XFMEXPRESS is a new SSD form factor which is introduced by Toshiba. It was firstly showcased at FMS this year in California. Now, you can read this post to get some information about this SSD format factor. While, if you want to manage your SSD, you can try MiniTool software.
What Is XFMEXPRESS?
At this year’s Flash Memory Summit (FMS), Toshiba showcased a new SSD form factor – XFMEXPRESS. It is small enough to be considered as a removable alternative to soldered-down BGA SSDs.
XFMEXPRESS SSD form factor allows for 2 or 4 lanes. At the same time, the size of it is much smaller than the M.2 22x30mm card. To be specific, the card size of XFMEXPRESS is 18x14x1.4mm that is slightly larger and thicker than a microSD card (15x11x1 mm).
The footprint of XFMEXPRESS SSD form factor can reach up to 22.2×17.75×2.2mm because it mounts into a latching socket. Here, you should know that the standard sizes of the BGA SSD are 11.5x13mm with a PCIe x2 interface or 16x20mm with a PCIe x4 interface.
In a word, XFMEXPRESS Memory Device is characterized by small-thin removable form factor and easy-to-implement via PCI Express interface and NVMe protocol.
The Design of XFMEXPRESS SSD Form Factor
XFMEXPRESS is an innovative design which can bring replaceable storage to devices including the drives which are normally be stuck with soldered BGA SSDs or eMMC and UFS modules.
This offers a convenient way to upgrade the device capacities after-sale. For embedded devices that need to be maintained, this can permit even smaller overall dimensions.
It is also good news for device manufacturers. They get a bit of supply chain flexibility because the storage capacity can be adjusted later accordingly in the assembly process.
Unlike the SD cards, XFMEXPRESS is not intended to be severed as an externally-accessible slot. You need to open up the case of the device that installs the SSD to swap out an XFMEXPRESS SSD. Different from the M.2 SSD, the XFMEXPRESS socket and retention mechanism itself is tool-less.
You can see that the whole design of XFMEXPRESS is much more convenient.
The Future of XFMEXPRESS
As a matter of fact, XFMEXPRESS will allow for similar performance to the BGA SSDs. The general bottleneck of it is not the PCIe x4 host interface. After all, in the near future, the BGA SSDs will gradually adopt the PCIe gen4 and the XFMEXPRESS connector can support it.
Another truth is that SSDs with these small form factors are usually thermally limited. That is, the current SSD form factors are bothered by heat dissipation problems. But the XFMEXPRESS connector is designed with a metal lid allows for easy heat dissipation, which can be treated as a heat spreader.
Now, Toshiba is working with Japan Aviation Electronics Industry Ltd. (JAE) to develop and produce the XFMEXPRESS connector. Perhaps, it will be released to the public in the near future.
No matter which kind of SSD format factor you are using, you can always use MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a professional data recovery software, to rescue your deleted and lost data when data loss issue occurs.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 7 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.