Storage News - Page 56

Storage titan Seagate has just revealed its first helium-filled hard drive aimed at the cloud datacenter market.

Seagate's new helium-filled hard drive is set in a 3.5" form factor and features 10 terabytes of storage capacity. The drives specifically target cloud datacenters that need extensive storage space as well as memory efficiency, both of which helium-filled drives can accommodate. Traditional hard drives are filled with air, but filling the drives with helium allows manufacturers to fit more platters to increase capacity, improve power usage, and maximize accuracy of the actuator arm.

The new hermetically-sealed enterprise-class hard drives feature seven platters at 1.43 TB a piece, along with 14 heads. Speeds have yet to be determined, and are assumed to be 7200RPM. Seagate affirms that the helium-filled drives utilize the company's PowerChoice technology to help manage power consumption during idle times. Thanks to the benefits of helium gas, the new 10TB drives have a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rate of 2.5 million hours, which is significantly better than existing enterprise drives.

Seagate is on quite the roll lately with the introduction of an 8TB NAS focused consumer HDD, which is a first in the industry. This HDD uses six platters with 1.33TB per platter, making it incredibly dense. It'll be shipping this later on in this quarter for $385.

Though it's being marketed towards everyone, it's really designed for the NAS and RAID applications, which likely entail a much more constant workload. Each of the six 1.33TB large platters use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology that's been well refined since commercial introduction in 2005.

The drive operates at 7200RPM with 256MB of DRAM cache and a SATA 3 interface. The dense platters and even the normal spindle speed should allow a peak transfer rate from the media to the internal cache of about 216MB/s, which is quite impressive for a mechanical device. This new NAS HDD joins Seagate's other SMB and consumer NAS drives that can be found in 4-6TB's of storage space.

CES 2016 - M.2 NVMe SSD's are all the rage. There are several products slated to hit the market this year and one of the drives we are most excited about is OCZ's upcoming RevoDrive 400. Rumored to be powered by a proprietary controller and 15nm MLC flash, the RevoDrive packs a punch that is sure to delight enthusiast's everywhere.

Early-adopting enthusiasts that feel held back by commodity SATA storage can't wait to get their hands-on the impending RevoDrive 400 series which was designed and engineered for ultimate next generation storage performance. The NVMe™ PCI Express Gen. 3 x4 SSD series redefines the boundaries of speed and the limitations of storage capacity with up to 2.4GB/s of bandwidth and up to 1TB on a single M.2 module.

OCZ was kind enough to give TweakTown a first look at a RevoDrive 400 512GB SSD in action. These benchmarks display an impressive 2.6GB/s sequential read performance and an equally impressive 1.6GB/s sequential write performance. Looks like the 950 Pro may have some serious competition coming soon from Team OCZ.

If having a good camera capable of 4K video weren't enough, you have to have the proper storage to actually record that. So if you plan on using a Sony A7R II or perhaps even the newly announced Nikon D500 or D5, then you might want to invest in some good storage media for that.

Sony's newest XDQ alone can reach read speeds of 440MB/s and writes speeds of up to 150mb/s, which is more than enough for moving large 4K files on-the-fly. It's massively fast compared to older generations of the portable media. You'll be able to find it in 32, 64 and 128GB capacities .

They're also introduction a new SF-M series of SD cards that can read at a rate of 260MB/s and write at a very swift 100MB/s. Just keep in mind that those speeds are ideal and are likely limited in older cameras with slower connective interfaces. But that's plenty fast, again, for writing high bit-rate 4K video, which is slowly becoming standard in DSLR's. The only competitor that needs to release a consumer 4K ready DSLR (or mirrorless) is Canon, and it's only a matter of time.

CES 2016 - TweakTown visited Patriots suite at CES 2016 and got a first look at Patriot's upcoming Hellfire PCIe-based SSD. This soon to be released SSD has generated a lot of buzz in the enthusiast community. TweakTown's storage editor, Jon Coulter, was given the opportunity to run a couple of benchmarks with a 480GB Hellfire PCIe SSD.

