PLX Technology today announced a pair of direct attached storage (DAS) SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0)-to-SATA controllers — devices that are essential elements of wired external consumer storage drives. Optimized for bus-powered applications, the new PLX OXU3110 and OXU3111 (with encryption) DAS controllers are ideal for OEM storage designers seeking product differentiation matched with superior performance, a tiny footprint, and very low power. The devices are fully compliant with the USB-IF SuperSpeed specification and published on the forum’s exclusive integrators list.

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“PLX predicts that USB 3.0 will account for more than 60 percent of total USB hard drives in 2011, then growing to more than 80 percent in 2012,” said David Raun, PLX vice president of marketing and business development. “This rapid growth can be attributed to USB 3.0 drives delivering up to 140 megabytes per second performance, compared to roughly 30 megabytes a second from USB 2.0 drives, meaning a one-terabyte drive swiftly being copied in one-quarter the time. With continually growing libraries of large data files such as video, digital photos, and music, consumers will find this newfound performance very appealing.”

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sony_memory_stick_pro-hg_duo_hx.jpgNow photographers can fully exploit the high-speed, high-resolution shooting potential of the latest digital cameras and camcorders from Sony.

The range-topping Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX now boasts blazing data transfer speeds of up to 50MB/sec. 1.6x faster than previous Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX cards – and available at the same price – it’s quicker than today’s fastest commercially available UHS-I SD cards when used with devices by Sony.

This phenomenal performance makes new Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX an ideal shooting, storage and data transfer solution for demanding digital imaging users.

Available in capacities from 8GB to 32GB, the fastest-ever Memory Stick is optimised for sustained burst shooting with today’s high-resolution DSLR, SLT and interchangeable lens cameras.

Teamed with the NEX-5 ultra-compact camera by Sony, the card can capture 190 JPEG images in one minute in high-speed burst shooting mode. That’s well over double the rate of 80 images/minute using a standard Class 4 SD card. The high performance of Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX also makes it ideal for recording Full HD and 3D movies with the latest Handycam camcorders. For more information please see the HX Memory card file which is attached to this release.

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Buffalo Technology, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of wired and wireless networking and network and direct attached storage solutions, today announced the MiniStation Plus USB 3.0 portable storage solution. Buffalo continues in a tradition of innovation and leadership in the USB 3.0 market with the MiniStation Plus by offering high performance USB 3.0 portable storage in a compact and lightweight shock proof chassis.

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With USB 3.0 support and backward compatibility with USB 2.0, the MiniStation Plus works with nearly any PC or Mac, while providing interface speeds up to 5 Gbps.  Because it’s USB powered, there are no additional cables to manage and no need for a separate power source; simply plug it into any available USB port on your computer and instantly add capacity or store files to take on the road. With 256-bit AES hardware encryption, you can easily protect your data from unwanted access by simply assigning a password. Also included with MiniStation Plus is Buffalo’s multipurpose Buffalo Tools utility suite designed to enhance Windows® PC performance and user experience, including TurboPC for 3X faster transfers. Store, back up and transport your content with SuperSpeed plug and play connectivity.

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SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Pliant Technology, Inc., a leading developer of enterprise solid state drives (SSD). Under the terms of the agreement, SanDisk will pay approximately $327 million in cash and provide certain equity-based incentives. The transaction, which has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory review and approval, and it is expected to close by the end of SanDisk's second fiscal quarter.

Pliant currently sells ultra-high performance enterprise solid state drives based on the SAS protocol to meet the demanding performance, data integrity and reliability needs of enterprise storage customers. The company's product roadmap also includes PCIe-based solutions for high-performance compute servers. Pliant is a leader in the use of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND in enterprise SSDs, and the lower cost of MLC is a key enabler for the broad adoption of SSDs in the enterprise market.

"Flash memory is making significant inroads into the enterprise by dramatically increasing application performance and reducing power consumption," said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk president and chief executive officer. "We believe that the combination of Pliant's innovative technology and enterprise-level system expertise with SanDisk's high-quality, large-scale MLC memory production is a winning value proposition for customers. Our advanced flash technology roadmap and flash management capability will complement Pliant's strengths and allow us to lead the way in reliability and performance in the Enterprise SSD market."

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OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today unveiled the Arowana Flash Translation Layer (FTL) from Indilinx. Supporting both existing and upcoming Indilinx controllers, this firmware subset dramatically improves performance and enterprise capabilities and enables SSD suppliers to deploy cost-effective 2xnm NAND flash memory.

"We are always driving to add more value for our clients, and the exciting new Arowana Flash Translation Layer delivers both major performance and feature-set enhancements," commented Daryl Lang, VP of Product Management at OCZ Technology Group. "Arowana not only boosts IOPS performance by up to 500%, but does so with the support of the industry's latest 2xnm flash technology, making Indilinx solutions now more competitive than ever."

The revolutionary new Arowana FTL enhances performance of Indilinx controllers with HyperQueuing, which significantly increases sequential write speeds and random IOPS over the previous generation FTL. In addition, Arowana's support of 2xnm flash provides SSD suppliers with the ability to offer end users a more attractive product with lower cost NAND components. The new Arowana FTL also maximizes the life of low endurance flash with INXtend™ Technology.

