Storage News - Page 101

Buffalo has come up with a new way to provide mass external storage which still plays ball nicely with the many DLNA-capable TVs that don't support 3, or in some cases even 2TB drives.

The multimedia focused HD-ALCTU2/V drive from Buffalo provides a capacity switch whereby you can set the amount of space seen by the 3TB drive inside the unit - 1TB, 2TB or the full 3TB. The way it works is by allowing users to partition their content, so you could for instance have all your larger movie files taking up 2TB, whilst the other 1TB partition would be for housing all your TV shows / music etc.

As for the design of the unit itself, it is of glossy black appearance and measures 121 x 40 x 201 mm. It relies on a USB 2.0 connection for its interface and includes built-in rubber mounts to prevent vibration. The LED system up front give indication as to how much space is left on the drive. Buffalo says power draw of this unit is also particularly nice via use of the eco Manager software, using as low as 2.1W.

Intel's roadmap for 2011/2012 has been leaked and it is clear that Intel wants to give their SSD portfolio the same non-stop product cycle that their processor lineup enjoys, where we receive generation leaps every year or so. Intel will start 2012 with products that have been introduced just recently such as the SSD 520 "Cherryville", SSD 710 "Lyndonville", SSD 720 "Ramsdale", and "Hawley Creek" mSATA SSDs.

Most of these will launch in Q4 2011 where Intel will allow these products to lead the portfolio for the remainder of the year and until the end of Q1 2012. In Q2 2012, Intel plans to launch "Ramsdale MLC" which is a variant of "Ramsdale" Intel SSD 720 series PCI Express SSDs, which sport 25nm MLC-HET NAND flash memory instead of SLC NAND flash found on the normal "Ramsdale". MLC-HET gives Intel the ability to double capacities, whilst offering the same kind of endurance to SLC, and much higher price per gigabyte.

It does come at a cost though, slower throughput. This is where Ramsdale MLC is not really a replacement, but just an extension of the 700 Series PCI Express family. At this time, Intel will launch "King Crest", which is a successor to the SSD 520 "Cherryville" family. This is definitely an increase in tech, which uses 25nm MLC-HET NAND flash instead of regular 25nm NAND flash that is found on the SSD 520. Capability wise, there shouldn't be any surprises, but endurance, sequential data-rates and throughput should be increased. Also like the SSD 520, "King Crest" will be a 2.5-inch form-factor with a SATA 6 Gbps interface.

A fresh roadmap looking deep into 2012 reveals that Intel is planning to hit the SSD market harder than ever with new series' on the horizon that will cover pretty much all major market segments.

We've already seen some refreshments in their SSD product range recently, and more to follow before the year is out. These include the SSD 520 "Cherryville", SSD 710 "Lyndonville", SSD 720 "Ramsdale", and "Hawley Creek" mSATA SSDs. These will maintain the lead into the first quarter of 2012, and as the second quarter comes around Intel will introduce its "Ramsdale MLC" and "King Crest" families to market.

But the biggest changes are to be seen into the third quarter of 2012 when "Taylorsville" hits the scene. This is said to be a successor to SSD 710 "Lyndonville" and will bring significant capacity increases going as large as 800GB.

Plextor has hit up the ever growing SSD market with a new line of SATA 6Gbps drives in regular 2.5-inch form. There are currently two drives in the new lineup, the 128GB PX-128M2P and 256GB PX-256M2P, both of which depend on Marvell's 88SS9174 controller together with Toshiba TH58TV68D2FDA88 MLC 34nm NAND flash.

With 512MB DDR3 cache on the 256GB model and half that (256MB) on the 128GB, sequential write speeds vary between the two with Plextor promising write rates of 440MB/sec and 320MB/sec on the 256 and 128GB drives, respectively. Read rates, however, are equal at up to 500MB/sec.

Other included features of the new Plextor drives are SMART, NCQ, TRIM, Bad Block Management, Instant Restore and Plextor TrueSpeed firmware. As for pricing, with the drives first showing up in Japan we can get an idea from the JPY pricing of 46,800 (about $610 US) on the 256GB model and 21,800 (about $284 US) on the 128GB.

Fusion-io have today announced the next evolution of their ioMemory platform for powering application acceleration and data center optimization. Fusion-io previously broke performance barriers when they released their first enterprise MLC products which dramatically enhanced reliability metrics for enterprise flash, and redefined server-side flash have done it again by introducing their new ioDrive2 and ioDrive2 Duo.

David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO and Chairman says:

Customers have grown to expect nothing but groundbreaking products from Fusion-io. Today, we are proud to raise the bar once more with the ioDrive2. Just as many competitors gauge success by Fusion-io performance standards, we developed the ioDrive2 to outperform the original ioDrive on all measures. Companies around the world trust ioMemory to supply critical data to their trading platforms, ERP systems, virtual environments, enterprise applications and databases, and now, they can rely on the ioDrive2 to accelerate even more of the data that powers our information economy.

