Storage News - Page 95

All the latest storage news, with everything related to solid-state drives, hard drives & plenty more - Page 95.

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Hitachi/WD announce the storage industry's first 12Gb/sec SAS drive, even The Flash is impressed

Anthony Garreffa | May 1, 2012 3:00 AM CDT

Thought the 6Gb/s limit was fast enough? Well, nope. Most SSDs can hit 500MB/sec without a problem, so a jump was needed. Enter Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) which is now a Western Digital company, where they've proudly announced the storage industry's first technology demonstration of a 12 gigabit per second (12Gb/s) SAS SSD.

Yes, 12Gb/s is what I said. SAS SSDs and hard disk drives have a strong bond with SCSI, and continue to be the building blocks of choice for enterprise and cloud-based storage. 12Gb/s SAS takes this one step further by being a broadly supported industry standard that is capable of delivering twice the throughput compared to today's 6Gb/s SAS solutions, all whilst maintaining established, known enterprise protocols and attributes.

One of the features, and limitations, of today's SAS drives is a second interface port that provides additional bandwidth to the drive. With 12Gb/s on each of these ports, a drive could send and receive data at 12Gb/s which would give a total available interface bandwidth of an insane 4.8GB/s per drive. With this speed, you can just imagine what enterprise and cloud datacenters could do, reducing latency, and more.

Continue reading: Hitachi/WD announce the storage industry's first 12Gb/sec SAS drive, even The Flash is impressed (full post)

ADATA brings additional player to NBA flash drive line

Trace Hagan | Apr 26, 2012 9:02 AM CDT

If you haven't heard, ADATA makes a line of NBA-licensed flash drives which look like NBA teams' jerseys. Today brings the announcement that they have added another player to the lineup. This new flash drive which features New York Knicks' Jeremy Lin is available today in the USA at Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, NBAstore.com, Newegg.com and Walmart.com.

This newest edition to the to the lineup increases the capacity to 8GB and retains the same attribute of being waterproof up to one meter. The device is designed to be rugged and withstand the bumps and bangs that come with an athletic and mobile lifestyle. If you want another way to support your favorite team or player, ADATA has your back.

The full press release:

Continue reading: ADATA brings additional player to NBA flash drive line (full post)

Western Digital releases new VelociRaptor hard drive, a 1TB, 10,000RPM monster

Trace Hagan | Apr 16, 2012 1:29 PM CDT

Today is a good day for storage geeks. Intel released their new 330 series solid state drives and Western Digital has released this monster of a drive. This new addition to the VelociRaptor line of hard drives brings a 1TB drive into the 10,000 RPM range. This is the single largest drive that operates at 10,000 RPM.

"WD is committed to providing customers with the best performing and most reliable SATA hard drives and our WD VelociRaptor family of drives underscores that promise," said Darwin Kauffman, vice president and general manager of WD's enterprise storage. "With ever-increasing demand for greater capacity, the new 1 TB WD VelociRaptor drive delivers the ultimate combination of speed and storage for the power user."

Features of the new drive include:

Continue reading: Western Digital releases new VelociRaptor hard drive, a 1TB, 10,000RPM monster (full post)

Intel announces Intel solid-state drive 330 series for people on a budget

Trace Hagan | Apr 16, 2012 1:17 PM CDT

The new line of Intel sold-state drives dubbed the 330 series are built for consumers on a budget. Intel states that it blends performance, quality, and value. The new line is produced in 60 gigabytes (GB), 120GB and 180GB versions, which according to Intel are the most popular sizes for solid-state drives.

The highlights are as follows:

"An SSD is still the single best upgrade you can make to your existing PC, and the Intel SSD 330 Series gives users the latest Intel SSD technology at a price to meet their budget," said James Slattery, product line manager for client SSDs, Intel Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "Backed by Intel's rigorous testing process, the Intel SSD 330 Series offers our users the speed they need at a great price, backed by world-class manufacturing, reliability and tech support."

Continue reading: Intel announces Intel solid-state drive 330 series for people on a budget (full post)

WD uses magical shrinking ray, starts shipping 7mm HDD for Ultrabooks

Anthony Garreffa | Apr 11, 2012 10:30 PM CDT

WD have just unveiled a new, 7mm tall 2.5-inch HDD that will slide straight into your already-thin Ultrabook, and other skinny devices. WDs new super-slim drives are capable of taking a shock of 400Gs, which is impressive as itself, but we're also impressed by the new single-platter WD Scorpio Blue drives being made available in both 500GB and 320GB capacities.

The drives still slot into the standard 9.5mm slots, making them perfect for virtually all small machines. Matt Rutledge, vice president and general manager for WD client storage products says:

Consumers want thin and light personal computers, but the limited storage capacity of SSD-based notebooks forces them to pick and choose what files to bring from their library. With the release of the new WD Scorpio Blue 7 mm mobile hard drives, WD is able to offer capacity, reliability and data-protection features combined with excellent power management all in a slim form factor perfect for thin and light notebooks.