Featuring capacities of 240GB, 480GB and 960GB, these new products promise read speeds of up to 3000MB/s and write speeds measuring in at a maximum of 2200MB/s. With the Hellfire utilizing PCIe 3.0 x4 technology, check out our benchmark results in the full news story. Enjoy!

Patriot states the Hellfire should hit retail channels in Q1 2016.

CES 2016 - Phison was showcasing their extensive line of storage products at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, with PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe solutions, as well as next-gen SSDs using 1Znm TLC flash. Not only that, but flash drives using USB Type-C and super-fast 128GB SD cards were also on the table.

Starting with the PS5007-E7 which is the latest PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe-based SSD controller which Phison says "is in the final phase of performance tuning", with it hitting 2.6GB/sec reads and 1.5GB/sec writes - they are not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. The PS5007-E7 features random performance of 300K IOPS read, and 250K IOPS write. Random performance sits at 36K IOPS. We should expect it to hit the consumer space in March, with drives arriving at up to 4TB.

Moving onto the PS3110-S10, which is a SATA 6Gbps controller, but it now supports the latest 1Znm NAND flash technology. Together with the 1Znm TLC, the S10 controller "saturates" the SATA bus, but adds "additional proprietary technology to provide a robust solution".

Apple Mac upgrades certainly aren't cheap, but users should know that they're purchasing a system without many upgrade possibilities being given.

Other World Computing (OWC) are a zero emission Mac and PC technology company and are one of the global experts when it comes to pimping out your Mac system. Its latest offering is the 4.0TB Aura SSD upgrade for the 2013 Apple Mac Pro, set to cost a cool $2,128 for anyone who wants the privilege.

If you're not prepared to spend that kind of cash, $895 will get you the 1.0TB version or you can spend $1,447.99 on the 2.0TB kit instead. Packed within these kids are the SSDs themselves, an Envoy Pro SSD USB 3.0/3.1 enclosure for the existing 2013 Mac Pro SSD (so you can transfer files or use it in the future), a complete installation kit for the Aura SSD and a three year OWC warranty.

Kingston Digital, Inc. has released a product for those looking at carrying sensitive information, or just really don't want their siblings seeing the hundreds of selfies that were taken the night before.

Introducing the DataTraveler 2000, coming in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, packing Datalock Technology licensed from ClevX, LLC within and a keypad to ensure only you can access what is inside - unless someone else knows the code.

This USB drive is suitable for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7 and even Vista systems, while also functioning just fine with Mac OS X, Linux, Chrome OS and Android devices. Offering USB 3.1 Gen. 1 speeds, this encrypted device allows users to choose their own PIN and auto-locks when removed from the host device, with further security measures meaning that it will delete the encryption key and password after 10 invalid login attempts.

CES 2016 - Patriot has not only unveiled their new PCIe-based Hellfire SSD, but a nifty SSD enclosure, and now two new USB 3.1-powered USB flash drives here at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The Viber USB is the first off the rank, with USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectivity, and backwards compatibility with USB 2.0. The Viber USB will be made available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB with a slick red and black style. As for pricing, we're looking at $34.99, $54.99, and $94.99 for the 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, respectively.

Moving onto the Supersonic Mega USB flash drive from Patriot, with huge read speeds of 380MB/sec and write speeds of 70MB/sec. The Supersonic Mega USB comes in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities with pricing of $49.99, $89.99, and $229.99, respectively.

CES 2016 - If the new super-fast PCIe-based Hellfire SSDs weren't enough storage goodness for you from Patriot, the new Gauntlet 4 SSD enclosure should have you raising an eyebrow with its USB Type-C connectivity.

The Patriot Gauntlet 4 SSD enclosure converts any 2.5-inch SSD or HDD to an external storage drive, with Patriot providing two connector cables: a microB to Type-C and a microB to Type-A, which ensures that everyone can get use out of the SSD enclosure.

Saeed Arash Far, Global Director of Engineering for Patriot explains: "The Market is rapidly changing from the traditional USB connectivity and data transfer to the latest advancements in USB connectivity, such as Type-C, and the fast speeds of USB 3.1 Gen 2. With the Gauntlet 4, Patriot enables consumers to take full advantage of these speeds across different platforms in addition to Type-C enabled notebooks and computer systems".