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Storage news on STORAGEsearch.com

. Megabyte's selection of storage news
10 years editing the storage news on
STORAGEsearch.com hadn't aged
Megabyte one little bit.
the Fastest SSDs
the Top 10 SSD OEMs
the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap
Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps?
RAM versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?
SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
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Storage news
New SSD is a Zillion Times Faster than a Hard Drive

Leading UK Storage VAD Turns 20

8 Months Later 2.5" Flash SSD Price 6x Lower

SiliconSystems Opens Office in People's Republic of China

New Models from Solid Access Technologies

STORAGEsearch.com Pageviews Up 20%

Chip Leaders Plan Move to 450mm Wafers

HDD & SSD Reliability Event

Adtron Samples 2.5" 128GB SLC SSDs

New 1.0" SSD HDD Directory

WD Reports 43% HDD Revenue Growth

BakBone Certified with Data Domain

Nirvanix Rains on Amazon's S3

Seagate First to Ship a Giga Hard Drives

Downtime for Upline?

All Roads Lead to Rome for Memopal PC Online Backup

WD Ships Fastest SATA HDD

For Sale - RAM Company with Long Pedigree

New $1.1 billion RAM Company

New Directory - PCIe SSDs

STEC Announces Fast 1" SSD

Iomega Hard Drives Games Market

Unveiling the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap

Hitachi Claims Biggest 15K RPM HDD

Seagate Steps Towards Failing the SSD Market Challenge

earlier news (archive)
RAM based SSDs
RAM SSDs
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Nibble:- Whatever Happened to Optical Storage?
Editor:- when I started STORAGEsearch.com in 1998 there was a lot of industry excitement about the promise of optical storage.

Marketers in optical storage companies set the hype volume at a high level - which was necessary in those days for anyone to be heard above the din of the dotcom boom.

It was not uncommon to read claims like:-
  • "Our optical disks will offer more capacity than hard drives." and / or
  • "Our new optical storage will be faster than hard disks." and / or
  • "Optical storage will replace tape and disks as the primary backup medium."
Although hundreds of millions of dollars got poured into such ventures (a small dribble compared to the the multi-billion dollar VC storage stream) nothing very significant ever came out the other end. And certainly nothing approaching the aspirations of the industry.

The optical storage industry has settled into a comfortable sort of middle age couch potato early retirement. Instead of offering revolutionary products - they're mostly content churning out bits of shiny plastic for delivering music or movies.

There are still some comnpanies flogging the dead horse of optical backup and archiving. But for most users - the proposition of backing up a single hard disk onto 10 or more optical ones - doesn't sound like a better way to do things.

Every couple of years - the rallying cries from the old pretenders (or new ones) of optical storage are heard again. But after a few flurries and flag waving press releases - they go quiet and nothing more is heard.

If anything does happen to change that - I'll let you know on these news pages.
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Top 20 Storage Articles on STORAGEsearch.com?
The top 20 most popular articles on STORAGEsearch.com in April 2008 - were as follows...
  1. the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide
  2. Understanding Flash SSD Performance (pdf)
  3. the Fastest SSDs
  4. the Top 10 SSD OEMs
  5. War of the Disks: Hard Drives vs. Flash SSDs
  6. SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
  7. NAS, DAS or SAN? - Choosing the Technology
  8. Data Backup: Tape vs. Disk
  9. Flash Memory vs. Hard Disks - Which Will Win?
  10. the Benefits of SAS for External Subsystems
  11. RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?
  12. the 10 biggest storage companies in 2008
  13. LVD, SE, HVD, SCSI compatibility
  14. What's a Solid State Disk?
  15. Disk to Disk Backup vs Tape - War or Truce?
  16. Solid State Disks - Market Adoption Model
  17. How Solid is Hard Disk's Future?
  18. SSD Market History
  19. Increasing Flash Solid State Disk Reliability
  20. the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap
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Solid State Disks for banks
from Dynamic Solutions International
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Squeak! - the Fastest Solid State Disks

Speed isn't everything, and it comes at a price.
But if you do need the speediest SSD then wading through the web sites of over 75 current SSD oems to find a suitable candidate slows you down.

