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Active Media Products, a leader in DOMs and small form factor SSDs, today announced a new 64GB Mini PCI-E SSD designed specifically for Dell Inspiron® Mini 9 upgrades that delivers substantially more storage space and dramatically faster performance than the Mini 9's default drive, as shown in the benchmark results below.
The SaberTooth AA SSD scored about 100% faster than the default SSD in Read speeds, and up to 9x faster in write speeds. The SaberTooth AA is one of the first available 64GB upgrades for the Mini 9, making it the highest density storage solution in this form factor. "This SSD answers the demand from many netbook users for bigger and faster storage options. We were able to reach the 64GB density by using the newest high capacity flash chips," stated Active Media Products VP of Sales, Jerry Thomson.
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Transcend Information, Inc., a worldwide leader in memory and storage products, today announced a new addition to its SSD family, the SSD18C3 Portable Solid State Drive. The new portable SSD combines the benefits of USB 3.0 with all the performance and durability advantages of solid-state technology, providing unparalleled speed and stability that conventional portable hard drives cannot compete with.
The new USB 3.0 SSD18C3 is a true Solid State Drive, based on high quality NAND flash memory. It includes an innovative device driver engineered to dramatically enhance USB transfer speeds. Once installed, the SSD will switch into Turbo mode, boosting data transfer speeds up to an incredible 260MB/s when connected to a USB 3.0 port. This exceptional performance makes the SSD an ideal storage solution for read-intensive applications; even an entire DVD movie takes a mere 15 seconds to process. Also compatible with USB 2.0, the SSD18C3 ensures that users will be able to transfer files on computers not yet equipped with a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port.
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Western Digital and Hitachi, Ltd. announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement whereby WD will acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $4.3 billion. The proposed combination will result in a customer-focused storage company, with significant operating scale, strong global talent and the industry's broadest product lineup backed by a rich technology portfolio.
Under the terms of the agreement, WD will acquire Hitachi GST for $3.5 billion in cash and 25 million WD common shares valued at $750 million, based on a WD closing stock price of $30.01 as of March 4, 2011. Hitachi, Ltd. will own approximately ten percent of Western Digital shares outstanding after issuance of the shares and two representatives of Hitachi will be added to the WD board of directors at closing. The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the third calendar quarter of 2011, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. WD plans to fund the transaction with a combination of existing cash and total debt of approximately $2.5 billion.
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Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today unveiled its next generation TeraDrive. Featuring the 2nd generation SandForce controllers, a SATA III 6Gbps interface, and the new ONFi Double Data Rate NAND flash, these new drives promise to deliver twice the performance of their predecessors.
At 3 Gbps, the SATA 2 interface posed a bottleneck to existing SSD designs but little performance was to be gained by changing to SATA3. That just changed. As double data rate (DDR) NAND becomes available, SSD performance stands to double overnight. Since the new 2nd generation SandForce controllers support both SATA3 and DDR flash, we are now able to unleash the performance of these new designs.
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Imation Corp., a leading global technology company dedicated to helping people and organizations store, protect and connect their digital world, today announced that the company has acquired ENCRYPTX Corporation, a leader in encryption and security solutions for removable storage devices and removable storage media. Approximately 10 employees will transfer from ENCRYPTX to Imation; other terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition, which follows Imation’s recent unveiling of its strategic direction as a technology company focused on growth opportunities in data storage, protection and connectivity, includes a portfolio of software solutions and intellectual property that allow enterprises to protect, encrypt, control, and manage “data at rest.”
“We are excited to bring the talented ENCRYPTX team and their portfolio of software solutions into Imation,” said Mark Lucas, president and chief executive officer, Imation Corp. “As a global leader in data storage, Imation understands the importance of protecting sensitive data against loss, theft, or security breaches, and has successfully partnered with ENCRYPTX in the past to develop elements of our Defender Collection(TM) of highly secure storage media and software solutions.”
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New entertainment products from ASUS to be shown at CeBIT 2011 include Blu-ray drives with advanced media format compatibility, 3D playback, smartphone remote control functionality and USB 3.0-based high speed write performance. Also on display at the show are all-new active noise cancelling headphones, designed to provide high quality portable personal audio.
