WebProNews

Tag: SSD

  • Some M2 MacBook Pros Have Slower SSDs Than M1 MacBooks

    Some M2 MacBook Pros Have Slower SSDs Than M1 MacBooks

    The Apple world is in a bit of an uproar after it was discovered the new M2 MacBook Pro has slower SSDs than its predecessor.

    Apple unveiled the M2 at WWDC 2022 in June. The new processor is the next generation of Apple’s custom silicon. While users are understandably excited about the performance gains the new processor brings, it seems some models may be held back by subpar SSD performance.

    According to The Mac Observer, reviewers started noticing that the base 256GB M2 MacBook Pro had read speeds roughly 50% slower than the M1, while write speeds were roughly 30% slower. This not only impacts the computer’s speed when reading and writing data but also when using drive space for swap when the OS uses drive space as virtual RAM. This can happen when the physical RAM is being heavily used and is a practice all modern systems employ. The faster the drive, the better the system can approximate real RAM, making a slower SSD a potentially significant bottleneck.

    According to YouTube channel Max Tech, the issue stems from the base model only using a single 256GB chip for the SSD instead of the two 128GB chips the M1 used. Using two chips allows them to operate in parallel, giving significant performance boosts.

    Interestingly, reviews of the 512GB model show comparable performance to the M1 MacBook Pro. This would seem to indicate the more expensive model uses two 256GB chips.

    Given Apple’s notoriously tight-lipped nature, the company has not commented on why it chose to include a single chip in the base M2 MacBook Pro instead of the superior dual-chip configuration. In all likelihood, however, the decision was probably made in response to the ongoing semiconductor shortage.

  • Microsoft Wants the Industry to Transition Exclusively to SSD Boot Drives by 2023

    Microsoft Wants the Industry to Transition Exclusively to SSD Boot Drives by 2023

    According to a new report, Microsoft wants manufacturers to ditch traditional boot hard drives, in favor of SSDs, by 2023.

    In recent years solid-state drives (SSDs) have dropped in price and increased in capacity to the point of being more competitive with traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). SSDs offer a number of advantages, including speed and durability. As a result, according to Tom’s Hardware, Microsoft is pushing OEMs to make the switch to SSDs for boot drives by 2023.

    Unfortunately, despite how far SSDs have come, the price and capacity is still not quite on par with HDDs. While this is not an issue with high-performance computers, it can be a breaking point for budget PCs.

    “The original cut-in date based on our discussions with OEMs was to be this year, but it has been pushed out to sometime next year (the second half, I believe, but not clear on the firm date),” Trendfocus Vice President John Chen told Tom’s Hardware. “OEMs are trying to negotiate some level of push out (emerging market transition in 2024, or desktop transition in 2024), but things are still in flux.”

    One option is the one that has already gained popularity, combining a boot SSD with a larger HDD for data storage. By using the SSD for the operating system and applications, and offloading data to the HDD, OEMs and their customers could have the best of both worlds.

  • Western Digital Accused of Bait-and-Switching With Slow SSDs

    Western Digital Accused of Bait-and-Switching With Slow SSDs

    Western Digital, one of the leading hard drive makers, is accused of giving customers slower SSDs than advertised.

    It’s a common practice in the tech industry to send out products for tech journalists to review. Needless to say, companies try to put their best foot forward, sending the best products they have for the review. At the same time, however, there’s a certain expectation that the individual product being reviewed will be representative of the entire line, and not vastly superior to what will actually ship.

    Unfortunately, it appears Western Digital didn’t get that message. Instead, as first noticed by Chinese site Expreview and covered in more detail by ExtremeTech, Western Digital appears to be shipping SSD drives that offer a fraction of the speed as the initial review units.

    The drive in question is the WD SN550 Blue, one of the highest-reviewed budget SSDs on the market. In initial reviews and testing, as well as early models that shipped, the drive delivered 610MB/s speeds. The latest drives being shipped, however, drop to an abysmal 390MB/s once the SLC NAND cache is exhausted. As ExtremeTechhighlights, that means the new drive is only delivering 64% of the performance people are expecting.

    There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of cheap, classless tactics. ExtremeTech’s Joel Hruska puts it best:

    This is unacceptable. It is unethical for any company to sample and launch a product to strong reviews only to turn around and sell an inferior version of that hardware at a later date without changing the product SKU or telling customers that they’re buying garbage. I do not use the term “garbage” lightly, but let me be clear: If you silently change the hardware components you use in a way that makes your product lose performance, and you do not disclose that information prominently to the customer (ideally through a separate SKU), you are selling garbage. There’s nothing wrong with selling a slower SSD at a good price, and there’s nothing right about abusing the goodwill of reviewers and enthusiasts to kick bad hardware out the door.

    Western Digital owes everyone of the people who bought this drive an apology and a full refund.

  • New Windows 10 Feature Will Detect Failing SSD

    New Windows 10 Feature Will Detect Failing SSD

    Microsoft has announced Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226 with feature designed to help monitor the health of SSD storage.

