Last Updated on 04/26/2018 by Mark Beckenbach
In the world of data storage Samsung is the king of speed
It is the year 2018 and hard drives are becoming less and less common in most work focused computers as significantly faster SSD storage has come down in price. SSDs (Solid State Drives) are smaller than ever and faster than ever. No company right now is pushing that need for speed more in the consumer realm than Samsung and their 900 series SSDs. The Korean electronics superpower just announced the latest additions to their 900 series family, the 970 Pro and 970 Evo SSDs, and they boast somewhat insane speeds in the 3,500MB/s range for reads and the 2,500MB/s range for writes.
To put this into perspective for those who are maybe not up to date with the latest storage technologies, a standard spinning disk hard drive, probably what you are used to, spins at 7200RPM and is going to give you roughly 100MB/s in the read speed. These new Samsung SSDs are capable of roughly 25x the write speed and 35x the read speed of those hard drives. Impressive, right?
But according to Samsung these new 970 SSDs are also around 30% faster than their previous 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs. In other words, these new storage units are fast – blazing fast. Storage speed is likely not what has been slowing you down these days, assuming you have even a somewhat modern computer with an SSD and are working with photos. But if you are a videographer working with high resolution 4K video, or maybe a high resolution photographer working with something like the A7R III or Fujifilm GFX 50s, or a PhaseOne body, this storage speed can still be an advantage as your system needs to be able to move these huge files around quickly.
Samsung says the 970 Evo utilizes a new Intelligent TurboWrite technology, which gives the drive a cache of up to 78GB, enabling faster writing speeds over sustained periods of time. This would be like transferring files to your drive from the SD card, or during the render of a longer high resolution video file. In terms of capacity, because that is always the downfall of SSDs when compared to hard drives, the 970 Pro will come in 512GB and 1TB capacity, while the 970 Evo will come in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities.
In terms of pricing, given the blazing speed these drives are capable of, it’s about on par with what we would expect to see. When the 970 Pro and 970 Evo hit store shelves on May 7th you can expect to find the 970 Pro starting at $329.99 and the 970 Evo starting at $119.99 respectively. If you have been unhappy with your storage speed, and your desktop/laptop supports these latest M.2 (2280) style SSDs, then these units should certainly peak your interest.
For more information you can find all of the details about the new Samsung 970 series SSDs on their website.
