Storage News » Direct-attached storage

Light Peak around the corner – without the Light

vink — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:59:24 +0000

Intel has been talking to several news outlets about their Light Peak technology at CES. While we all knew Intel was going to push this standard in favor of USB 3.0, this is the first time they have mentioned actual finished implementations. Previous estimates said the technology was likely to be ready sometime during [...] Related posts:

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2011: the year of the 4TB drives?

vink — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:48:55 +0000

Seagate has started talking up their next generation of perpendicular magnetic recording technology. In a recent analyst briefing they announced their sixth generation of this technology, which promises the next round of storage density increases. The Register has done the math, and reckons we should be seeing 4TB drives this year.

While this [...] Related posts:

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Seagate debuts 3TB external drive, 4TB to follow soon?

vink — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:59:51 +0000

Seagate is the first vendor to offer 3TB hard drives. This first drive is only available as an external USB 2.0 drive for now; for $249.99 you can buy a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk External Drive (try saying that a couple of times in a row!). The drive is currently on back order, but [...] Related posts:

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OCZ adds PCIe SSD to consumer lineup

vink — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:23:17 +0000

While several companies are already offering internal Solid State Drives for use in servers, OCZ has just announced a solution that targets the consumer segment. The RevoDrive uses a PCIe connection to enable higher speeds than possible with a traditional SATA interface, but OCZ manages to keep the price for the drive relatively low.

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Hot-swap SATA to USB 3.0 dock from ThermalTake

vink — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:31:28 +0000

I’ve seen a couple of UB 3.0 drive docks announced over the last couple of months, but this new model from ThermalTake stood out in my mailbox. The BlacX 5G supports both 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch SATA drives; instead of traditional external drive enclosures where you have to open a case to insert [...] Related posts:

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Toshiba and University of Tokio improve SSD write speeds

vink — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:22:53 +0000

Toshiba and the University of Tokio have presented an interesting technique for improving the write speed of Solid State Drives at last weeks VLSI symposium. The technique is targeted at three-dimensional NAND flash stacks; a method of stacking more NAND flash chips on top of each other to improve storage density and bring down [...] Related posts:

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Samsung touts low-power 512GB SSD

vink — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:20:49 +0000

Samsung has announced a new member for their Solid State Drive family. The drive uses 32 gigabit Samsung chips that entered production last year; new about the drive is a “toggle-mode DDR structure”. According to Samsung, this leads to a significant performance increase:

The new 512GB SSD makes use of a 30 nanometer-class 32 [...] Related posts:

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OCZ keeps the new products coming

vink — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:46:47 +0000

OCZ sure knows how to keep everyone’s attention. Why launch all your new products at once when you can spread the press releases out over the course of a week? The latest is the announcement of a 1.8″ version of their Vertex 2 model.

OCZ Vertex 2 1.8" SSD

This latest Solid [...] Related posts:

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Yet another SSD breakthrough?

vink — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:18:08 +0000

It was hard to miss the news about Anobit today. They announced the first drive using their Memory Signal Processing technology; with their proprietary technology they hope to make Multi-Level Cell (MLC) flash drives as reliable as the more expensive SLC models.

Anobit Genesis SSD

The MLC-based Genesis drive offers about 50.000 write/erase [...] Related posts:

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OCZ launches new Deneva SSDs

vink — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:13:17 +0000

OCZ just launched a new product as part of their Enterprise label: the Deneva series of SSD’s. These appear to be aimed at OEMs; OCZ offers these in a variety of interface options (SATA, SAS, FC and PCI-express) and all sorts of form factors.

OCZ Deneva 2

One relatively new thing is [...] Related posts:

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OCZ announces new enterprise SSD drives

vink — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:58:55 +0000

OCZ technology is offering two new Solid State drives for the enterprise market: the Vertex 2 Pro and Vertex 2 EX:

“OCZ is committed to enabling our enterprise clients with the latest solid state drive technology in a variety of interfaces,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “With our new Vertex [...] Related posts:

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USB3 standard setback

vink — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:12:04 +0000

Word got out last week that Intel is delaying the release of USB 3.0 chipsets to 2010. This means a major setback for external drive manufacturers and motherboard builders. For now, PC makers that want to offer USB 3.0 connectivity will have to rely on third-party solutions, increasing component costs and energy usage.

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Toshiba upgrades 2.5 inch drives

vink — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:36:49 +0000

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 [...] Related posts:

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3TB hard drives coming later this year?

vink — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:22:52 +0000

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.

Drive manufacturers are currently testing heads for 320 and 375 GB platters meant for 2.5″ drives. Models with two platters and 640GB capacity have already [...] Related posts:

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InPhase shutting down?

vink — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:13:22 +0000

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.

The local [...] Related posts:

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Hybrid solution combining SSD and traditional hard drive

vink — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:11:20 +0000

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%.

The basic [...] Related posts:

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Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory

vink — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:20:03 +0000

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.

The IMFT joint venture was formed in 2006, with a 50nm production [...] Related posts:

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Retro SSD drive: parallel ATA interface reappears

vink — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:54:25 +0000

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.

The new SaberTooth drive is [...] Related posts:

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Texas Memory Systems announces open source drivers for PCIe Flash

vink — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:00:36 +0000

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.

Drivers are available for both Linus and Solaris operating systems, which are traditionally used [...] Related posts:

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New memory cards: capacity, wireless transfers

vink — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:37:59 +0000

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.

The CF card is made by [...] Related posts:

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Lockheed Martin offering secure USB sticks

vink — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:47:50 +0000

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.

Lockheed Martin adds some extra technology to the IronKey drive that [...] Related posts:

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Samsung also readying 64GB NAND flash modules

vink — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:35:56 +0000

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.

In addition to the new flash modules, they also announced a [...] Related posts:

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Plextor enters SSD market

vink — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:13:33 +0000

Plextor, widely known for their CD-ROM and DVD drives, has announced they are entering the SSD business. According to the announcement made at the CES, the first drives will be 64 and 128GB units based on a Marvell chipset.

The 64GB model just appeared on their website; it’s based on MLC flash memory, [...] Related posts:

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IronKey responds to secure flash drive vulnerabilities

vink — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:30:10 +0000

Following the recent news about attacks against “secure” flash drives from Kingston, Verbatim and SanDisk other manufacturers have been rather quiet. This might mean they are checking their own products for similar vulnerabilities, or even working on patches for those before making any announcements. IronKey however is sure their products are safe, and want [...] Related posts:

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Do consumers need enterprise-class drives?

vink — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:12:56 +0000

A post over at PC Pro got me wondering about the difference between “consumer” and “enterprise” hard drives. Tim Danton ask whether “Windows 7 is killing your hard disks”; while I’m sure that Windows 7 is not doing just that, there might actually be some relation between your choice of operating system and hard [...] Related posts:

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