Western Digital shows off what it says is the fastest 4TB hybrid drive at Storage Visions 2015, Las Vegas-- a prototype drive featuring a SATA PCIe interface, 4TB 3.5-inch hybrid HDD and a 64GB solid state cache.

According to the company the larger cache enables the retention of hot data across multiple applications, improving overall performance. Thus WD tests saw the drive reaching near-SSD levels of performance with a PCMark8 benchmark score of 4459.

For the record, the test PC consists of an Asus Z97-A platform with a 3.4GHz Intel Core i5 CPU and 16GB RAM.

Seagate launches the Wireless at CES 2015-- a 500GB portable wireless (hence the name) drive the company says is designed to provide further storage the users of all mobile devices.

It is compatible with all iDevices, as well as Android and Windows 8/RT smartphones and tablets, via companion Media app. Setup simply involves connecting devices to the drive via wifi. Once connected it also handles the sharing on content on smart TVs and STBs over Apple Airplay or the Google Chromecast.

Seagate adds the Media app also includes an auto backup feature for the creation of secondary copies of photos and videos, while the drive's battery lasts for up to 6 hours on a single charge.

Samsung launches a 2nd generation of consumer SSDs equipped with 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology-- the 850 Evo, a range geared for “general consumer use in devices such as notebook and gaming PCs.”

The lineup follows on the company's high-end 850 Pro series, the first Samsung SSDs featuring V-NAND flash.

According to Samsung the drives are rated at 41GB/day (120 and 250GB models) and 85GB/day (500GB and 1TB models), with sequential read speeds of 540MB/s and writes at 520MB/s. Boosting speeds further is "Magician" software using unused PC DRAM as cache storage to push data processing speeds by up to 2 times.

PNY Technologies launches the Duo-Link On-The-Go (OTG), a pocket-size flash drive featuring both USB and micro-USB connectors, allowing for even easier file transfers and streamers between PCs and Android devices.

Available in either 16 or 32GB capacities, the Duo-Link is designed for customers wanting to fee up the storage in their Android smartphones or tablets by transferring multimedia files to their PCs. Alternatively content in the Duo-Link can be accessed by mobile devices once it is connected.

At its annual investor webcast Intel announced it will start offering 3D NAND flash drives from H2 2015 and, "within the next couple of years," the technology will enable 10TB SSDs and 1TB mobile storage in a 2mm form factor.

Producing such storage is Intel Micron Flash Technologies, the Intel joint venture with storage vendor Micron Technologies.

3D NAND involves the vertical stacking of chip layers (as opposed to horizontal planar structures) on a single MLC die. The Intel-Micron take on the technology features 32 vertical planar layers and offers densities of up to 256Gbit (32GB) per MLC die or 384Gbit (48GB) per TLC die.

SanDisk launches the iXpand Flash Drive-- the first USB flash drive from the company designed specifically for the iPhone and iPad, featuring both USB and Lighting connectors.

It allows simple file transfers between iDevice and PCs or Macs without need for cables or internet connections, as a companion iXpand sync app handles storage management, as well as playback of non-native movie files in formats such as AVI or WMV.

The app also provides cross-platform encryption, allowing users to password-protect files on the drive directly from the iDevice before decryption on PC, and vice versa.

Synology releases a successor to its DiskStation DS1813+-- the DS1815+, an 8-bay NAS device the company says offers "ultra performance" and "delivers outstanding speed and accelerated data encryption."

It features an Intel Atom C2538 quad-core 2.4GHz CPU paired with 2GB of DDR3 RAM (expandable to 6GB) to offer performance reaching up to 450MB/s read and 450MB/s write. Encrypted speeds reach 450MB/s read and 190MB/s write and are handled by a dedicated hardware encryption engine with AES 256-bit encryption.

The 8 hot-swappable drive bays allow for up to 48TB of storage, and capacity is expandable further the addition of 1 or 2 Synology DX513 units providing up to 18 drive bays and as much as 108TB of networked storage.

G.Skill announces the Phoenix Blade series SSD-- a next-generation storage solution designed for applications including extreme gaming, graphic design, industrial design and A/V content creation.

It features x4 LSI SF-2281 SSD controllers in a RAID0 setup and integrated 480GB MLC flash array, promising a bandwidth performance increase of up to 4 times over SATA3-based SSDs. Read and write speeds reach up to 2000Mb/s, while performance clocks at up to 245K IOPS with 4KB random write.

Connection to PCs comes via PCIe Gen 2.0 x8 high-speed slot.