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Seagate, today announced GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage, the first battery-powered external hard drive to wirelessly extend the storage capacity of any Wi-Fi enabled mobile device. With 500GB and Wi-Fi access over 802.11 b/g/n and a rechargeable battery, this latest member of the GoFlex family provides the ability to carry an entire library of video, music, pictures and documents with you. Devices are wirelessly connected directly to the GoFlex Satellite drive by use of the free GoFlex Media app–available now on iTunes and the Apple App Store–or a web browser. GoFlex Satellite is available immediately for preorder from Seagate.com, Amazon and BestBuy.com for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $199.99, and is scheduled to arrive in Best Buy stores in July 2011. Global availability is planned for later this summer.

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"With the growth of the tablet and iPad markets and the larger volumes of high-quality media now being consumed, there is a clear need for access to content that is not plagued with the challenges of streamed video over the Internet," said Patrick Connolly, vice president and general manager of Seagate's retail group. "The unfortunate fact is that these popular new mobile devices are hampered by their limited storage capacity while one of their primary functions is that of media consumption.

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adata_s511_ssd.jpgADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, today announced the release the S511 Solid State Drive (SSD), which employs the latest SATA 6Gb/s specification. With this cutting edge implementation of the latest data transfer standard, the performance of this SSD has been dramatically raised over conventional SATA II products.

The S511 utilizes the new generation SandForce SF-2200 series chip, with native support for the SATA 6Gb/s platform. Its read and write speeds are twice that of SSDs using the older SATA II specification, and in real world test simulations reached 550/520MB read and write speeds respectively, with 4K random write speeds as high as 60,000 IOPS. For consumers, this means transferring 5GB media archives can be completed in as few as 15 seconds. In actual testing of Windows 7 boot speed, the S511 cruised to an impressive 25 second system boot time.

Currently, the major processor platforms are gradually making the changeover to native SATA 6Gb/s chips. However, traditional mechanical drives are not capable of the corresponding high-speed read and write tasks. The result is that some newly-purchased computers can only utilize a fraction of the performance available when equipped with a traditional hard drive. The S511 solid state drive provides vibration-free running and low power consumption while taking full advantage of the 6Gb bandwidth transmission capability. In both desktop and laptop computers, and in a broad range of computing environments, SSDs built to the latest specification an irreplaceable advantage.

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Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the Force Series 3 family of solid-state drives. The newly announced Force Series 3 models take advantage of the new SATA 6.0 Gb/s (SATA 3) interface to deliver impressive speed at an attractive price. The Force Series 3 features the highest performance version of the latest-generation SandForce SF-2281 SSD Processor with out-of-box read and write speeds of up to 550 MB/s and 520 MB/s respectively, and an impressive 85000K IOPS for measurably faster system response, boot times and application load times than SATA 2 solid-state drives.

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All Force Series 3 models are also backward compatible with SATA 2, and include an easy-to-use 3.5” adapter to allow owners of both desktop and notebook PCs to enjoy the cool, quiet operation and enhanced system performance made possible by replacing their traditional mechanical hard drive with an SSD.

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Western Digital, a leader in the desktop, mobile, high-capacity enterprise and consumer markets for hard drives, today announced the addition of 2.5 TB and 3 TB versions to its family of WD AV-GP SATA hard drives, serving the audio-video (AV) market. Shipping immediately, the 2.5 TB and 3 TB capacity, 3.5-inch, WD AV-GP hard drives offer 24X7 reliability, low power consumption and unrivalled storage capacity for storage-intensive AV applications such as digital video recorders, video surveillance, single-drive media servers and external multimedia storage.

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"Designed to go the distance in high-temperature, always-on streaming digital AV environments, WD AV-GP drives store more hi-def audio and video than ever before with our new 2.5 TB and 3 TB versions," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and CE business units. "Combine unsurpassed capacity, power-saving WD GreenPower Technology™, and performance capabilities to capture up to 12 simultaneous HD video streams with SilkStream™ technology and the drive choice is made clear in optimizing AV applications like PVR/DVR, IPTV and video surveillance."

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Since Team Group Inc. released the TP1023 portable hard drive, which adopts a streamline sports car design, it has created a new trend. Following up this success, Team Group schedules to display the first sports car-designed flash drive disks at Computex 2011. The Team SR1 /SR3 carrying with exclusive “Team EZ Go” application software and come in both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 interfaces, respectively, are made of the same material and streamline sports car design as the TP1023. In addition to data storage, it is perfect for showcasing personal zest for sports and making a statement of masculine vitality and energy.

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Just like pursuing a sense of speed on the race track, the all new SR1 followed Team Group’s exclusive sports car design, blending the sports car concept into a small flash drive disk by using a unique streamline design and curves. The high speed USB 3.0 interface breaks the USB 2.0’s transfer speed limit, with a read and writes performance of over 50MB/s that help shorten the time of transferring large multimedia files and create better portability of Full HD videos.

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