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Hard Disks

05 January 2015

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today unveiled a high-design ultra-slim external drive that evokes the legacy form factor of 2.5-inch internal hard drives. The new Seagate Seven drive is the slimmest way to carry 500GB of data, with the name representing the 7mm depth of the 500GB drive. The simplicity of the industrial design of the Seagate Seven pays tribute to the roots of computer storage while simultaneously celebrating the latest advancements in storage innovation. The premium all-metal enclosure highlights the essence of a bare hard drive, Seagate’s core competency for over 35 years.

“Seagate has been providing the world with storage since the modern origins of computing history,” said Mark Whitby, senior vice president of Seagate Branded Group. “Seagate Seven is designed to speak to this history, while looking forward to the future of where storage technology is headed. We believe that Seagate Seven will resonate with those who want the latest trend in mechanical design while inspiring the user to create great experiences and memories.” 

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Flash Memory

05 January 2015

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, continues its momentum in the consumer SSD space by introducing two new offerings: the SanDisk SSD Plus, a 2.5” entry-level drive, and the SanDisk Ultra II mSATA SSD, a new form factor for the SanDisk Ultra II SSD product line. The SanDisk SSD Plus targets laptop and desktop PC users who want to significantly improve system performance. The SanDisk Ultra II mSATA SSD is for laptop and tablet users looking to increase the capacity and overall performance of their mSATA-enabled systems. The two new solutions are being unveiled at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies.

Building on SanDisk’s impressive line-up of SSD offerings, these new drives are designed to bring all the benefits of flash memory technology—faster speeds, extended battery life and upgraded systems—to users at an affordable price. With speeds of up to 23x the performance of a typical hard drive, the SanDisk SSD Plus will deliver faster boot and load times as well as better overall system performance, eliminating the need to completely replace a slow laptop or desktop PC. The SanDisk Ultra II mSATA SSD delivers competitive performance, with read speeds of up to 550MB/s, while adding up to 512GB of capacity so users can get more out of their mSATA-enabled notebooks and tablets.

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Other

05 January 2015

Toshiba Corporation today announced the launch of "TJM35420LT", the industry’s first TransferJet adapter for iOS devices such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod that is compliant with TransferJet close proximity wireless transfer technology. Sales of the adapter by mass marketers and online stores are scheduled to start from spring 2015 in Japan, followed by Europe, the Americas and Asia.

TransferJet is a close proximity wireless transfer technology standard promoted by the TransferJet Consortium. The technology provides simple connections and ultra-high speed data transfers with low power consumption, and works simply by bringing the two devices in the transfer into close proximity. Maximum data throughput is 375Mbps, and 100 MBytes of data can be transmitted in approximately three seconds.

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Hard Disks

05 January 2015

Seagate Technology plc, the pioneer in wireless storage, continues to grow its family of wireless storage solutions with the debut of Seagate Wireless, a 500GB portable wireless drive designed for streaming and offloading of media from mobile devices. The new Seagate Wireless offers more space to carry everything consumers want on their mobile devices and alleviates the challenge of running out of storage space on smartphones and tablets. Seagate Wireless provides a solution to stream your favorite HD video on your Android Tablet or Smartphone, iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, Windows 8 computers and Windows RT tablets. 

The new Seagate Wireless drive comes in a range of vibrant colors. There is a color to coordinate with one’s wardrobe, mood, or mobile accessories. Available Seagate Wireless color options include lime green, cool blue, slate grey, fire-engine red and white.

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Flash Memory

05 January 2015

OCZ Storage Solutions, a Toshiba Group Company and the most awarded solid state drive (SSD) brand of all time, today announced plans to showcase the highly anticipated JetExpress SSD controller at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada to be held January 6 – 9, 2015.

Designed and developed in-house, JetExpress will be the heart and soul of OCZ’s future product line. JetExpress silicon is native SATA and PCIe/NVMe and will support multiple form factors including M.2, 2.5-inch SATA, and SFF-8639 which enables PCI Express speeds in a compact 2.5-inch form factor. The flexible and advanced architecture of JetExpress is designed to offer superior flash endurance empowering SSDs to continue down the path to ubiquity in both mainstream notebooks and hyperscale data centers.

