Kingston 1TB Prototype SSD, mSATA & NGFF SSDs On Show At Post-CES Event

Whilst I was at an event in London Last night to see the new DataTraveler Locker+ G3 the Kingston have just released on to the market, there was one or two little extras to see aside flash drives. The more interesting one of these items was a solid state drive that has the word Prototype written across the front of it. Working out what it is that makes this drive worthy of being put on show doesn’t take a lot to work out as we can see that this drive is packing a massive 1TB of storage capacity (960GB after formatting). At this moment in time there is not a lot of information on this drive as it is still in its prototype stages and Kingston have not decided whether not to push it to market under the V-series of drives as the label may suggest. All we know is that we could be looking at the later part of this year in the middle to the end of Q3 before we see this drive being released.

All I can say for now is that I’ll be keeping an eye on this drive as, after CES where we saw ADATA demonstrating their own 1TB drive, the number of 1TB drives that we are now seeing in development is becoming more and more interesting. With the number of drives that we now know to be in development growing, passing the 1TB barrier on a regular basis may not be as far away as we think.

Whilst the capacities of 2.5″ drives are pushing the barrier further and further out, the capacities of the smaller and more compact mSATA drives are also starting to blossom. Since the introduction of Intel’s NUC and the likes of Gigabyte’s BRIX as seen at the top, the way we think about modern computing has been undergoing a rapid alteration. The popularity of these units has resulted in a boom in the sales of mSATA drives and where the sales start to flow, the demand for drives with greater capacities is only a short step away. Whilst we are seeing traditional SSDs typically pack 240GB+ into a slim 7mm frame, mSATA drives are even more compact as seen above with a standard size PCB playing home to a whopping 480GB of storage.

Built around a SandForce SF3700 controller and NAND courtesy of Micron, this new league of drives is set to arrive on our doorstep in the next quarter with rumours that a 1TB drive may be on the horizon in the latter part of this year.

Rounding off the SSD mini line-up for this event we have one of Kingston’s new M.2 SSD’s that falls under the NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor) class of drives. Like the mSATA drive above, the M.2 features a SandForce SF3700 controller, although here we find Toshiba 19nm NAND packages in place. The M.2 is set to be available in a range of physical form factors with units coming to market in 42mm, 60mm and 80mm lengths with capacities starting at 16GB and pushing all the way up to 1TB. There isn’t a lot else that we know about these drives currently. but like the mSATA drives above, I’m keen to take a deeper look into the world of NGFF drives and will hopefully be lining up a review on one of these in the not too distant future.

Images courtesy of eTeknix.com