And the SSD search problem will get even worse.
the Fastest Solid State Disks
I predict there will be over 100 SSD oems in 2008.

I've done the research for you to save you time. And this page is updated daily from storage news and direct inputs from oems. ...read the article,
.
Nibble:- Choosing the Storage News page which works best for You

The storage news jungle is vast and it's easy to get lost in it. Here's a simple guide to help to understand how to find the best news page for your needs in the labrynthine archives of STORAGEsearch.com

Starting point: - where am I now?

The page you're viewing now, is our main storage news page.

All news on STORAGEsearch.com filters through this page. That's good if you're interested in the whole $200 billion storage market - but most people are interested in news about just a couple of topics at a time.

News about specialist storage topics can be found on most of the subdirectories / storage magazines listed on our home page.

If, for example your main interest is in news about hard disk drives, storage chips, NAS or people in the storage news then those pages are the best ones for you..

There are over 50 storage topics (or magazines) in which you can read a summary of the latest news, see a list of related articles and a list of all manufacturers / ISVs in that market segment. Going to the specialist magazines on STORAGEsearch.com gives you more of the information you want, but just as important, gives you less of the stuff you're not interested in.

There are many reasons why you might be interested to read older archived storage news.

Maybe you've been on vacation and want to catch up, or perhaps you're new to the market or doing market research, or researching subjects for an article.

Our storage history directory gives you access to thousands of news items we've covered since January 2000, and also includes summary features for most years.

Our main news page is updated daily. Other magazine pages are typically updated daily, weekly or monthly depending how many news events happen in that neck of the woods. If you see old news on this page - try refreshing your browser. We don't use cookies - so sometimes your browser may show older information from cache.

We've been a directory publisher in the storage market since 1992, and there has never been a more exciting time in this market. We hope you enjoy our content and hope you've found this short note useful.
Editor:- May 7, 2008 - in a new article published today on STORAGEsearch.com called - "How Much Hay Has Your Car Been Eating Lately?" - I bemoan the tired old comparisons of server SSD IOPS to HDDs. SSDs have been around for long enough now to drop those worn out old comparisons from which we never learned anything very useful in the first place. ...read the article


London - May 7, 2008 - CMS Peripherals today officially celebrates 20 years in business. Founded in 1988, CMS Peripherals is the largest independent value-added distributor of information storage products and solutions in the U with anual revenue of approx $250 million. ...CMS Peripherals profile, UK Storage VARs, Storage History


San Jose, Calif - May 6, 2008 - Super Talent Technology today launched a new line of MasterDrive 2.5" SATA MLC flash SSDs. The 120GB model has R/W speeds upto 120/40 MB/sec and a price tag of $699. Proprietary wear-leveling algorithms extend the life of these SSDs to over 65 years @ 50GB write-erase/day. ...Super Talent Technology profile

Editor's comments:-
in less than 8 months the price of a 120GB SSD from Super Talent has reduced by a factor of more than 6x - down to $699 for the new models compared to $4,499 in September 2007.


ALISO VIEJO, Calif - May 6, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that it has expanded its Asia-Pacific operations by establishing an office in Shanghai, the company's first in the People's Republic of China. The new office will play a critical role in supporting the burgeoning demand for SiliconSystems' industry-leading SiliconDrive technology in China and Taiwan. Yu Yuan Tang, a 21-year industry veteran, will head the new office.

"OEMs throughout the Asia-Pacific region have embraced the use of SiliconSystems' SiliconDrive technology, resulting in tremendous year-on-year revenue growth for the company throughout the entire region," said Michael Hajeck, CEO at SiliconSystems. "Opening an office in China will allow SiliconSystems to closely collaborate with its globally distributed, netcom, embedded system, industrial, military and medical, OEM customers throughout their entire product development and deployment cycle." ...SiliconSystems profile


Newburyport, Mass - May 6, 2008 - Solid Access Technologies today announced higher capacity models in its 2U rackmount line of RAM SSDs. The 128GB model (price $75,000) is shipping now. The 256GB models will ship next month. Both models are part of the USSD 200 product line - which dramatically increases server efficiency by recovering CPU cycles formally lost in I/O wait cycles. They deliver random read/write performance of 95,000 IOPS using a single Fibre Channel link and over 70,000 IOPS using SAS. Access time is under 10 microseconds