Also being unveiled this CES is the OCZ Vector 180 series which will be launched at the beginning of 2015. This new enthusiast-grade SSD takes reliability to the next level with its onboard Power Failure Management Plus (PFM+) feature while providing the industry-leading performance the Vector series is known for. The Vector 180 line will be offered in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, and a new 960GB model demanded by today’s power users who want more of their data and media available to them at solid-state storage speeds.

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Hard Disks

04 January 2015

Today, LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology plc unveiled the LaCie Mirror portable hard drive wholly encased in scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass. This unique device is at once both a functional 1TB hard drive and a striking piece of decor. The LaCie Mirror hard drive will adorn any desktop as it sits in its base made of a single piece of ebony wood from Makassar. This new signature piece for LaCie has been designed in collaboration with the acclaimed French designer, Pauline Deltour.

"You have to look twice to discover the LaCie Mirror's true ambition," said Deltour. "Covered by mirrored glass, it's first an elegant and functional object, and only on second glance is it revealed to be a slim high–performance hard drive."

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Hard Disks

04 January 2015

Today, LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology plc, announced Rugged RAID, the latest product to join its line of iconic Rugged mobile hard drives. LaCie Rugged RAID features twice the speed and capacity of a standard mobile hard drive — all with the same Rugged portability and durability that enthusiasts have come to expect. It is also the only product in its class to feature hardware RAID 0 and 1, which lets professionals optimize the product for speed or data security according to their workflow — and use it on any Mac® or PC.

When on a deadline, every second counts. The LaCie Rugged features Thunderbolt™ and USB 3.0 along with two internal hard drives that are preconfigured in hardware RAID 0 for sustained performance of up to 240 MB/s. With this speed, users can transfer 64 GB of content in less than five minutes, and even start to edit photos in the field with Adobe® Lightroom®. This time savings is key for field–based professionals who collect and move tons of data onto external storage.

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Other

24 December 2014

ASUS today announced the Xonar U3 Plus, a pocket-sized USB-powered sound card with a 150-ohm headphone amplifier, studio-grade vocal effects and a full suite of audio enhancements. The Xonar U3 Plus is designed for PC and notebook users who are looking for an easy-to-use solution that caters to their high-fidelity audio playback and home recording needs.

Pocket-sized soundcard with incredible sound
Xonar U3 Plus has a high-performance headphone amplifier with adjustable gain levels that can drive up to 150ohm-impedance headphones and headsets. It enhances treble and bass to add dynamic details to low and high frequency sounds like explosions and footsteps in movies or games.

Studio-grade effects and specially-tuned audio
The pocket-sized Xonar U3 Plus supports real-time microphone audio recording, with a digital signal processor (DSP) that provides extremely-low microphone latency. Xonar U3 Plus features a suite of studio-grade vocal effects including a dedicated 10-band equalizer, precision low- and high-frequency filters, as well as reverb adjustment to add a sense of environmental space.

Stereo Mix allows users to mix vocals and music tracks easily, while the DJ Mix tool features a ducking effect that automatically reduces (‘ducks’) the volume of a background audio track when vocals are present, allowing users to create professional-sounding podcasts.

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Hard Disks

17 December 2014

Toshiba Corporation’s Semiconductor & Storage Products Company today announced the addition of 6TB SATA and SAS models to its MG04 series of 3.5-inch form factor enterprise capacity class of hard disk drives (HDD). New SAS interface models provide the benefits of 12Gbit/s transfer rate for 6TB, 5TB, 4TB and 2TB HDDs. Sample shipment will begin in CQ1 of 2015.

The new MG04 series 6TB models offer a 50 percent increase in max capacity from prior MG03 generation 4TB models and approximately 30 percent increase in sustained data rate (MG03xxx400x:165MiB/s, MG04xxx60Ex:205MiB/s). These new HDDs support both industry-standard 4K native and 512e Advanced Format sector technologies for optimum performance in the latest generation servers and storage systems as well as being suitable in legacy applications requiring 512 sector lengths using aligned-write environments.

Both the 6TB MG04ACA and MG04SCA 12Gbit/s models offer Toshiba persistent write cache technologies (PWC), designed to help protect against data loss in the event of sudden power loss. Model options supporting SAS and SATA commands to enable sanitize “instant” cryptographic erase (SIE) are also available.