Continue reading: WD uses magical shrinking ray, starts shipping 7mm HDD for Ultrabooks (full post)

MOSAID develops World's first 512Gb 16-die NAND flash stack

Anthony Garreffa | Apr 11, 2012 4:13 AM CDT

Mosaid Technologies have sampled the industry's first NAND flash MCP (multi-chip package) with a 16-die NAND stack operating on a single high-performance chip. Impressive, eh? Jin-Ki Kim, vice president of research and development at Mosaid:

The 16-die stack 512Gb HLNAND MCP demonstrates the superior scalability of HLNAND's ring architecture compared to the parallel bus architecture used in industry standard NAND Flash products. HLNAND's ring architecture allows a virtually unlimited number of NAND die to be connected on a single channel without performance degradation.

Mosaid's 512Gb HLNAND (HyperLink NAND) MCP combines a stack of 16 industry standard 32Gb NAND flash die with two HLNAND interface devices to hit 333MB/sec output over a single byte-wide HLNAND interface channel at 1.8V with no power termination resistors needed. Conventional NAND flash MCP designs cannot stack more than four NAND dies without being hit with performance degradation, and then also require two or more channels to deliver what Mosaid can do with one.

Continue reading: MOSAID develops World's first 512Gb 16-die NAND flash stack (full post)

RumorTT: Google Drive coming as soon as April

Trace Hagan | Mar 27, 2012 4:26 PM CDT

Google has been leading the way with cloud-based productivity apps such as Google Docs and and the rest of the Google Apps suite. The one thing Google hasn't provided though, is a competitor to Dropbox and other online cloud storage services. This seems like one of the areas Google could excel in, especially with how many servers the search giant has.

Rumors have been floating around regarding Google Drive for years. They first emerged in 2006, and have come and gone since. Sources are now saying that the official announcement is due in the first week of April. Sources say that the free service will offer 1GB of online storage with charges for more. In comparison, Dropbox offers 2GB free and you can get more through referrals and promotions.

It reportedly will come with a desktop client and a web interface similar to Google Docs. Additionally, the sources are saying that Google has built an API around the service which could theoretically be used in conjunction with Android Apps. This comes at a time when mobile phones are doing more than ever, storing video, music, and pictures. Being able to offload them to online storage would reduce the need for high capacity phones.

Continue reading: RumorTT: Google Drive coming as soon as April (full post)

WD manages 2TB on a 2.5-inch USB drive

Trace Hagan | Mar 20, 2012 6:27 PM CDT

With SSDs seeming to become the norm with Ultrabooks and the like, it makes sense that more and more people will need a portable hard drive that has vast amounts of storage. Previously, you would only a thumb drive to move small files from one computer to another, but since SSDs are expensive for any sort of storage, our needs have become increasingly large to the point where thumb drives can't keep up. Let me introduce you to the Western Digital's next-generation My Passport.

Before this launch, 2TB drives relied on the larger 3.5-inch drive. These larger drives require more power than a 2.5-inch drive and often couldn't be powered solely over a USB port. To achieve this, the size of the device is up slightly to a total thickness of 21mm versus the 19mm of the 1TB and 750GB models, and the 15 mm of the 500GB model. No performance numbers have been quoted regarding the new drives, but it features USB 3.0 and the case comes in a range of colors as long as you don't want the 2TB model, which seems to be limited to black. It comes with a suggested retail price of $250 for the 2TB model. The 500GB-1TB flavors will ring up between $130 and $200, according to WD.

Continue reading: WD manages 2TB on a 2.5-inch USB drive (full post)

Seagate wants 60TB HDDs, says its possible with next-generation storage technology

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 20, 2012 1:28 AM CDT

Seagate has achieved quite the storage milestone, bu hitting a storage density of 1 terabit per square inch, roughly 55-percent more than today's 620 gigabits per square inch. Seagate have compared this to our Milky Way galaxy, comparing the number of stars, which astronomers estimate we have between 200 and 400 billion. Seagate say that their 1 terabits per square inch, has more bits per square inch than our entire Milky Way galaxy!

Currently, 620 gigabits per square inch provides us with current 3TB capacity in 3.5-inch disks, 2.5-inch disks max out at 750GB. This new technology from Seagate should double this to 6TB and 2TB for 3.5- and 2.5-inch drives, respectively. Seagate say this technology will arrive "later this decade", and will drive hard disk drive sizes right up to 60TB over the following 10 years. Seagate hit the milestone by using heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), which they hail as the next-generation successor to 2006's perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR).

PMR should hit a peak of approximately 1Tb per square inch in the next few years, which should be the starting density of the new HAMR-based drives. Seagate explain in their press releases:

Continue reading: Seagate wants 60TB HDDs, says its possible with next-generation storage technology (full post)

Marvell unveil third-generation SSD, is powered by high-performance embedded processor technology

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 14, 2012 8:01 AM CDT

Marvell have just announced their third-generation SSD which has gone into mass deployment, the Marvel 88SS9187 SATA controller is powered by high-performance embedded processor technology and sports a 6Gbps SATA III interface.

Marvell have said that a number of high-profile SSD manufacturers are set to deploy Marvell's 88SS9187 controller immediately, with more partners to jump on board over time. Marvell's latest and greatest technology offers an open, world-class architecture that supports industry-standard, high-speed NAND flash interface with up to 200MB/sec per channel.

The new Marvell 88SS9187 controller also offers something new, a ground-breaking correction capability thanks to its high-performance ECC engine with Adaptive Read and Write Scheme and on-chip RAID functionality to allow use of the latest generation of NAND flash devices in the fast-growing SSD markets.

Continue reading: Marvell unveil third-generation SSD, is powered by high-performance embedded processor technology (full post)