    SSDs have many benefits over traditional platter hard drives. They’re faster and more energy efficient, since they have no moving parts. Just as important, they’re less prone to damage. When a traditional hard drive is stopped, the head can impact the platters, scoring them and causing major damage. With no moving parts, this is less of a concern with SSDs.

    Despite their durability, SSDs do have a failure rate. Corrupt data, weak solder joints, failing chips and other factors can cause an SSD to fail. Once they begin to fail, they tend to go quickly.

    Microsoft is looking to give users a heads up when an SSD is about to fail, giving them time to backup before it’s too late. The latest preview release includes the new feature.

    “Attempting to recover data after drive failure is both frustrating and expensive,” says Brandon LeBlanc on the company blog. “This feature is designed to detect hardware abnormalities for NVMe SSDs and notify users with enough time to act. It is strongly recommended that users immediately back up their data after receiving a notification.”

  • Samsung Brutalizes Puppy-Computers in Strange New Ad [UPDATED]

    Samsung Brutalizes Puppy-Computers in Strange New Ad [UPDATED]

    Last week, in order to advertise their Solid States Drives, Samsung tapped Laina Walker, the wide-eyed girl better known as the inspiration behind the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme. In that ad, Samsung suggested that your computer could easily give up all of your private information – making your life a living hell (if it wanted to). So could your crazy ex-girlfriend, or course, and that was the motivation behind bringing OAG into the mix.

    Today we get the second installment of Samsung’s “Love me again” campaign, and it’s even stranger.

    This time, Samsung likens your computers to cute little puppies and asks you to not give up on puppy love. Instead, make it better with a Samsung SSD 840.

    Cue two minutes of brutally destroying computers made to look like puppies. It’s a little morbid, when you think about it. If Samsung’s goal was to make me feel bad for old laptops, well, they succeeded. Check it out below:

    UPDATE: We’ve received word that the video has temporarily been made private. We’re seeking further explanation and comment, and will let you know when we hear anything.

    UPDATE 2: Some negative feedback prompted the move. We can only assume that some people were upset by the portrayal of the computer as dogs, and some of the violent actions being done to the dogs.

  • Samsung Taps Overly Attached Girlfriend for New Ad

    Samsung Taps Overly Attached Girlfriend for New Ad

    It would sure be a shame if your computer turned on you and began to slowly sabotage your privacy and security. Just like an ex-girlfriend, your computer has all of the tools and information to make your life miserable (if they so choose). That is, of course, unless you protect everything with a Samsung SSD (solid-state drive).

    That’s the message behind a new virally-inspired ad from Samsung. It stars Laina Walker, who has skyrocketed to internet fame as the inspiration for the “Overly Attached Girlfriend” meme which you’ve probably seen while browsing reddit, Tumblr, and other social channels over the past few months. In the ad, Overly Attached Girlfriend becomes Overly Attached Computer, who talks about all of the evil ways in which she could ruin your life.

    Those eyes do it. It’s time to put my information in a different, safer location. Yikes.

  • Intel Unveils New 330 Series Solid State Drives

    Intel has announced their new 330 Series of SSD (Solid State Drive) hard drives. The 6 Gbps SATA drives are designed to be a budget option for those looking to upgrade their computers’ current hard disk drives (HDDs) to SSDs.

    Solid State Drives have a number of advantages over older HDD technology, including better storage performance, greater energy efficiency, higher read-write speeds, and greater resistance to damage from drops. Though often still catching up to HDDs in terms of storage capacity, SSDs have been growing significantly in popularity over the last few years, especially in mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, and an increasing number of laptops all use SSDs).

    Intel’s 330 Series of SSDs is available in the standard 2.5-inch by 9mm configuration, and comes in 60GB, 120GB, and 180GB models. It is designed to work in a dual-drive configuration on desktop PCs to increase application speed and boot time, or as a standalone drive on a laptop.

    Intel 330 Series SSD drive

    The Intel 330 Series is available today from a variety of retailers, both online and brick-and-mortar. The 60GB model has a suggested retail price of $89, the 120GB model is $149, and the 180GB model is $234.

  • CES 2012: Victorinox Unveils 1 TB Swiss Army Knife

    Victorninox has been including USB thumb drives in certain models of their famed Swiss Army knives for several years now. At this year’s CES, though, they’ve really raised the bar. All the way to 1 terabyte. Today at CES they’ve unveiled two new devices that pack a staggering amount of storage space into an amazingly tiny package.

    The two products, the Victorinox SSD and Victorinox Slim 3.0, offer a range of features and come in a variety of sizes. The Slim 3.0 comes in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB models and includes a basic assortment of tools – blade, scissors, and nail file/screwdriver. The Victorinox SSD, pictured above, is the world’s smallest solid state drive. It comes in 64GB, 128GB, 256 GB, and 1TB models. It includes a connector that is compatible with USB 3.0 and eSATA 2/3. The drive also sports a bi-stable (i.e., e-ink) display that allows users to label the drive’s contents. The SSD also includes two bodies. One includes the standard Victorinox knife implements, and the other is a flight-friendly shell.

    Victorinox’s press release does not include any information on pricing or availability, but CNet is reporting that the SSD will start at $470 and go up to $2000, and will be available in April.

    [Source: Victorinox Press Release]