QNAP have announced three new Turbo NAS models, with a four-bay, dual-bay and single-bay solution available. The models are TS-419P II, TS219P II and TS-119P II which are all aimed at corporate workgroups, SOHO and home users who are after a budget-friendly solution for backup and file sharing. No pricing has been announced from QNAP, so we don't know how "budget-friendly" they really are. But, the models closest to them (which sport 1.2GHz chips instead of the included 2GHz chips) are very decently priced.

The new models look virtually identical to the predecessors, but they sport upgraded chips tech. QNAP have used a 2.0GHz Marvell CPU and also included 512MB of DDR3 memory which is a bit quicker than the 1.2 and 1.6GHz Marvell CPUs used in previous models. QNAP also say the added speed will enable Windows-based file transfers of up to 109MB/sec. QNAP claim idle power consumption is as low as four watts.

All three models support 2.5 and 3.5-inch HDDs, Gigabit Ethernet, up to four USB 2.0 ports and eSATA. The best bit about QNAP NAS solutions is the software features. Built-in UPnP media server, back up solutions, iTunes support, Time Machine support, power consumption, Bit Torrent and Usenet clients and of course the very powerful QPKG system.

I-O Data has just unveiled its latest portable Blu-ray drive, the BRP-U6XE which at first may not seem like anything special at all considering there's quite a number of these portable Blu-ray drives on the market these days.

However, there is in fact quite the stand-out feature with this one; it is capable of writing in the new BDXL format, meaning up to 100GB of data can be placed on supporting discs with this drive.

On the downside, the drive only has USB 2.0 connectivity. Considering the drive has BDXL support, I would have thought USB 3.0 would have been the more sensible, ideal interface with its much more accomodating bandwidth for such large amounts of data.

Other World Computing have announced the launch of the 6G Mercury Aura Pro Express (say that 3 times fast), which is a replacement SSD for the 2011 MacBook Air. The new drive fully utilizes the SATA 3 (6Gbps) interface and is available in both 120 and 240GB capacities.

The drive sports the SandForce 2200-series controller with Tier 1/Grade A NAND memory which pumps along at 507MB/sec read, 454MB/sec write speeds which is roughly twice as fast as the stock SSD in the MBA.

Apple's MacBook Air ships with SATA 3Gbps SSDs even though the hardware inside is capable of SATA 6Gbps. But, the MBA uses a non-standard SSD form factor, which means the usual 2.5-inch SSDs on the market can't be used as a replacement. OWC says that the Aura Pro Express 6G SSD is the first and only 6Gbps SSD designed to work with both the 11.1-inch and 13.3-inch models of the new MacBook Air.

A little later than some would have expected, but as the saying goes, better late than never. Corsair has just updated its good ole' Voyager GT, Voyager and Survivor families of Flash Drives to USB 3.0, giving a significant boost in transfer rates across the board.

While the Voyager GT and Flash Survivor series stick to their traditional designs externally, the Voyager (non GT) in USB 3.0 form is more compact in stature. The Voyager GT USB 3.0 gives read and write rates of up to 135MB/sec and 83MB/sec, respectively, featuring a rubber housing to make it water resistant and coming in two capacity sizes of 32 and 64GB at respective pricing of $59 and $129.

As for the Flash Voyager (non GT), this one also uses rubber housing, measuring 73 x 22 mm and coming in 8 and 16GB capacity sizes costing $17 and $24, respectively. The Flash Survivor on the other hand features a unique anodized 'aircraft-grade' aluminum housing giving it shock, vibration and water proof attributes. It comes in 8 and 16GB capacities, costing $28 and $35, respectively.

We knew they were coming soon, just not sure exactly when. Today marks the day the world's first 4TB capacity HDD hits the scene with Seagate beating its competitors out to the milestone. However, the it isn't in naked form at this time and comes as part of their GoFlex Desk external HDD family.

The official announcement from Seagate on the new unit doesn't go into specifics about the 4TB 3.5-inch drive itself, but we are presuming it uses a 4x1TB platter arrangement. As for specific features on the 4TB GoFlex Desk, it uses USB 3.0 for its connectivity and comes pre-loaded with software to assist in automatic, continuous data backup (with encryption) and the included adapter has an illuminited gauge that makes it quick and easy to look at the available space remaining on the drive.

Seagate is now shipping the USB 3.0 4TB GoFlex Desk with a price tag of $249 US. There's word of a Mac version on the way too, shipping later this month with FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connectivity.