Fixstars unveiled a new 2.5-inch SSD on May 7, which has 6TB of storage. The SSD-6000M is 9.5mm thick and uses the SATA 6Gb/s interface. Most notably, it surpasses the SSD-3000M drive that was released last year by SanDisk, which offers only 4TB of storage and was the largest of its kind at the time.
The SSD uses 15-nm MLC NAND attached to a proprietary controller, according to The Tech Report. The combination is rated for 540MB/s sequential reads and 520MB/s sequential writes. That’s not the quickest performance available today, but it’s not bad, either.
The product is now available for ordering today via Fixstars, and the company will begin shipping the product in late July. However, you need to directly contact Fixstars to submit an order.
Pricing has not been mentioned as of yet, but experts speculate that it could be high. Big name clients such as Boeing are on the company’s client list, meaning its target audience is likely willing to pay top dollar for the new product. In short, the average consumer may have to wait to purchase the item through a mainstream retailer.
SanDisk revealed its 4TB Optimus MAX SSD in April 2014. At the time, SanDisk boasted that the product was the world’s first 4TB SSD, and noted that it outpaced many of the 2.5-inch 10K and 15K RPM SAS hard-disk drives on the market while retaining high data density.
With Fixstars’ new product on the market, it appears that SanDisk has a new challenge ahead of it in terms of SSD development. Companies like Samsung that are entering the ring with SSDs of their own are also bound to give SanDisk a run for its money.
