Western Digital is asserting a bunch of merchandise below the SanDisk and SanDisk Skilled manufacturers as we speak at its What’s Subsequent Western Digital Occasion. The corporate additionally supplied a second take a look at merchandise launched in the course of the lately concluded NAB present – the G-DRIVE PRO STUDIO SSD with a 7.68TB enterprise-class desktop SSD inside, and the addition of 20TB Ultrastar drives to the G-RAID SHUTTLE 8 (driving up the highest capability to 160TB).
The brand new merchandise being introduced as we speak have been designed to handle points confronted by high-volume content material creators. Probably the most thrilling of the lot is the SanDisk Skilled PRO-BLADE modular SSD ecosystem. Western Digital has created a compact enclosure for its PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs (with a customized, however not proprietary connector). Two choices are supplied to attach this PRO-BLADE SSD Magazine to a bunch system – the PRO-BLADE TRANSPORT is the transportable sleeve with help for a single magazine, whereas the PRO-BLADE STATION is the JBOD desktop model with help for as much as 4 mags.
The goal marketplace for the PRO-BLADE merchandise embrace professionals and prosumers requiring a number of high-speed transportable drives for for content material seize and backing up on the sector, whereas needing fast transfers again at their modifying desks. The light-weight high-capacity mags allow simple portability and consolidation of storage in use-cases beforehand restricted to heavy multi-HDD techniques. Western Digital supplied a real-world instance the place 42 lbs. value of storage gadgets could possibly be changed by a set of drives weighing in at lower than 7 lbs.
The corporate additionally identified the rising prevalence {of professional} seize gadgets with the flexibility to document on to USB-C SSDs. The PRO-BLADE TRANSPORT can be used straight with these cameras and the magazine transferred on to the JBOD PRO-BLADE STATION. The variety of mags in use can differ based mostly on the workflow necessities.
On the {hardware} entrance, the SSD Magazine employs a 40-pin customized connector and has options to assist in simple hot-swapping. The enclosure can also be designed to face up to drops (as much as 3m) and has 4000lbs of crush resistance. The aluminum physique additionally aids in warmth dissipation. The mags are certified for greater than 2000 mating cycles with the TRANSPORT / STATION enclosures. The customized connector is designed to make sure no lack of the inner SSD’s native speeds – supporting as much as 3GBps reads and a couple of.6GBps writes, with the precise worth various relying on the enclosure used.
The TRANSPORT enclosure employs a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps) Kind-C host interface and provides extra thermal safety to the magazine’s aluminum enclosure. The desktop STATION enclosure has a Thunderbolt 3 host interface to help the magazine’s most switch charges and has extra thermal administration within the type of lively cooling and satisfactory air flow slots.
The desk above summarizes the important thing options of the merchandise within the PRO-BLADE ecosystem.
On the SanDisk entrance, the corporate is asserting new Excessive PRO UHS-I playing cards in each SD and microSD form-factors. The important thing differentiation in comparison with earlier UHS-I choices is the flexibility to ingest information from these playing cards at as much as 200MBps – nearly double the UHS-I charges. SanDisk used to supply the earlier technology Excessive PRO UHS-I playing cards with a 170MBps learn velocity score utilizing proprietary extensions, and the brand new playing cards have improved on this velocity.
The upper speeds may be unlocked with the PRO-READER card reader that can be utilized with the PRO-DOCK4 introduced in Could 2021 in the course of the launch of the SanDisk Skilled model. The playing cards work at regular UHS-I speeds when used with different card readers.
We’re significantly excited in regards to the PRO-BLADE SSD Magazine and its customized connector. Given the non-proprietary nature, it might be attention-grabbing to see if NAS distributors undertake it. Presently, hot-swappable NVMe SSDs in SMB / SOHO NAS techniques are restricted to the U.2 form-factors, and common M.2 help is accessible solely straight on the NAS motherboard. The adoption of the PRO-BLADE magazine’s form-factor could possibly be a consumer-friendly possibility.
