Storage - Page 123

I am glad to see USB 3.0 ports finally coming to market in more and more notebooks, desktops, and mainboards. The increase in the number of USB ports making it to the market means that we are seeing more and more USB 3.0 gadgets land as well.

Silicon Power has a gob of external HDDs that it offers in different styles for different needs. The company has previously offered both flash drives and external HDDs and today it has added the new A80 external HDD to its line.

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The A80 is a USB 3.0 external HDD that is rugged and designed to be water resistant to IPX7 standards. That means that the HDD can survive being submerged in up to a meter of water for up to 30 minutes and still operate.

The drive is also shock, vibration, and dust resistant. The USB 3.0 interface lets the drive offer up to 5Gbps of bandwidth and the A80 is compatible with USB 2.0 ports as well. The drive is offered in 640GB, 500GB, and 320GB capacities. Pricing and availability are unknown at this time.

As many of you know, Seagate launched their first hybrid HDD/SSD-type storage solution for consumers yesterday under its Momentus XT series. These new drives are based on traditional high-performance (7200rpm) 2.5-inch mechanical hard drives, but include a technology Seagate calls Adaptive memory which will move the most accessed files into a much faster solid state flash area for optimal performance that improves over time. The end result is significantly improved performance + large drive capacities, whereas a 256GB+ SSD will still cost a small fortune and is out of reach for most consumers budgets.

The SSD world is more competitive than ever, especially since SandForce readied up their SF-1200 mainstream controllers for manufacturers which kept pricing down whilst pushing performance to new heights; a combination that has everyone jumping on the bandwagon.

However, big gun mechanical storage maker Seagate is focusing on bringing something much different to stand out from the crowd and has been developing some SSD-threatening 'hybrid' drives for mass market.

Seagate calls it the Momentus XT which marries a traditional mechanical 2.5-inch, 7200rpm, 250, 320 or 500GB (750GB rumoured to be in the works, too) 3Gbps SATA HDD with a 4GB solid state drive (likely from Seagate's Pulsar series) which has data cached into it that uses something Seagate calls 'Adaptive Memory algorithm'. This algorithm is in place to monitor data transfers to and from the drive right from power-up and will index and copy the most commonly accessed files into the SSD on the fly for faster overall performance.

We first heard a whisper about a week ago that Seagate have apparently been working hard at pushing the capacity barrier further with the 3.5-inch form factor and are looking to bring out a new enterprise level Constellation ES series of drives later this year with a whopping 3TB capacity.

Confirmation from Seagate themselves has now been given that the company is in fact developing 3TB drives for launch later this year. But as is the case with 2TB drives currently, being the top capacity model means a much less attractive GB per dollar ratio.