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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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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
G-Tech Launches Desktop SSD RAID for Macs
Macworld, San
Francisco - January 5, 2009 - G-Technology today announced a new
family of external drives based on 2.5" SSD technology.
The
G-DRIVE mini SSD has a FireWire and USB interface and costs $599 for 120GB and
$1,299 for 250GB.
The G-RAID mini SSD has
eSATA,
FireWire and
USB interfaces and upto
195MB/sec data transfer rates. Price is $2,199 for 500GB. ...G-Tech profile
Tandberg Marks 100,000 Disk Backup Systems Milestone
Oslo
Norway - December 8, 2008 - Tandberg Data has recently shipped its
100,000th RDX QuikStor (removable disk backup system) and more than 300 000
cartridges.
"Since its introduction (2 years ago) the
RDX QuikStor has conquered the removable disk market," says McClain Buggle,
product manager for disk and software at Tandberg Data.
"Removable hard disk drives
(R-HDD) are a cost-effective and convenient backup solution for SMBs" said
Robert Amatruda, research director at
IDC "Tandberg Data's
shipment of its 100,000th RDX QuikStor drive unit represents a significant
milestone for the company, and illustrates the increasing adoption of its RDX
technology in the marketplace."
...Tandberg profile,
Disk to disk backup
Sonnet Launches Speedy SATA ExpressCard for Notebooks
IRVINE,
CA - September 12, 2008 - Sonnet Technologies today announced the Tempo
SATA Pro ExpressCard/34, a dual port SATA host controller for notebooks.
It
enables users to connect from 1 to 10
SATA
hard drives to any
compatible notebook computer with an ExpressCard/34 or /54 slot. Suitable for
video capture and editing it supports sustained data throughput of up to
200MB/sec. OS compatibility includes MacBook Pro systems running Mac OS 10.5
and 10.4, as well as with notebooks running Windows Vista and XP SP2. The
Sonnet card will be available in October at a suggested retail price of
$299.95.
...Sonnet profile
Samsung's OneDRAM Accelerates Multimedia Phones
Seoul,
Korea - September 11, 2008 - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today
announced that its embedded memory, OneDRAM is being used in its new SGH-L870
handset was launched in Europe last month.
Samsung's single chip
OneDRAM receives data from the modem processor at 533MB/s and forwards it
to the application processor at 1.06GB/s which enables a 10x increase in the
data processing speeds between the 2 processors in mobile handsets. The OneDRAM
interface complies with the JEDEC low-power, double-data-rate and eliminates
the need for
DRAM and SRAM chips as
buffer memory.
...Samsung profile,
storage interface chips
Editor's
comments:-
OneDRAM
is a dual port RAM chip that reduces the PCB footprint and increases data
throughput between processors in a mobile phone. Dual port RAMs can
speedily solve tricky design problems and they let you optimise functional
blocks in a product with minimum interaction.
Imation Launches Half Terabyte Portable Drive
OAKDALE,
Minn. -July 30, 2008 - Imation Corp. now offers a 500GB 9.5 mm thick
2.5" HDD inside its line of Apollo external hard disk drive.
The USB-powered 500GB
Apollo portable hard drive has a midnight-black brushed surface with chrome
details. At just over a half an inch wide and weighing less than half a pound,
the drive easily fits in the palm of your hand. MSRP is $319.99.
...Imation profile,
Removable Storage
ProStor Expands RDX Capacity
BOULDER, Colo. -
June 2, 2008 - ProStor Systems today announced that its RDX removable
disks are now available with upto 500GB native capacity.
(Previously
the maximum capacity was 300GB.) With a current installed base of more than
75,000 end users worldwide, ProStor says its RDX backup solutions have
captured 90% of the removable disk market for business server and workstation
backup. Unlike tape drives
which introduce incompatibility with each new generation and require the
purchase of a new system, RDX docks and cartridge capacities are fully
compatible and interchangeable. ...ProStor profile,
Disk backup | |
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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 | |
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| 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... |
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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 | | |
