It may seem as if storage technology hasn’t advanced beyond flash memory, but in reality, the flash memory being used for today’s storage drives is incredibly advanced and could help give you an edge in certain applications.

We’re talking of course about NAND flash which is a non-volatile storage medium that doesn’t require consistent power to retain data. However, NAND flash is multi-layered (this joke will land in a second we promise) and the type of NAND your storage drive makes use of can yield very different results.

There are many types of NAND namely:

• SLC – Single-level cells. These drives store one bit per cell and offer incredible endurance at a higher cost.
• MLC – Multi-level cells where two bits are stored per cell. As there is more data being written and removed, MLC is not as durable as SLC, but is cheaper and finds its way into more products.
• TLC – Triple-level cells. Here, three bits are stored per cell. This makes for a more affordable drive at the cost of performance.
• QLC – Quad-level cells, store four bits per cell, are not as durable and generally more affordable.
• 3D NAND – Here NAND cells are stacked atop each other improving capacity and performance as data doesn’t have to travel as far.

Depending on what the purpose of your storage is, the type of NAND in your drives should be considered as if you need endurance, SLC is the option but if you need speed, 3D NAND is your best bet.

One of the leaders in NAND technology is Micron and you can experience the advances of flash storage through Crucial.

The latest solid state storage solution from Crucial is the P3. This PCIe Gen3 NVMe drive makes use of Micron Advanced 3D NAND which gives you a variety of capacity options ranging from 500GB to 4TB.

We mentioned speeds and the P3 boasts sequential read/write speeds of up to 3500MB/s and 3000MB/s respectively. Not only will your computer get an upgrade, so will your workflow thanks to improved performance resulting in less time waiting for files to load.

Together with Acronis True Image for Crucial, which is included with every Crucial P3 drive, you can easily upgrade your storage with minimal downtime. With a mean time to failure (MTTF) rating of 1.5 million hours, you can rest easy knowing your work is safe, as well as the free Storage Executive Software helping you to optimise your SSD.

To get your hands on your own Crucial P3 3D NAND powered SSD, head to Takealot.