"For applications facing critical performance demands that can't be serviced by decades old spindle-based storage, ultra-fast SSD is emerging as a weapon of choice to improve lagging storage speed," said Solid Access Managing Partner, Tomas Havrda. ...Solid Access Technologies profile, rackmount SSDs


Editor:- May 6, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com today updated its monthly list of the top subjects viewed by storage searchers in April. The top 5 subjects were:-

(1) - Disk to disk backup - no change
(2) - Solid state disks - no change
(3) - 2.5 inch SSDs - up 2 places
(4) - Hard drives - no change
(5) - NAS - down 2 places

Overall pageviews grew 20% compared to the year ago period. More info about the top 20 subjects and articles can be viewed on the market research page


May 5, 2008 - Intel, Samsung Electronics and TSMC today announced they have reached agreement on the need for industry-wide collaboration to target a transition to larger, 450mm-sized wafers starting in 2012. Historically, manufacturing with larger wafers eventually produces semiconductors at a lower cost. The total silicon surface area of a 450mm wafer and the number of printed die (individual computer chips, for example) is more than twice that of a 300mm wafer.


Editor:- May 2, 2008 - Here's news about an upcoming IDEMA event - "Hard Disk and SSD Reliability - The Pursuit of Excellence" - May 15 in Sunnyvale, CA.

This IDEMA Symposium will address HDD reliability; the physics, mathematics, and statistics of its assessment, HDD design for reliability, field performance experience of storage users and finally the HDD production environment and supporting metrology to maximize yields and minimize reliability detractors. Also included will be a similar discussion relative to SSD product reliability. Price is $455 for non members. ...IDEMA profile, Storage Events, Storage Reliability, Storage Industry Trade Associations


FREMONT, CA - April 29, 2008 - SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. today announced the release of "true" industrial-grade 2.5" SSDs by its subsidiary, Adtron Corp. Based on the latest 8Gb Flash technology, these new PATA / SATA drives feature densities up to 128GB, the highest density available in the industry for SLC SSDs in a 2.5-inch (9.5mm-high) form factor.

By leveraging the latest 50nm 8Gb flash technology, these new SSDs offer higher density, reduced height and lower price than before. Available in configurations of 32, 64, and 128GB, the new A25FB-3 and I25FB-3 drives offer sustained performance of up to 72MB/s read and 57MB/s write.

The new SSDs are tested to meet a "true" industrial-grade standard, which includes 8 hours of comprehensive test while temperature is cycled through its rated range. In addition, the drives are certified to meet a wide range of environmental requirements, including temperature, shock, vibration, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), altitude, and current defense industry standards, making them well suited for applications requiring industrial-grade storage solutions.

"Advances in Flash technology continue to drive new applications," explained Wade Campbell, Director, SSD Marketing and Product Management. "With their increased density and improved price/performance, these new drives enable us to deliver an even wider range of industrial-grade applications in the defense and industrial markets. They also provide a base platform for higher performance SSDs that we expect to release in the coming months."

Early access A25FB-3 SATA SSD units are available now, with general availability expected by mid-summer. The I25FB-3 PATA SSDs are scheduled for general availability in calendar Q3 2008. ...Adtron profile, ...SMART Modular Technologies profile


Editor:- April 28, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article and directory related to 1.0" (and smaller) Storage Drives. Once the exclusive preserve of the military, spooks and space scientists this market is now dominated by the needs of shoppers for consumer lifestyle and entertainment gadgets - with market volume projections resembling international phone numbers. ...read the article


LAKE FOREST, Calif - April 24, 2008 - Western Digital Corp. today reported that hard drive revenue grew by 43% for the quarter ending March 28 compared to the year ago period. Overall revenue was $2.1 billion comprised of $2.022 billion of hard drive revenue and $89 million of revenue from media and substrate sales. Net income was $280 million.

