade Portable HDDs - The All-in-one Storage Device
Under such a stressful and fast-paced mobile life, how to efficiently store and organize all the important files for better data management is already one of the biggest issues. Do you want to have all your documents in one drive instead of bringing numbers of storage devices？Are you tired of wasting your time and energy on looking for certain file out of numerous devices？SP takes all your needs into consideration and now offers you the perfect all-in-one upgrade storage solution - the 2 TB portable hard drives, which enables incredibly high data storage capability for nearly one million high-resolution digital photos, around 500,000 songs or over 880 hours Full-HD videos.

Sony's new 2 TB (terabyte) portable storage hard disk drive takes the worry out of back-up in the field, and gives professionals reliable, bus-powered high-speed storage.

The new 2 TB hard disk drive (PSZ-HA2T) expands Sony's line of portable storage drives, and joins three current models including a 500 GB and 1 TB (PSZ-HA50 and PSZ-HA1T) hard disk model and a 256 GB solid state drive (PSZ-SA25).

LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology, announced that its LaCie Fuel wireless hard drive will be available this April with an expanded capacity of 2 TB. With double the capacity than before, LaCie Fuel offers more storage than any 2.5" wireless hard drive on the market. It is the ideal cable-free, portable solution for movie buffs, photographers and others to gain 2 TBs of on-the-go access and storage for iPad or iPhone and Mac.

HD movies can monopolize storage space on mobile devices, requiring users to make compromises on what content to synchronize to their device. With the 2 TB LaCie Fuel, users can go from 20 movies on a 32 GB iPad to over 1,000 movies on the Fuel. This allows users to store entire movie collections without sacrificing any of the content they need.

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions for the connected life, today introduced My Passport Pro, the first portable, Thunderbolt-powered dual-drive solution, providing creative professionals and enthusiasts high performance and capacity in a truly mobile solution. For Mac systems, My Passport Pro has user-selectable RAID functionality to deliver needed performance for the most demanding applications in the field, without the need for power adapters or extra cables. My Passport Pro is available in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities.

"The only Thunderbolt dual-drive solution that's bus-powered, WD's My Passport Pro enhances the workflow of mobile creative professionals by providing fast transfers and data protection for the large amounts of digital content they generate outside the studio," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president of branded products and worldwide sales, WD. "From photographers, videographers and musicians to graphic designers and architects, people who depend on portable storage for their livelihood will find My Passport Pro defines a new level of performance, reliability and especially portability."

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today introduced the Canvio Home Backup & Share, a simple and powerful network attached storage hub for the connected home that brings together islands of content and allows easy access to digital assets. Available in capacities up to 3 TB, the Canvio Home enables the availability of content on a contextual basis, flowing from device to device, screen to screen and location to location.

"Imagine having access to all your important digital assets - around your home, around the world, or through your portable devices, and you'll know what it's like with the new Canvio Home, an easier, safer way to backup, share, stream, and store your files and multimedia," said Maciek Brzeski, vice president of product marketing and development, Branded Storage Products, Toshiba Digital Products Division. "It is so much more than just a box to drop your files in. This is safe, private storage that you can share."

Today, LaCie announced that its award-winning Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series hard drive is now available in a 2 TB version. With double the storage of its predecessor, the new LaCie Rugged is the highest capacity bus-powered storage solution with Thunderbolt technology on the market. Plus, the 2 TB model achieves speeds up to 127 MB/s, a 15 percent increase from the previous version. With these speeds users can transfer 750 RAW photos or one HD movie in less than one minute. Built for heavy data users who require complete mobility, the LaCie Rugged is the ideal sidekick to a new Mac or Ultrabook.

"With video and photo file sizes increasing exponentially, creative pros are generating more digital content than ever before," said Erwan Girard, Professional Business Manager, LaCie. "Today, we've addressed their number one demand by doubling the LaCie Rugged's capacity. This allows on-the-go pros to store more data on fewer drives and lets them stay in the field longer."

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in storage solutions for the connected life, today introduced its new My Cloud family of personal cloud solutions. WD's My Cloud is a complete solution for users to organize, centralize and secure the digital content from all of their computers and mobile devices and access those files from any device, from anywhere in the world. By simply connecting a My Cloud personal cloud drive to the Internet, consumers get the anywhere, any-device access they can get from the public cloud, without having to pay monthly fees or giving up control of their personal data.

"We believe that there's no place like home for the cloud," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. "Everyone is inundated with thousands of digital files scattered across multiple computers and mobile devices, and controlling that chaos is a challenge. WD's personal cloud is the easiest, most secure and most affordable way for customers to control that chaos, with access to all of their files anywhere, anytime."

