The selection of SandForce-driven solid state drives (SSDs) you have to choose from just got a little bit bigger today with the introduction of Patriot Memory's new Wildfire Pro and Wildfire SE drives. Both new additions come equipped with a SATA 6Gbps interface and SandForce SF-2281 chipset, a potent combination built for speed and, according to Patriot, reliability as well.
Western Digital would like nothing more than to finalize its proposed takeover of Hitachi's hard drive business, and to facilitate the process, WD agreed to transfer an asset package to rival Toshiba to ease concerns of regulatory agencies. The package includes equipment and intellectual property (IP) that will enable Toshiba to build and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for desktops, consumer electronics (things like DVRs), and near-line (business critical) applications.
Teams of engineers from SanDisk and Toshiba working at SanDisk's Milpitas campus developed a NAND flash memory chip smaller than a U.S. penny, the two companies announced. The 128Gb (gigabit) memory chip, which is currently in production, is the world's smallest and can store 128 billion bits of information on a single die measuring just 170mm2, barely more than a quarter of an inch squared.
Hitachi on Wednesday announced the shipment of more than 25 million Travelstar Z-series, 7mm hard drives for notebooks, ultra-thins, Ultrabooks, and other portable form factors that support slim 2.5-inch storage devices. It's the sort of thing companies like to brag about, but rather than gloat over record shipment numbers, Hitachi spent the bulk of its press release talking about the 7mm form factor and its new 500GB Travelstar Z7K500 drive, supposedly the industry's fastest and highest capacity single-disk 7200RPM hard drive.
If you've built or upgraded a rig recently, you probably struggled with whether to spend your money on oodles of storage (mechanical hard drive) or raw speed (solid state drive). You're not alone. Ultrabook makers find themselves in the same boat, and rather than choose one over the other, hybrid hard drives may provide the compromise between cheap(er) storage and fast performance they're looking for.
The average selling price of mechanical hard drives has risen ever since severe floods in Thailand wreaked havoc on HDD manufacturing plants, and on the opposite end of the storage spectrum, the cost of solid state drives (SSDs) has been steadily decreasing as the technology matures. With that being the case, why in the world would researchers from the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) declare the future of NAND flash memory and SSDs as being bleak?
Samsung's new line of SD and microSD memory cards look so good it's a shame they'll spend most of their time hiding inside your digital camera or other portable device. Regardless of the fact that memory cards are destined to spend most of their days out of sight, Samsung decided to add a bit of bling to seven new models of SD and microSD cards as part of either its High Speed Series or Plus Extreme Speed Series.
It's not all fun and games for the PC building gurus over at a AVADirect. The boutique system builder also caters to the enterprise crowd with a 
If the high prices of mechanical hard drives has you feeling blue, perhaps you should use it as an excuse to kick a little green at a high performance solid state drive instead. You won't save any money by going that route, but if it's a matter of principle, or if you've been shopping a fast SSD anyway, SanDisk is hoping you'll consider its new Extreme SSD line.
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