The new ASUS O!Play BDS-700 Blu-ray player uses Qdeo video post-processing to deliver clear, vivid images in native high definition and upscaling of 480p DVD content. It supports Blu-ray 3D playback on compatible screens for immersive movie-watching experiences, delivering 7.1-channel surround sound mastered in Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD. An independent audio-only HDMI port on the BDS-700 guarantees improved high definition audio performance through a dedicated channel.
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Plextor, a leading brand of high-performance storage and digital media solutions, introduces a new portable hard disk drive, equipped with a high-speed USB 3.0 connection.
The PX-PH500U3 is a strikingly compact 500GB portable hard disk. Formed of perfect aluminum it incorporates the latest SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface for exceedingly fast connection and data transfer rates. It is the fast new professional standard in portable hard disks from world renowned storage manufacturer Plextor. Power to the hard disk is also provided through the USB connector, eliminating the need to carry an additional power adapter.
Protecting the advanced drive mechanism an elegant casing crafted from aircraft grade aluminum results in a mere 162 grams total weight. The complete package includes a USB 3.0 cable and a stylish leatherette case provides additional protection during transportation. Complementing this well-balanced hardware, a range of powerful software applications comes preinstalled on the hard disk. Users can backup and restore valuable data using FNet PC Clone EX and maximize the read and write speeds with the Turbo HDD utility.
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The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) today announced that 200 products have passed SuperSpeed USB certification testing. The latest certified devices include the first certified SuperSpeed USB flash drive from Imation and also the first certified SuperSpeed USB media player, the O!Play HD2 from ASUS.
hese new products signal the vitality of SuperSpeed USB and expand the list of certified products to include motherboards, notebooks, external storage devices, flash drives, media players, PCI Express and ExpressCard add-in cards, storage controllers, hard disk drives and device-enabling silicon.
“The industry ramp of SuperSpeed USB products achieving certification has been phenomenal,” said Jeff Ravencraft, President & COO, USB-IF. “We have seen the number of certified products quadruple since CeBIT 2010 and the certification workshops and labs continue to fill up with products from around the globe. This is a testament to the consumer and manufacturer enthusiasm behind the technology.”
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Today Synology America Corp. is pleased to announce the official release of its latest operating system for the popular DiskStation and RackStation series of NAS products. DiskStation Manager (DSM) 3.1 has Synology continuing to bring yet more enterprise-level features within reach for the SMB and SOHO markets.
"This latest release simply underscores Synology's commitment to bring ever more powerful tools to its business users," said Jason Bonoan, Product Marketing Manager at Synology America. "The real value of this upgrade is that it actually increases the capabilities of existing systems, giving business users more reliable and flexible servers than they had originally purchased, at no additional cost."
Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) in DSM 3.1 gives business users the option to choose 2-disk redundancy, allowing the volume to survive the failure of 2 disks. The updated storage manager offers support for iSNS to allow for centralized management of iSCSI resources. This gives users a choice in reliability.
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The NVM Express 1.0 specification that defines an optimized register interface, command set and feature set for PCI Express (PCIe)-based Solid-State Drives (SSDs) has been released today by the NVMHCI Work Group. The goal is to help enable the broad adoption of SSDs using the PCIe interface.
The significant advances in performance enabled by non-volatile memory-based storage technology, as embodied in PCI Express-based SSDs, has demanded the surrounding platform infrastructure evolve to keep pace and allow the system to realize the full potential of these devices. A primary goal of NVM Express is to provide a scalable interface that unlocks the potential of PCIe-based SSDs now and into the future. The interface efficiently supports multi-core architectures, ensuring thread(s) may run on each core with their own queue and interrupt without any locks required. For Enterprise-class solutions, there is support for end-to-end data protection, security and encryption capabilities, as well as robust error reporting and management capabilities.
The NVM Express specification offers numerous benefits as a standard interface through the interoperability it fosters. For example, each OS vendor may confidently write a driver that works for devices from multiple vendors. OEMs may procure devices from diverse suppliers that all implement a consistent feature set. Time to market may be reduced as validation times shrink with standard drivers and OEMs leverage the same test suites across devices.
