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- Optical Storage
Three Korean Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc. (HLDS) executives have agreed to plead guilty and to serve prison time in the United States for their participation in a series of conspiracies to rig bids and fix prices for the sale of optical disk drives, the Department of Justice announced today.
According to the felony charges filed today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Young Keun Park, Sang Hun Kim and Sik Hur, aka Daniel Hur, conspired with co-conspirators to suppress and eliminate competition by rigging bids for optical disk drives sold to Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) and/or fixing prices for optical disk drives sold to Microsoft Corporation. The three HLDS executives participated in the conspiracies at various times between approximately November 2005 and September 2009. Under the plea agreement, Park and Kim each have agreed to serve eight months in prison and Hur has agreed to serve seven months in prison. Each has also agreed to pay a $25,000 criminal fine. HLDS is a joint venture between Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese corporation, and LG Electronics Inc., a Republic of Korea corporation.
“Today’s plea agreements demonstrate the Antitrust Division’s continued commitment to protect competition in the high tech industry,” said Sharis A. Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. “The division will continue to pursue and prosecute those who participate in bid-rigging and price-fixing conspiracies that harm businesses and consumers in the optical disk drive industry.”
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One month after launching its new Pogoplug Cloud service, Pogoplug has announced the next generation of its flagship cloud expansion device: Pogoplug Series 4.
Pogoplug's free Pogoplug Cloud service gives users 5GB of online cloud storage optimized for mobile phones and tablets. New users can sign up directly from their phone to create their free Pogoplug Cloud account.
Pogoplug Series 4 allows users to add unlimited cloud capacity to their Pogoplug account by hosting their own storage, with no monthly fees or limits. The high-performance Pogoplug Series 4 model provides plug-and-play support for Seagate® GoFlex™ external drives and other storage products that have adopted the new Universal Storage Module standard (USM), as well as the following inputs:
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PQI, a leading manufacturer of storage and memory devices, has announced a aesthetically pleasing USB flash drive - i817L - with the exclusive intelligent stick interface featuring a auto-closing protective shield to provide data safety.
The stylish i817L's body mimics the sleek, clean cut form of a surfboard while maintaining the durability to handle the accident-prone ruggedness of day to day usage. The smooth yet sturdy intelligent stick interface of the i817L is easily pulled back with the thumb so to be inserted into a USB port. Just as simply when the i817L is removed this innovative barrier automatically springs back into place providing safety and eliminating any concern of losing the cap. Thanks to i817L's intelligent stick design and chip-on-board(COB) technology, waterproof, dustproof, and anti-shock capabilities are ensured. Along with the fully plug and play feature, the i817L is no doubt simple, safe, and easy-to-use.
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- Hard Disks
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced that it is now shipping its new Ultrastar C10K900 enterprise drive family. Continuing its quality and performance leadership, the Ultrastar C10K900 leads the industry with 18 percent faster sequential and up to 17 percent faster random performance than the nearest competitor. It also features a high-performance SAS 6Gb/s interface for reliable data throughput and packs a 64MB cache buffer to optimize the read/write response time. The new Ultrastar drives feature average seek times as low as 3.8 milliseconds, and its fast rotational speed reduces average latency time to below 3.0 milliseconds, enabling customers to access data more quickly and efficiently.
As the company’s fourth-generation, small form factor enterprise hard drive, the Ultrastar C10K900 also hits the industry’s highest 10K capacity point at 900GB, delivering more capacity for less space for greater configuration flexibility. The new Ultrastar C10K900 family is available in 900GB, 600GB, 450GB and 300GB capacities.
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LaCie announced today the launch of its MyNAS iPhone/iPad app and remote access capability, which gives users instant access to files on their home network from anywhere. Compatible with the LaCie Network Space 2 and Network Space MAX network-attached storage (NAS) devices, MyNAS is simple and easy to use. A 30-second setup is all it takes to access music, photos and video while away from home.
