Posted 11/05/09 at 01:30:52 PM by Paul Lilly

The most capacious 1.8-inch hard drive on the planet now checks in at 320GB, says Toshiba, who just introduced a new line of tiny HDDs

Toshiba's targeting thin and light mobile PCs and portable external HDD contraptions with its new storage series, which also includes two other models sized at 160GB and 250GB. All three drives sport a perpendicular magnetic recording head, efficient power consumption, a high level of durability, and quiet seek operation, Toshiba says.

The new drives come equipped with a SATA interface and spin at 5400RPM. All three models also include a 16MB buffer. Combined with improvements to areal density, Toshiba claims you can expect data transfer rates to improve by 15 percent over previous drives.

Toshiba's tiny drives will start mass production in December. No word yet on price.

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Posted 10/26/09 at 08:39:46 AM by Paul Lilly

Maybe not next year, or even the year after, but sometime in the not too distant future, mainstream storage duties are destined to make the jump from mechanical hard drives to flash-based SSDs, right? Not according to a new study published in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Magnetics. Not only are hard drives in it for the long haul, but the cost to storage ratio will shrink dramatically, the study suggests.

Some would argue it already has, but study authors Professor Mark Kryder and PhD student Chang Soo Kim of Carnegie Mellon University predict that by the year 2020, a two-disk, 2.5-inch HDD with 14TB of storage capacity will run a mere $40. And if that weren't enough to keep mechanical storage media relevant into the next decade and beyond, the duo also suggest that flash memory technology will run into technical roadblocks that will halt its continued scaling before 2020.

Hit the jump to find out why even the study's authors were surprised at their findings.

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Posted 10/19/09 at 09:42:00 AM by Paul Lilly

Now that the spec has been finalized and controllers in mass production, we expect to see a lot of USB 3.0 devices in the coming weeks and months, particularly as companies look to brand their products as the "world's first" in their respective categories. Enter Dane-Elec, who claims its new line of external hard drives is the first to take advantage of the new spec (Freecom would disagree).

Plenty of storage options abound in the So SuperSpeed line, ranging in capacity from 500GB to 2TB. The series will also include Intel-branded USB 3.0 solid state drives (SSDs) with data transfer speeds of up to 250MB/s, Dane-Elec says. At full-bore, that's almost 10 times faster than currently available USB 2.0 devices.

Pricing for the new drives will start at $45 on the lower end and work its way up to $800. Catch a glimpse of the full lineup (with prices) here.

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Posted 10/08/09 at 01:00:36 PM by Paul Lilly

Buffalo, who has offices in Japan, USA, Germany, UK, Ireland, and Taiwan, is well on its way to being the first to release a USB 3.0 hard drive. On Tuesday, the networking and storage company said its HD-HU3 series of USB 3.0 external hard drives would be the "world's first" to ship to retailers, Engadget reports.

The company also plans to offer NEC's IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI-Express x1 host controller because, well, what good is a USB 3.0 drive without a controller to take advantage of it?

But before we get ahead of ourselves, it appears the drives will only be available in Japan when they ship later this month. According to Engadget, the 1TB model will run about $225 after the exchange rate, while the 1.5TB will cost $284. Later on, Buffalo plans to release a 2TB model, which will sell for around $530. Add another $60 for the controller.

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Posted 10/02/09 at 02:56:41 PM by Paul Lilly

After months of negotiations and ironing out the details, Toshiba and Fujitsu have put their John Hancocks on the appropriate papers to make Toshiba's take over of Fujitsu's multinational hard drive design manufacturing business a done deal, eWeek.com reports.

The two sides had hoped to seal the deal by July 1, but it took longer than expected to finalize the details. Neither side has disclosed financial terms of the buyout, but according to Toshiba, the buyout propels the company to the top of the storage heap.

"Effectively, the deal makes Toshiba the world's largest full-service data storage supplier, when taking into account hard disk drives, solid-state NAND flash disks, optical disk drives, software, and everything else the company provides," Toshiba marketing executive Scott McCabe told eWeek.

Equally important, the deal pushes Toshiba into the enterprise HDD market, a sector the company has been trying to break into for years.

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Posted 09/23/09 at 05:25:35 PM by Paul Lilly

There's always some jackass at every party who still thinks it's funny to push people into the pool while fully clothed. What if they were carrying around a portable hard drive filled with family photos, work documents, government secrets, and other data that's now drenched in water and chlorine?

Yeah, that's probably never happened to anyone in the history of portable hard drives, but there's always a first. If you're lugging around A-Data's new SH93 mobile drive, you won't have to lose any sleep at night wondering what you'd do in exactly that situation. Heck, you wouldn't even need to get out of the pool right away, because according to A-Data, it's SH93 portable HDD, wrapped in a rubber-plastic mix and special cushion materials, has passed the 1M waterproof test for 30 minutes. Go ahead and practice your backstroke!

You could even drop it out of a second story window for a quck air-dry. After all, the rugged drive also passed the military standard MIL-STD-810F drop test.

Available in 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, and 640GB capacities, you'll probably never subject your portable HDD to the above abuses, but hey, it's good to know you can fumble your beer while watching the Super Bowl and not worry about frying your portable backup.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 09/21/09 at 08:50:33 AM by Paul Lilly

Toshiba last Thursday unveiled a new line of performance-oriented 2.5-inch notebook drives that purport to offer the best of both worlds: Performance and capacity.

Available in 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB capacities, Toshiba's new MKxx56GSY series promises "significant performance improvements" over the company's previous generation of 7200RPM drives. Just how much faster are they, you ask? Toshiba claims the new series offers a 23 percent boost in data transfer speeds at 1,255MB/s, while also raising energy efficiency by 28 percent.

The gains come courtesy of improved magnetic head and disk layer technology, which paved the way for an areal density of 395Gb per square inch. Other specs include a 16MB cache buffer, 25dB noise levels during both idle and seek, and 11-12ms average seek times.

Toshiba didn't announce any pricing info, but did say it plans to start mass producing the new drives in October, 2009.

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Posted 09/21/09 at 07:51:47 AM by Paul Lilly

Seagate today announced it has begun shipping what it claims is the "world's fastest, largest-capacity mainstream desktop hard drive" dubbed the Barracuda XT. While the Barracuda XT isn't the first 2TB hard drive to sport a 7200RPM spindle speed, it is the first one to feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface.

"Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers, and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office," said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate. "Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200RPM desktop drive to combine 2TB of storage capacity with the fastest Serial ATA interface to date."

Hit the jump to learn more about the SATA 6Gb/s interface and what you can expect out of the new Barracuda XT.

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