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ioSafe Launches
Disaster Proof Backup SSD
Editor:- January 5, 2010 - ioSafe launched the
ioSafe Solo SSD - an ultra rugged
USB /
eSATA
external
flash SSD with
upto 256GB capacity ($1,250) designed to provide data protection against
disasters such as fire, flood, and building collapse.
ioSafe offers
a "no questions asked"
Data Recovery policy
to help customers recover from any data disaster including accidental deletion,
virus or physical disaster.
"The new ioSafe Solo SSD is the world's most rugged and versatile
desktop external hard drive. It can be used alone or in conjunction with any
offsite or online backup
strategy to add real time, zero data loss, synchronous disaster protection to
any data that sits vulnerable," said ioSafe CEO, Robb Moore.
Digital Video Cameras get 250GB Adapter
Editor:-
December 2, 2009 - Maxell
announced imminent availability of a new digital video camera adapter ( $1,500)
- the iVDR VC102 designed to operate with its
Firewire compatible
250GB iVDR EX rugged drive ($289).
Operating
off a rechargeable, internal battery, it will operate for up to 90 minutes of
nonstop recording. iVDR news
VAIOs get SanDisk SSDs
Editor:- November 3, 2009 -
SanDisk
announced
that its 64GB
(9,000
vRPM) pSSD module has been selected as a standard SSD option in
Sony's
new VAIO X ultra-thin laptop.
RDX QuikStor Now 640GB
Editor:- October 27, 2009 -
Tandberg Data
now offers a 640GB model in its
RDX
QuikStor cartridge "10 year data life"
removable disk archive
product line.
This is 28% more than the previous maximum 500GB
capacity model. Tandberg Data has shipped more than 150,000 RDX QuikStor drives
and more than 450,000 compatible cartridges worldwide. disk to disk backup
Editor's
comments:- You may not be impressed by the capacity - but
reliability is more
important than density for backup
applications.
Originally launched in
November 2005 - "RDX
uses a patent-pending error correcting format, which makes the data 1,000x
more recoverable than in a standard
hard drive. This means
that RDX-stored data will be readable even after the cartridge has been archived
and non-operating more than a decade."
In comparison - if you use
standard hard drives for removable disk archiving my own experience is that
50% are unreadable after 4 years and 80% are unusable after 6 years.
Dane-Elec Unveils USB 3 SSDs
Editor:- October 19,
2009 - Dane-Elec
Memory announced it will start shipping a range of USB 3 compatible
external SSDs with 250MB/s throughput in December.
These new products
leverage
Intel's flash SSDs.
Dane-Elec will also be offering USB 3.0-compatible adapters for desktops with
PCIe slots and laptops with PCIXpress slots.
Intel Walks the SSD Notebook Talk
Editor:- September
14, 2009 - Intel
has published a case study about the productivity benefits of using
SSDs
instead of hard drives in business notebooks.
Following an
internal evaluation Intel says it will deploy up to 10,000
SSD notebooks
this year to its own employees.
- Benefits to users include:- increased productivity, reduced data loss and
drive-related errors, and lower thermal footprint for more comfortable use.
- Benefits to IT include:- faster malware scans, better performance with less
RAM, and extended battery life cycle.
Despite the higher cost of SSDs -
Intel concluded that the case for replacing notebook HDDs (which averaged 4.9%
annual failure rate according to its own experience) - was "compelling".
...read
the article (pdf)
Sonnet Launches Camera to Hard Drive Transfer Module
Editor:-
September 10, 2009 - Sonnet
Technologies today announced the
Qio
professional universal media reader/writer.
It's a convenient
high speed alternative to stand-alone card readers,
SATA controllers and
various adapters, combining their functionality in a compact rugged case, and
fulfilling the data handling needs of videographers with multiple cameras using
different memory card formats.
We talked to many customers who had combinations of Sony, Panasonic
and Red cameras who wanted some way to transfer the data from any of them at
full speed to hard drives,
needed drive-to-drive copy capability, and desired a compact, portable, rugged,
and battery-operable package," said Robert Farnsworth, CEO of Sonnet
Technologies. "The Qio does this and more!." Removable Storage
Verbatim Acquires Freecom
Editor:- September 3, 2009
- Verbatim's
parent company (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd) has
acquired Freecom Technologies.
The
Freecom acquisition represents yet another investment made by the MKM/Verbatim
group aimed at the growing external
hard disk drive market. The asset acquisition of
SmartDisk, made in
June 2007, has proved successful in establishing MKM/Verbatim in both the
portable and desktop external HDD markets on a global basis.
Editor's
comments:- Although virtually unknown outside Europe, Freecom was founded 20
years ago in 1989. Its acquisition is sandwiched between FolderShare and
FreeDiskSpace.com in our list of 499
gone-away storage
companies. Who will be the 500th? It's probably happening as you read this.
WD's 2.5" TB USB HDD
Editor:- July 27, 2009 -Western Digital is
shipping a new 3 platter, 2.5" terabyte
mobile hard drive.
The
WD Scorpio
Blue is 12.5 mm high, has a
USB interface and costs
$249.99
SaberTooth SSD Bites into Eee PC Upgrade Market
Editor:-
July 15, 2009 -
Active Media
launched its
SaberTooth
brand of SATA Mini PCIe MLC flash SSD cards as upgrades for Asus Eee PCs. R/W
speeds are upto 155MB/s and 100MB/s respectively. The 64GB model costs
$219.95.
The company's marketing VP - Jerry Thomson says "SaberTooth
SSDs deliver read and write speeds that are up to 5x faster than stock
storage devices in the Eee PC. Upgrading gives users a huge performance boost..."