"The hard drive market continued to demonstrate strong year-on-year unit growth of 16% in the March quarter, while exhibiting an expected seasonal decline of 8.6% from the exceptionally strong December quarter, as anticipated in our guidance issued in January" said John Coyne, WD president and CEO. "Our March quarter revenues demonstrate strong customer preference for the WD value proposition... We remain very enthusiastic about our opportunities in the fast-growing hard drive industry in the years ahead." ...WD profile

Editor's comments:-
these results confirm that Seagate, which announced lower revenue growth of 10% for the same quarter, is losing market share within the overall hard disk market. That's not a problem it can fix by hiring lawyers to sue SSD companies.


Reading, UK - April 23, 2008 - BakBone Software is now certified with Data Domain. Working together they now offer the ability to use Data Domain systems as NAS or as a VTL within a NetVault environment, D2D2T (Disk to Disk to Tape backup) and reduced backup windows. ...BakBone profile, ...Data Domain profile


SAN DIEGO - April 22, 2008 - Nirvanix today announced a 30-day free trial promotion for users who want to test its online storage service. Nirvanix also announced the availability of its 'Amazon S3 Migration Tool' which enables the easy migration of files from an Amazon Simple Storage Service account while preserving folder structures.

"For a company with just 50 terabytes of archived data, for instance, this fee holiday can mean a setup savings of well over $9,000 to move to the world's fastest, most reliable cloud storage platform in the world" said Jonathan Buckley, Chief Marketing Officer with Nirvanix. ...Nirvanix profile, online backup and storage


SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif - April 22, 2008 - Seagate Technology announced it is the first hard drive manufacturer to have shipped 1 billion hard drives. Seagate says that although it took 29 years to reach the 1 billion milestone, it will ship its next billion in less than 5 years. Also, by the time its nearest competitor reaches 1 billion drives shipped, Seagate will already be close to shipping its second billion. According to Gartner, in 2007 alone more than 500 million drives were shipped, compared to 1990, when slightly less than 30 million were shipped. ...Seagate profile

Editor's comments:-
I forgot to check if there's a footnote somewhere defining a "billion". You've got to be so careful nowadays to get the right meaning for once arcane big number adjectives (like Giga) when they seep into the public domain and get misunderstood.


Editor:- April 22, 2008 - an article on InformationWeek discusses problems which led to a shutdown of HP's new online storage service called Upline,


Rome, Italy - April 22, 2008 - today Memopal announced details of its online backup service for XP and Vista PCs. Memopal offers 250GB of space for archiving your files and many other services for $99 per year. Memopal works in real time. Whenever you save a file it is backed up online making it available immediately. Memopal has geographic RAID 5 technology, which provides triple-copy storage in 3 different continents so that files are even protected against natural disasters. ...Memopal profile


LAKE FOREST, CALIF - April 21, 2008 - WD said it is now shipping the fastest SATA hard drives. At under $300 MSRP the 300GB 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class mechanics encased in a heat sink that fits into a standard 3.5" system bay. ...WD profile

Editor's comments:-
"fast" claims like this have to be seen in an almost legalese PR copywriting context. 15,000 RPM HDDs are faster - although they don't have a SATA interface. Many 3.5" SSDs are faster, and do have a SATA interface, but cost more.


Editor:- April 21, 2008 - do you want to buy a RAM maker? Qimonda is up for sale according to its owner Infineon . The company generated net sales of Euro 3.6 billion in its financial year 2007 and had approximately 13,500 employees worldwide.

Back in March 2006 - when the new name Qimonda was first announced - I wrote a short article Siemens Semiconductors? Infineon Technologies? Qimonda? the names change but the problems remain the same.


Boise, Idaho - April 21, 2008 - Micron Technology, Inc. and Nanya Technology Corp announced today that the 2 companies have signed an agreement to create MeiYa Technology Corp a new DRAM joint venture. The partnership will leverage both Micron and Nanya's manufacturing technology, strengths and experience. As part of the joint venture, a 200mm Nanya manufacturing facility in Taiwan will be upgraded to 300mm technology starting this year, with the facility coming online for production in 2009. In addition to MeiYa, the parties will jointly develop and share future technology.

