Toshiba upgrades 2.5 inch drives

Toshiba is about to release a new series of 2.5 inch Small Form Factor drives that offer a combination of high capacity and performance. The new MBF range comes in 300, 450 and 600 GB capacities, each doing 10.025 rpms. Yes, you read that correctly; 10.025. Their press release has the text “over 10.000 rpm” [...]

TDK says 3TB hard drives coming later this year

TDK’s most recent roadmap shows some new developments. The most important thing I found in this presentation was a roadmap for the next generation of HDD read/write heads.

InPhase shutting down?

InPhase, one of the pioneers of holographic storage technology, appears to be shutting down. As I wrote last year, while the technology sounds promising it still has a long way to go. There is no real use case, and the price per gigabyte is still higher than for other storage media.

Hybrid solution combining SSD and traditional hard drive

SilverStone has come up with a nice idea to combine the excellent capacity and value of a traditional hard drive with the speed advantages of Solid State Drives. By combining a normal hard drive and a SSD into a single “virtual” drive, they promise a speed increase of up to 70%.

Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory

IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash memory produced on their next-generation, 25nm production process. This latest shrink enables Intel to reach densities of 8 gigabytes per chip, reducing chip count for larger SSD’s and other memory devices.

Retro SSD drive: parallel ATA interface reappears

It’s been a while since I last saw a Solid State Drive with a parallel ATA interface, but at least one company is still developing them. Active Media Products announced a new 128GB SSD earlier this week, targeted at systems that are limited to an old PATA interface.

Texas Memory Systems delivers open source drivers for PCIe Flash

Texas Memory Systems (TMS) just announced they are providing open source drivers for their RamSan-20: a PCIe based flash solution that offers lower latency and higher bandwidth than a normal Solid State Drive connected via a SAS or SATA connector.

New memory cards: capacity, wireless transfers

There has been a lot of news about memory cards for digital cameras, media players and mobile phones lately. Two notable announcements managed to escape my attention earlier this month; a huge 128GB compact flash card, and a new card from Sony that supports wireless data transfers.

Lockheed Martin offering secure USB sticks

Lockheed Martin, a firm that’s primarily known for their physical security products such as jet fighters, helicopters and naval ships, is now getting into computer security as well. Their first product was announced today: a secure USB stick powered by IronKey technology.

Samsung also readying 64GB NAND flash modules

Following Toshiba’s announcement last month, Samsung has provided details about their next generation of NAND flash modules. Like Toshiba, the new modules offered by Samsung will be 16-layer stacks of 32 Gbit flash chips, providing a total of 64GB of storage per chip.