The free LaCie MyNAS app for iPhone and iPad gives convenient, instant access to files stored on a home network. Users are no longer limited to what is stored on their device; they now have access to terabytes of files and storage at home, too. Already filled up an iPhone with vacation photos and still have three days left on the trip? With the MyNAS app, simply move the files from the device onto the NAS to free up space.
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Pioneer Japan sent out a press release this morning, announcing the its new BDXL compatible Blu-ray Disc writer, the BDR-207JBK. Along with the ability to playback BDXL discs, the drive can write to triple- (100GB) and quad-layer (128GB) BD-R media at 6x and triple-layer (100GB) BD-RE media at 2x. The BDR-207JBK is also capable of 12x BD-R, 12x BD-R DL, 6x BD-R LTH, 2x BD-RE and 2x BD-RE DL writing speeds and includes features like Pioneer's PowerRead and PureRead2 technologies and a new power-saving mode. Pioneer rounds all this out with a software bundle from CyberLink that supports BDXL recording as well as Blu-ray 3D playback.
The BDR-207JBK is scheduled to ship in early January and is expected to retail for about 18,000 Yen ($231US).
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- Flash Memory
ADATA Technology Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in DRAM memory and Flash application products, today introduced the S396 Solid State Drive (SSD), providing a needed cost-effective entry solution to what is often seen by consumers as a high-priced component market. Now, consumers who have been hesitant to upgrade their machines are provided with an appealing incentive.
After extended periods of use, many computers see a marked decrease in system speed. A common method seen to eliminate this problem is to upgrade the hard drive to a SSD. Because the method by which SSDs transfer data is entirely different from that of conventional hard drives, SSDs provide markedly higher speeds. In addition, SSDs have further advantages of low heat-discharge, low power-consumption, lightweight structure, and high impact resistance.
The S396 utilizes optimized firmware, allowing for appreciably increased performance. In normal situations, 90% of computing tasks involve transfers of data packets 4KB in size. This means that the performance of 4KB file transmission plays a critical role in users’ experience. The S396 runs 44K IOPS of 4KB random write and 280/250 MB/s of sequential read and write.
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Kingston Digital Europe Ltd, an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the launch of the DataTraveler Micro - one of the world's smallest USB Flash drives. The DataTraveler Micro is designed in an ultra-small form factor that can be left in devices such as tablet PCs, slim notebooks, netbooks or car audio systems while on the move.
The drive's light weight and compact size easily adds up to 16GB of extra storage to a device without increasing its footprint. It is simple to use and just needs to be connected to any device with a USB port. DataTraveler Micro blends in easily without blocking other controls and is simple to use for storing, transferring and sharing photos, videos, music and other favourite files while on the move.
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OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs), today launched the Indilinx Everest-based Petrol SSD Series. The Petrol Series enables further adoption of SSDs in cost-sensitive applications, while taking advantage of real world performance and complete feature set of the Indilinx Everest platform.
"Until today, SSD adoption has been limited to high performance applications due to the high cost of SSDs in relation to slower rotating discs, and we are proud to once again close the gap in pricing without sacrificing durability," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "The new Petrol Series showcases the flexibility of the Indilinx Everest platform and NDurance™ Technology, allowing OCZ to deliver the benefits of SSDs to a wide new set of applications while retaining the superior real world performance and reduced latency that separate Everest-based SSDs from our competitors."
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SandForce Inc., the innovator of Solid State Drive (SSD) Processors that drive ubiquitous deployment of volume flash memory into primary and I/O intensive data storage applications, today announces the SF-2481 SSD Processor – the first SSD Processor optimized for cloud computing environments. This booming storage segment uniquely demands the performance and reliability of enterprise SSDs balanced with volume Multi-Level Cell (MLC) flash in order to meet the ever-increasing solid state storage demands of the world’s leading cloud services providers.
"As the SSD market matures, architectures are being developed to satisfy the specific needs of various market segments," said Jim Handy, SSD analyst for Objective Analysis. "SandForce is wisely targeting one of the most important SSD markets by tuning a variant of its high-performance SSD Processor to the needs of the Internet data center. This should be a good deal both for SandForce and for the company's cloud computing customers."