Both parent companies will own 50% of the joint venture initially, and each will contribute $550 million in cash by the end of 2009. ...Micron profile, ...Nanya profile


Editor:- April 21, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article and directory of PCIe SSDs. It lists all oems who make these products, includes related news and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of bus connected SSDs. ...read the article


SANTA ANA, Calif - April 21, 2008 - STEC, Inc. announced the MACH4 - a 1" SATA / PATA SSD. The MACH4 is fast:- with sustained sequential reads upto 90MB/s and writes upto 55MB/s. It's expected to be in mass production at the end of April in capacities up to 32GB. Projected OEM pricing for the 8GB capacity point is $45.

"For the numerous applications which were historically challenged by the severe limitations of 1 inch HDDs, STEC is now offering a much more cost-effective, higher capacity and higher reliability alternative..." said STEC's Patrick Wilkison. ...STEC profile


SAN DIEGO - April 17, 2008 - Iomega Corp today announced availability of the new Iomega Media Xporter Drive, a $119.95 160GB game-oriented portable hard drive. The USB powered drive connects to ports on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 to give gaming enthusiasts a convenient new way to enjoy music, digital movies, and photos through the family game console, without the need of a PC or digital media adapter. It also includes software for converting file formats not natively supported by the game consoles. ...Iomega profile


Editor:- April 17, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article today called - the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap. A few weeks ago a reader asked a very good question. "Is there an industry roadmap for future flash SSD performance?"

That prompted other questions like... How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009? or 2012? What are the technology factors which relate to throughput and IOPS? And how much faster will they be than today.

There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay scattered all across this web site and in my many discussions about the market... But I agreed there should be a single place on the web where these answers could be found. Forget Moore's Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article


SAN JOSE, Calif - April 16, 2008 - Hitachi today said it will be shipping the highest capacity 15K RPM hard drives later this quarter. The Ultrastar 15K450 with 450GB of storage capacity will ship with either 3Gb/s SAS or 4Gb/s Fibre Channel interfaces. ...Hitachi profile

Editor's notes:-
later this week - a Reuters news story commented on Hitachi's future strategy for its HDD business unit.


Editor:- April 15, 2008 - Seagate Technology has filed a patent suit against STEC according to a report in the New York Times. Seagate is claiming that SSDs made by STEC may infringe Seagate patents related to disk interfaces and flash technology.

In an article published earlier this year Why Seagate will Fail the SSD Challenge I explored the business options available for Seagate in the flash SSD market. This move against STEC is in line with that analysis (and conclusion).

It's not unusual for Seagate to sue companies which it sees threatening its hard disk business. Earlier in this decade the business development of hard disk startup Cornice was first slowed down in the courts by suits from Seagate and WD before it was killed off by flash memory.

You can see what some other SSD analysts have to say on this subject in these article links.

Gregory Wong, at Forward Insights says "It's hard to see the financial motivation behind such a move..."

Jim Handy, at Objective Analysis looks at the weight of the patent arsenal but says that SSD Purchasers shouldn't worry. "In such dealings the plaintiff (Seagate in this case) usually will try to collect somewhat equivalent royalties from all players.."

Don Clark reminds us of an earlier patent dispute in the HDD market "that Rodime began in 1992, which ended after Seagate agreed to pay the Scottish company $45 million in 2000..."

...Later:- STEC dismissed the claims in these terms.

STEC is one of the first companies to build (flash) SSDs, having designed, manufactured and shipped SSDs as early as 1994, long before any of the suggested patents were issued to Seagate.

Given the effect SSDs are having on the HDD market, STEC believes that Seagate's lawsuit is completely without merit and primarily motivated by competitive concerns rather than a desire to protect its intellectual property.

STEC believes that Seagate's action is a desperate move to disrupt how aggressively customers are embracing STEC's Zeus-IOPS technology and changing the balance of power in enterprise storage. Seagate is sending a clear signal that it recognizes STEC as the leader in the SSD business and is attempting to slow down part of the growth that STEC is gaining through its SSD offering, particularly in the enterprise segment. STEC will aggressively pursue its defense to this infringement action.
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