Buffalo has today announced the HD-LCU3 Series a new line of external hard drives that goes up to 4 TB in terms of capacity. Coming in black and white (the white models top 3 TB, while the black ones reach 4 TB), the fresh drives measure 187 x 120 x 39 mm, they weigh about 1 kg, and feature USB 3.0 connectivity, an internal anti-vibration system, no active cooling, and a casing that allows both vertical and horizontal installation. Moreover, using the TurboPC EX2 software, users can activate the HDD's 'Save Mode' which compresses the data transferred to it so as to fit in more content.

The 1 TB, 2 TB, 3 TB and 4 TB HD-LCU3 Series drives will arrive at the end of this month priced at 13,125 yen (~ 134 USD), 16,485 yen (~ 169 USD), 22,050 yen (~ 225 USD) and 38,850 yen (~ 397 USD), respectively.

WD, a Western Digital company, has redesigned its popular My Book and My Book for Mac lines of external desktop drives to provide as much as 4 TB storage capacity and enhanced data protection for those who create and collect large volumes of data, video, music and photos.

With USB 3.0 for speed, the new My Book lines are available in 2 TB, 3 TB and 4 TB capacities for the largest content collections. At any point in time, anything can happen to one's data. Whether it's a lost notebook or destructive virus, it's critical to keep data safe and maintain a backup of important documents and valued content.

Buffalo has this week announced a new addition to its storage offer, the Mini Station Turbo PC EX2 portable hard drive. Seen below, the HDD is 115 by 76 mm (thickness differs by capacity - 11.5 mm for 500 GB, 14 mm for 1 TB and 19.5 mm for 2 TB), it has USB 3.0 connectivity, it comes in two color versions - black and white, and includes a power saving mode that lowers standby consumption to just 0.95 W, and a transfer mode that will compress data on the drive, so as to fit in more content.

The Mini Station Turbo PC EX2 is backed by a one-year warranty and is set to ship early next month, priced at 9,975 yen (~ 100 USD) for the 500 GB drive, 13,860 yen (~ 139 USD) for the 1 TB model, and 27,720 yen (~ 279 USD) for the 2 TB unit.

Toshiba Europe GmbH (TEG), Storage Peripheral Division, has today announced the addition of a new 2 TB hard drive (HDD) to its travel friendly STOR.E Plus external HDD range. The STOR.E Plus range has been developed by Toshiba to provide a simple storage solution with a portable travel design. The new STOR.E Plus not only comes with a sizable 2 TB storage capacity, but it also has SuperSpeed 3.0 USB connectivity and plug and play technology, for quick and easy use whilst on the go.

With remote working becoming increasingly popular, especially for the thousands of people who spend an average of 75 minutes a day commuting to and from work, the need to secure and back up valuable data whilst on the move has never been more important. With unsecure Wi-Fi connections available in most public spaces and occasional weak spots with 3G coverage, consumers run the risk of losing or corrupting precious data files viewed or edited on the move, which can be prevented with a portable back up capability.

Avant Technology has shipped its 1 Terabyte (1 TB) and 2 Terabyte (2 TB) Enterprise class Solid State Drives, effectively doubling the capacity of the largest SSDs available up to this point. These 1 TB and 2 TB drives merge the capacity of an HDD with the performance of an SSD to create the ultimate 2.5" drive. Enabling this capacity increase is the unique SATA bridge technology provided by IntelliProp Inc. in Longmont, CO. Avant and IntelliProp will be showcasing this technology at the 2013 Flash Memory Summit.

"The Avant and IntelliProp teams have worked closely to integrate IntelliProp's device with our drive design expertise to enable a family of high capacity SSD drives with excellent uncompressible data write performance. These drives set the stage for continued advancements in data storage and Avant will be at the leading edge." - Paul Goodwin, Avant Technology Chief Technology Officer.

WD, a Western Digital company and world leader for storage deployed in datacenters, today announced availability of its innovative WD Se line of hard drives, the first designed for scale-out datacenter deployments. Built on an enterprise-grade platform for reliable 24x7x365 datacenter operation, WD Se is tailored to deliver the right combination of performance, reliability and robustness for large-scale replicated environments, mid-sized network attached storage (NAS) deployment, and backup/archiving applications.

WD Se is a true enterprise-class drive with the right blend of affordability and capabilities to address the massive growth of semi-structured data, which is accelerating the scale-out of datacenters of all sizes. Now shipping in capacities up to 4 TB, the new WD Se hard drives enables customers to balance their data growth challenges in multi-drive enclosures without compromising enterprise-class features.