FORTASA BLOG

FAST SSD DATA ERASE | QUICK ERASE COMMAND

Oftentimes Industrial and Military equipment manufacturers are keenly focused on data protection and keeping stored information away from unauthorized users. They require a feature that can delete all the stored data on the SSD in the most quickest way. While conventional, off the shelf, HDDs only offer command set that is compliant with the ATA command standard, Industrial SSD have the flexibility to create any "vendor specific", unique command that can perform any custom task. 

There are multiple ways that this feature could be implemented.  One of the quickest SSD erase methods is by using a Quick Erase command. All physical memory blocks of the Flash Memory are categorized into either User Blocks, Spare Blocks or System Blocks. Most of the physical blocks are in the User Blocks category, where the host has read and write access and can store various types of files. Since it is extremely time-consuming to erase all the physical blocks, a Quick Erase function was developed for cases when there a quick drive erasure is required in a shortest amount of time. Fortasa Quick Erase command implementation overwrites the FAT table and the MBR (Master Boot Record). With the MBR and FAT table erased, the drive appears as uninitialized and mapping links between LBA and physical blocks are erased. In order to access the drive, full reinitialization and FAT table rebuild are necessary.

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Industrial SSD Bill of Material Locking | Who Can You Trust | Fortasa Memory Systems, Inc.

One of the most memorable phrases that my mother used when I was growing up was - "Don't trust the book by it's cover !". This was meant for me to look beyond the flashy advertisement and glorified promotional specs and really understand the value and the promise the product or relationship had. The same proverb could be well used to warn the prospective customer about the Industrial SSD products.

A customer is typically barraged by multiple factors when evaluating an Industrial Solid State Drive purchase. The price point, cost per gigabyte, data transfer and IOPS speeds and type of NAND flash memory used are all vitally important when assessing the value of an SSD drive. However, there is one item typically business customers frequently take for granted during the evaluation  process: the bill of materials. It's not surprising why this checklist would not get more than a cursory check. After all, it is common sense that manufacturers should be using the best materials and components when producing the end products. In addition, any sale production should put a major focus of product quality and consistency of operation. This, unfortunately, is not always the case.

At the lowest level, the bill of materials is nothing more than a list of the approved subsystems and components that make up a larger product. End users may not feel that this is of importance and should not be concerned with this kind of minor detail, but issues with a product's BoM can directly affect its performance and reliability.

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Industrial CompactFlash Cards and PATA SSDs | Still Committed to Manufacturing

The CompactFlash (CF) card form factor has been in use since the early 1990's. Originally embraced by the consumer devices such as Digital Cameras and MP3 players it has more recently migrated to the industrial and embedded platforms.

The CompactFlash card has many distinct advantages: common interface, installed base of manufacturers, specification stability and minimum innovation. In recent years, however, Parallel ATA (PATA) systems and respectively, CF cards have been slowly replaced by SATA interface systems and multiple form factors they incorporate.

Industrial CompactFlash card

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Flash Memory Controller - Heart of the Industrial Storage System

Frequently we receive customer inquiries about our Industrial Storage products where they don't understand the difference between an Industrial and Consumer solution and how the technology and product quality differs.

While my colleague addressed this question from the point of view of product manufacturing, I would like to address it from the point of view of technology and specifically about the Industrial Flash Controller that transparently manages the host system interface to NAND Flash media.

As part of the NAND Flash management algorithm, Flash controller performs the following discrete tasks:

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