| USB
storage news |
animal brands in the SSD
market
Editor:- August 4, 2010 - StorageSearch.com today published
a new article -
animal brands in
the SSD market.
Examples discussed in the article range from
cute and cuddly animals through a menagerie of fast rugged and best friend
rugged SSDs, a regional curio and some real monsters. This is the 3rd in a 6
part series - Branding Strategies in the SSD Market. ...read the article
How can SSDs change your life? - the movie
Editor:-
July 19, 2010 - as an alternative to
SSD market research
- which is hard to digest, and those long powerpoints and complicated
spreadsheets can send you to sleep - Kingston's SSD
marketers have launched a
competition to learn how users might really benefit from using their SSDs.
It
involves uploading a video with the theme "How Can a Kingston® SSDNow
Drive Change Your Life?". 1st prize is $7,500. If your video wins - they
might use it promotions (but you won't get any royalties). See also:-
SSD videos -
StorageSearch.com's pick of the best on the web.
LaCie launches rugged USB flash stick
Editor:- July
13, 2010 - LaCie
today
launched a
rugged USB
flash drive - the
XtremKey - with upto 64GB capacity inside a 2mm metal pipe casing.
Sealed
with wear-resistant screw threads and a rubber O-ring, it is watertight up to
100meters. The LaCie XtremKey is also resistant to 5-meter drops, fierce heat
and bitter cold. Non operating temperature is claimed to be (+200°C / -50°).
R/W speeds are upto 40MB/s and 30MB/s respectively. ...watch the flash key abuse
video
Editor's comments:- The XtremKey is not
an SSD. If
you're not sure about the critical difference between a flash drive and a flash
SSD - it's wear leveling.
For
rugged HDD and SSD drives see
military storage. If
you liked the LaCie video - check out
ioSafe's video linked in
our SSD video page
- which inspired it
upgrading old PCs with new SSDs
Editor:- July 9,
2010 -
Upgrading
Old PCs with SSDs is a cautionary tale published on Denali Software's blog.
I've often told readers who asked me about this subject - that they
could be wasting their time trying to upgrade old notebooks with
PATA or
SATA SSDs - because
most of the speedup benefits - if any - will be lost by the latency damping
effects of cheap and slow bridge
chips on the motherboard - and that - unlike in a server - notebooks have
precious little CPU headroom.
It's nice to see these views are
shared by the author of this article who works for an
SSD IP vendor. ...read
the article
Seagate offers consumers 3TB USB HDD for under $250
Editor:-
June 29, 2010 - Seagatetoday
announced availability of the
3TB
GoFlex (under $250) - an
external desktop
FireWire /
USB 3.0
hard drive. |
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| WD launches
new TV media player for USB disks |
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Editor:- June 9, 2010 - Western Digital
introduced the
WD TV Live
Plus HD media player (US$149.99) which connects directly to a users' HDTV
and automatically converts and plays
many file
formats stored on a connected
USB drive.
(But
it doesn't support protected premium content such as movies or music from
iTunes.) |
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| The WiFi enabled box (via
optional extra USB adapter) also includes a user remote interface to the
Netflix online movie on demand service. | |
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RunCore's new Express Card
SSD
Editor:- March 1, 2010 - Among the many SSDs which RunCore will show
at CeBIT 2010 this week is an
Express Card
flash SSD designed for
notebooks
As
well as providing upto 64GB capacity (R/W speeds 120MB/s and 90MB/s) - the
Express 34 module also provides 2x
USB 3.0 ports with
connectors for linking the notebook to external devices. |
... |
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LaCie Launches Desktop USB
RAID
Editor:- January 26, 2010 - LaCie
launched
its "Enterprise"
range of desktop RAID
systems with eSATA
or USB or
FireWire connectivity.
"The
introduction of LaCie's Enterprise Class product range responds specifically to
niche industries such as creative professionals, as well as those in the
medical, legal, and accounting fields, who require highly robust and reliable
storage solutions to manage their digital assets," said Arnaud Prézelin,
LaCie Product Manager for Creative Pro Solutions.
Editor's
comments:- this is an "Enterprise" storage system in name only -
because it doesn't include redundant data paths or power supplies. It's best to
think of it as a stylish, high capacity, consumer DAS.
IDC Tallies SSD Shipments
Editor:- January 20, 2010 - IDC
says that
SSD shipments in
2009 exceeded
11 million units, an increase of 14% year over year.
