Intel’s 2nd Generation SSDs

With the expanding competition in the market for Solid State Disk’s a big change has been imminent for a long time. Well the company that seem to be making that big change are Intel by announcing that they plan to release generation 2.0 drives. This may be a big oppurtunity for Hitachi following their recent co-development news. Read more

Buffalo’s New Ministation Metro External Hard Drive

Buffalo have announced that they will be releasing a new range of portable hard drives. The hard drives are expected to be available in a range of sizes up to 500GB, and are going to be available in a range of colors.

One of the most unique features that the drive possesses is a integrated USB cable which is cleverly tidied away when not in use, apart from that and the colors everything else seems to be pretty much standard. Read more

Kingston SSD Upgrades: Easy with SSDNow V

Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is at the forefront when it comes to memory products, and the company has just announced the SSDNow V Series SSD upgrades bundle. This new product has been targeted for the mass market, from consumer too small to medium business. Read more

Dell to offer Samsung encrypted SSDs (Solid State Drives)

Dell has been offering solid state and encrypted drives for a while now, but the second largest computer maker is about to offer Samsung encrypted SSDs (Solid State Drives) over the coming months and will come in a range of sizes. Read more

2TB Western Digital My Book series released

If you are in the market for a new Western Digital single-disk My Book external hard drive, then you will pleased to know that the storage solution company has upgraded the range to a 2TB capacity. To put this in perspective you will be able to store 241 hours of full-bitrate HD, ideal for Mac user who shop at iTunes. Read more

Super Talent UltraDrive ME / LE SSDs and Prices

We have known for some time that Super Talent were supplying SSDs for the Asus S101, it is nice to learn that the company are now making solid state drives for us mere consumers. As of yesterday Super Talent were making available a range of UltraDrive ME / UltraDrive LE drives. Read more

Apricorn announces Aegis Mini 1.8-inch 240GB External hard drive

Apricorn have just announced their super slim Aegis Mini 1.8-inch 240GB drive. It is able to slot nicely into your pocket and due to it’s compact size, it is now the world’s largest capacity 1.8-inch external hard drive. Read more

Samsung Going Green: EcoGreen F2EG 1.5TB hard drive

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd (SEO:005930), understand that when developing new products, they need to make certain that they are better for the environment than in previous years. This is exactly what Samsung have done with its EcoGreen F2EG 1.5TB hard drive. Read more

SanDisk price drop on laptop Solid-State Drives

Yesterday SanDisk announced that they will be dropping the price of their Solid-State Drives for laptops. The company said that these new prices will make these SSDs a more affordable option for businesses. The G3 Series are SanDisk’s third generation of SSDs, and was unveiled at CES 2009. Read more

Toshiba launches first 512GB Notebook SSD at a price

Electronics giant Toshiba have launched the first 2.5-inch solid-state drive, this SSD drive has a storage capacity of 512GB. The new drive will be used for notebooks, and offers people on the move a better storage solution. Read more

Fujitsu’s New Thin 500GB Portable SATA Hard Drive

As laptops get smaller their components have to as well, this presents a hard job for technology companies. Hard drives cause a huge problem, as they want storage to be bigger, yet the device has to be smaller in size. Fujitsu have two new 500GB Portable SATA Hard Drive, just for laptops. Read more

Seagate developing hybrid SSD’s (Solid State Disks)

Seagate is a bit late to the whole Solid State Drives party, but their CEO has said that they are now working on their own line of SSD’s. Bill Watkins has been talking to Pocket-Lint, and has been discussing about what we can expect from them once they start to put their resources behind SSD technology. Read more

Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA 32MB Hard Drive

If you love to play games as well as store all your music, photos and videos on your PC, then chances are the standard hard drive that came with your PC is just not large enough. However it is so simple and cheap to increase your storage capacity. Read more

Western Digital VelociRaptor: fourth generation hard drive

Western Digital launched a 10,000 RPM hard drive some time ago now; they are now into their fourth generation with the VelociRaptor. When it comes to performance from a hard drive, no one comes close to Western Digital’s Raptor Series.

Hard drives with faster speeds than 10,000 RPM have been out a long time before the Raptor Series, but none have managed to get the same performance figures like WD have.

Tweaktown thought they would take a closer look at the Western Digital VelociRaptor; here is what they thought about the storage device. “Until Western Digital released the VelociRaptor, 2008 was on track to be a year dominated by Solid-State Drive headlines. Western Digital has quickly put a stop to that and released a major roadblock for the adoption of SSDs for enthusiasts.

The Western Digital VelociRaptor is clearly the fastest consumer hard drive available, SSD or traditional platter based period. There are of course a few faster SSDs and SAS drives, but they are far from consumer class and what I am really saying is consumer priced.

When it comes to price, the VelociRaptor retained the same initial MSRP as the third generation 150GB drive, around 300 U.S. Dollars. The New Raptor is available at a number of e-tail locations in the US but at this time the price has yet to slip, so if you are looking to purchase now, the MSRP price is what you are going to pay.

When comparing the VelociRaptor to other enterprise 10K drives, the VelociRaptor really stands out from the crowd. All other 10K drives are based on SAS which requires either an expensive controller card or a motherboard with onboard SAS which is also expensive. Western Digital has really dealed a death blow to high cost 10K drives for small to medium sized businesses.