Notebook SSD Market Overview - is not pretty
Editor:-
June 15, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
published a new article today called -
Overview of
the Notebook SSD Market.
There's a simple way to summarize
the complex view of the SSD Notebook / Netbook market.
Lots of
initial hype and optimism that the market would deliver an astonishingly
new product experience to users, followed by dismay and disillusion due to
a flurry of poorly conceived, badly designed and ineptly executed products.
...read the
article
2 New Storage Interface Standards
Editor:- June 11,
2009 - this month there have been 2 developments on the
storage standards front.
Version 2.0 of ExpressCard
- will be 10x faster than the previous version. This will mainly benefit
ExpressCard SSDs.
FCoE is now a
draft standard. To learn more
read the
(unreadable) T11 document (pdf). If, like me, you ever wondered what the
difference was between this and the much older FCIP - this
2007
InfoWorld article explains. |
|
| PhotoFast
Announces Faster 1.8" Notebook SSDs |
| Editor:- May 27,
2009 - PhotoFast
launched its G-Monster 1.8"
SATA SSD with
internal 64MB DRAM cache
and upto 128GB capacity. |
| .................................................................. |
.. |
 |
| It supports R/W speeds upto
230MB/s and 160MB/s respectively. The company says - what's important in this
type of notebook product is not just sequential R/W throughput for large blocks
- but also write performance for small random blocks. It claims its 12MB/s (for
4KB blocks) is best in class. |
| |
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Toshiba Takes
the High Ground in Notebook SSD Wars
Editor:- May 14, 2009 -
Toshiba announced
today it is offering
512GB SSDs
as an option in notebooks for the Japanese market.
The new,
Toshiba-developed 512GB SSD employs a 2-bit-per-cell
MLC flash memory -
which gives 4x the capacity of SLC flash used in industrial and
enterprise SSDs for the same silicon wafer footprint.
One of the
failures of the SSD
market in 2008 was the low performance of SSDs integrated in notebooks.
Toshiba's new notebook seems to address that market failure . The company says
its new SSD controller
boosts data throughput figures of 230MB/s reads and 180MB/s writes.
New ExpressCard SSDs Directory
Editor:- March 17,
2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new directory on the subject of
ExpressCard SSDs.
Until
now - the list of ExpressCard SSD vendors has been buried in a table in the
SSD Guide.
It's still a small market. But what really distinguishes the ExpressCard SSD
market, is that it's the easiest way for users to perform an SSD upgrade on
their own notebooks. ...read the article
Pretec Samples Highest Capacity ExpressCard SSD
Editor:-
March 3, 2009 -
Pretec Electronics
announced
today it is sampling a 128GB ExpressCard
SSD for the notebook market with 38/30MB/s R/W speeds and hardware encryption.
Volume shipments are expected next month.
Hitachi GST Buys Desktop SSD Company
SAN
JOSE, Calif. - February 23, 2009 - Hitachi GST today announced that
it has agreed to acquire Fabrik, Inc. whose leading storage brands
include G-Technology and SimpleTech.
Financial
details of the transaction were not disclosed. Closing of the acquisition, which
is subject to customary conditions, is expected to occur early in the 2nd
quarter of 2009. Fabrik's business will continue intact and form the core of
Hitachi GST's newly-formed external storage business.
Hitachi GST will
fully support the G-Technology and SimpleTech product lines, building upon their
success and differentiation in the market. The combined company will also
leverage operational, technical and product development resources, distribution
channels and global reach to accelerate delivery of a full portfolio of
traditional hard drives,
solid state drives and
branded personal and professional storage products. ...Hitachi GST profile
...G-Technology profile |
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| ZoneLoc
Prevents flash SSD Data Walking into the Wrong Hands |
Phoenix, Arizona - February
12, 2009 - White Electronic Designs Corp announced a new technology -
ZoneLoc - which automatically desanitizes a flash SSD to military standards
- when the device is moved outside a specified operating zone - to prevent data
falling into enemy hands.
The boundary can be tied to a fixed
location or made to be portable for mobile applications. ZoneLoc has
configurable features and options, including audible warnings, programmable
response times, wireless remote purging and sensitivity modes. Because the
protected device takes its own action, autonomously, security is guaranteed.
...White Electronic
Designs profile, Storage
Security, Disk
Sanitizers | |
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| Can You Trust Your Flash
SSD's Specs? |
Editor:- I've noticed is that
the published specs of
flash SSDs change
a lot -from the time a product they are first announced, then when they're
being sampled, and later again when they are in volume production.
Sometimes
the headline numbers get better, sometimes they get worse. There are many good
reasons for this.
The product which you carefully qualified may
not be identical to the one that's going into your production line for a
variety of reasons... ...read the article | |
| . |
| Z's Laws - Predicting
Future Flash SSD Performance |
A few months ago a
reader asked me 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?, 2010? or 2012?
- What are the technology factors which relate to flash SSD throughput and
IOPS?
- How close will flash SSDs get to
RAM SSD performance?
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many one on one discussions with readers 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 | | |
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the
Dangers of Removable Storage Media - article by Pointsec
In
the early
James
Bond films of the 1960s, viewers were introduced to an array of implausible
(at the time) portable high tech spy gadgets. Nowadays we know from our own
everyday experience that something the size of a cigarette lighter can actually
be a video camera with its own wireless internet access.
The
proliferation of miniature high capacity storage devices creates a serious
problem for commercial and national security. This article provides an up to
date picture of the intrinsic dangers posed by current removable storage
technologies. ...read
the article, ...Pointsec
profile, Security,
Removable Storage | | |