Looking forward, IDC says it expects SSD adoption will continue to experience
tangible growth in 2010 and beyond, with shipments expected to achieve a
compound annual growth rate of 54% over the 2008-2013 forecast period.
Solid State
Drives - market research & analysts
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.
OCZ will show Symwave based USB 3.0 SSD at CES
Editor:-
November 24, 2009 -
Symwave today
announced that
its USB 3.0 controller
has been designed into a new
flash SSD by
OCZ - which will be
shown at CES in January 2010.
Editor's
comments:- Symwave's controller design includes a fully integrated USB 3.0 to
SATA controller
device (SoC with software) - making it easier to adapt existing designs for
SATA SSDs. It's very
fast. In September 2009 - Symwave demonstrated
270MB/s
R/W throughput for its new USB 3.0 controller.
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.
USB 3.0 SSDs Coming Soon
Editor:- October 5, 2009 -
Active Media
Products today announced imminent shipments of its
Aviator
312 line of bus powered fast
USB 3.0 external
SSDs with R/W speeds upto
240MB/s and 160MB/s respectively.
Measuring less than 3" long and
only 0.2" thin, the A312 is smaller than a credit card and is designed to
fit in a pocket. Capacity options include:- 16GB ($89), 32GB ($119) and 64GB
($209).
Jerry Thomson, VP of sales at Active Media Products commented, "Aviator
312 SSDs are a ground-breaking product with performance that is 8 to 10x faster
than today's fastest USB 2.0 flash drives."
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. | |
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| USB
Storage Milestones from
Storage History
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The USB (for Universal
Serial Bus) is a low cost serial bus which, when originally shipped in
1996
(USB 1.0), provided upto 12Mb/S. That's about 100x faster than the
RS-232
style serial interfaces used in earlier generations of computers which it
replaced.
The USB is now widely used in Macs, PC's and even Linux
systems. USB is typically used to connect devices such as printers, scanners,
keyboards, digital cameras, MP3 players and external storage devices.
In
June 2002, Intel and others started to demonstrate
USB 2.0, which increases the speed of the peripheral to PC connection
from 12 megabits per second (Mbps) on USB 1.1 to up to 480 Mbps on USB 2.0, or
40 times faster than with the older technology.
USB 3.0 - which
at 5Gbps is
10x faster than USB 2.0 - was originally expected to be available in
the summer of 2008. Instead shipments started in December 2009. It
offers throughput similar to
eSATA 2.0 - upto
approx 300MB/s.
The article -
USB 3.0 - A simple idea
full of challenges - summarizes the problems facing chip designers hoping
to achieve 5Gbps on cheap USB cables.
What if you're stuck with a USB 2 notebook and need fast cheap
external storage now?
Some companies, such as
Dane-Elec Memory,
are marketing USB 3.0 adapters.
Another solution - for those who want
to get more performance out of legacy USB 2.0
flash memory sticks is
to look at USB SuperCharger Software
from EasyCo which can
apparently speed up writes by 2x to about 5x.
eSATA is another option
- although for most notebooks it too - requires an adapter card.
Finally
AoE storage provides a
way for consumers to hook up a storage
network using their inbuilt ethernet - which may be easier to set up than
traditional NAS. | | |
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| SSD Pricing -
where does all the money go? |
SSDs are among the most
expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.
Understanding
the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
 |
...not made any easier when
market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read
the article | | | |
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| SSD encryption - does
it hurt? |
Editor:- a reader asked me a
good question...
Does SSD encryption hurt performance and
reliability? |
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SSD Bookmarks series
suggestions
by - Kevin T Crow, Strategy Specialist,
NAND Solutions Group,
Intel |
Here's an article written by or
about Intel
Enterprise-wide
Deployment of Notebook PCs with Solid-State Drives
Kevin says he
chose this article because "It will give the reader an overview of the
benefits experienced by the enterprise after deploying notebooks with solid
state drives."
The article is a case study about the productivity benefits of using
SSD based notebooks instead of hard drive notebooks inside an enterprise
(Intel). Following an internal evaluation Intel found the benefits so "compelling"
that it decided to deploy up to 10,000 SSD notebooks to its own employees.
Other SSD article suggestions...
The SSD
Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD - published by
AnandTech
Kevin says "This
is the latest in a long series of
reviews
that compare solid state drives and discusses the technology behind them.
Overall the series does a very good job educating the reader on what they need
to know when making a solid state drive purchase decision."
Editor:-
thanks Kevin for sharing your SSD links.
see also:-
Intel
- editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com | | | |
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