If I had a major complaint with the VelociRaptor, it would be the way the drive was rolled out with an adaptor bracket that does not comply with traditional standards. Western Digital has done a good job correcting the issue, but to be honest, SOMEONE should have caught this prior to launch.

From the “What Could Have Been” category, I am surprised to see that Western Digital only used 16 MB of cache, the same as the third generation Raptor 150. There have been countless numbers of drives released this past year with 32 MB of cache. I can only dream of the performance of a 32 MB cache VelociRaptor. I think a special edition is in order; sign me up for eight!”

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA/300 Hard Drive

This is the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA/300 hard drive that is today’s deal of the day on Woot.

The Seagate Barracuda 750GB hard drive comes with a 180-day Seagate limited warranty and a price of $77.77 (plus $5 for shipping).

Features on the Seagate Barracuda ST3750640AS include: Enhanced G-Force, Seagate SoftSonic, Directed Offline Scan, Clean Sweep, Adaptive Fly Height, Perpendicular Recording, 3.5-inch form factor, SATA/300 interface, 4.16 ms average latency, 8.5 ms average seek time, 16 MB buffer, 7200 RPM spindle speed and a 750 GB capacity.

The hard drive will require an available 3.5-inch drive bay, serial ATA power cable, serial ATA data cable and a serial ATA controller.

The box includes just the Seagate ST3750640AS 750GB SATA/300 7200RPM hard drive. Let us know what you think of this deal in the comments below.

You can visit Woot here or view other hard drive news.

Hello Kitty 1GB USB drive exclusive to W.H. Smiths

It has to be said that the Hello Kitty USB drive might be more suited for the girls in the family or office, not saying that the Hello Kitty USB drive won’t look cool along with your rugby sports bag but hey it’s really up to your personal taste.

Needless to say that the Hello Kitty 1GB drive from Vertatim is in the Hello Kitty trademark pink for a limited period at WH Smith’s and will set you back £8.74 for the cute little kitty.

The 2GB model will be available in pink, lilac and black and well cost you the normal price which is £17.99, W.H. Smiths are the only outlet you can get either of these USB drives until December 2008.

Source: Pocket-lint

New Intel Z-P230 PATA SSD at Flash Memory Summit

This is the rugged, low-power Intel Z-P230 PATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) that now comes in two form factors, the original 40-pin ZIF module that is four times smaller and one-fourth the weight of a traditional 1.8-inch hard drive, and an even smaller PCIe mini-card version for more space conscious systems Read more

Micron next-generation RealSSD: P200, C200 SSDs much faster

Micron has announced their updated line of SSDs from their RealSSD range. These new storage devices are based on the slower more cheaper MLC NAND process technology.

These new 2.5-inch SSDs go up to 256GB, while the smaller 1.8-inch versions have a capacity of 32GB to 128GB. These new drives come in two variations, enterprise-class RealSSD P200 and the client-focused RealSSD C200.

Both models offer a much faster performance over older models, making application open much quicker.

Companies such as Micron know that the slimmer and faster the hard drive the stronger hold they will have over the market. The launch of the RealSSD P200, C200 SSDs is a step in the right direction for them.

You have to ask yourself just how small these SSDs are able to go; only time will tell on that one.

Source

Costume Samsung 2.5in Hard Drive for women by Joongoo Lee

This is a new Samsung 2.5in hard drive that’s designed with women in mind. Before you start asking where to buy this Samsung beauty, you should know that it’s only a concept design by Joongoo Lee.

The Costume Samsung hard drive aims to be slick and a perfect fit for handbags. Its design came from the look of ladies make-up compacts.

It would fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and in Lee’s own words:

Designing electronic gadgets specifically for women has always seemed like either an insult to their sensibilities or simple pink pandering. Either way, you run the risk of a ton of pink back stock or pissing them off. My advice, design gadgets for humans.

No word on pricing or if this gadget will ever become real, we will update you if it ever does.

View more images on Yanko Design and view other gadgets and technology here.

Solid State Disk (SSD): Production up, prices down

Everyone should know by now what a Solid State Disk can do for your laptop or desktop computer, there have been enough comparison videos showing the boot-up time of Windows with an SSD compared to a normal drive.

Tweak Town have taken a look at the industry and where it stands now, things are looking much better than they have ever looked when it comes to SSD’s.

In their final thoughts they said “Solid state drives are not going to hit one day, cause mass hysteria and have people waiting in lines outside of their local Apple Store like some products. Even at the 300 Dollar price point for a 64GB drive, enthusiasts and business users will be the first to take advantage of the new, lower prices.

Over the next few months, big box builders will start to offer solid state drives in more of their middle class notebooks, and if big memory manufacturers like Samsung are not able to meet demand, the prices will rise again. Thankfully, these manufacturers appear to be ready to meet demand or at least know they need to ramp up production quickly.

It is my belief that upgrading your platter based hard drive to an SSD will produce the most significant change to your computing experience for a modern computer. I am neither talking frames per second nor calculation from a benchmark, but your overall, real world ‘I use my computer everyday’ tasks. The difference is similar to running an eight-year-old 20GB, 512KB cache drive with Vista installed and then moving to a new SATA II drive.

Over the next 30 days, I will run my Lenovo T61 notebook with the Super Talent Master Drive MX and give a detailed report of my experiences dealing with the battery life, losing 40GB of storage space and the overall system feel. This isn’t a shelf notebook that is used on the weekend; my T61 goes with me everywhere and twelve hours on my lap a day is not uncommon”

Read the three page market review.