Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Seagate, the worldwide leader in hard drives and storage solutions, unveiled the BlackArmor® PS110 USB 3.0 portable external hard drive performance kit for notebook computers. Demonstrating its industry leadership in delivering advanced and easy-to-use storage solutions, this all-in-one USB 3.0 toolkit packages a 500GB 7200RPM 2.5–inch portable hard drive, power cable and PC express card, to deliver real-world, proven speeds up to three times faster than its USB 2.0 predecessor, making it one of the fastest portable hard drives available. USB 3.0 speed has been specified at 4.8 Gbs per second or a ten times improvement over USB 2.0, however this is theoretical performance, and the new Seagate BlackArmor USB 3.0 portable drive achieves 3X performance over USB 2.0 in real world testing.
To address these growing storage needs, the BlackArmor PS110 USB 3.0 toolkit makes it easier and less time-consuming to store and share large amounts of rich digital content. This new super speed USB 3.0 interface allows easy transfer of large files to and from the external drive at sustained transfer rates of 100MB/s, which is three times faster than current USB 2.0 devices. The familiar scenario of waiting for large files to transfer will now be a thing of the past.
Today LaCie announced the LaCie CooKey and LaCie WhizKey, design by 5.5 Designers. The new USB flash keys are modeled after the award-winning LaCie iamaKey, which was recently issued a 2010 award by the internationally recognized Observeur du Design.
LaCie, the originator of the flat key-shaped design for USB flash keys, now presents two new unique designs. The LaCie CooKey and LaCie WhizKey are built with sturdy metal, making the surfaces tough and dependable. Additionally, the Gold SIP connector on the USB keys are both water- and scratch- resistant, making them some of the thinnest and most durable flash drive choices on the market.
The LaCie CooKey and LaCie WhizKey offer more than a resilient surface and up to 32GB of storage--they include a complete storage experience by integrating an extra 4GB of online storage through Wuala.
SMART Modular Technologies, a leading independent manufacturer of memory modules and solid-state storage products, including solid-state drives (SSDs), today announced the XceedIOPS SATA, its next-generation enterprise-class SSD. Available in 1.8" and 2.5" form factors, the XceedIOPS SATA is offered with either single-level cell (SLC) or enterprise-grade multi-level cell (E-MLC) NAND technologies.
This cost-effective XceedIOPS SATA SSD is the second product in SMART's XceedIOPS family, and the first SSD from SMART to feature the SF-1500 processor from SandForce, Inc. based in Saratoga, California. The XceedIOPS SATA is the industry's first SSD to integrate E-MLC technology, which provides significantly more endurance than SSDs based on commercial MLC NAND flash.
WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its fastest My Book® external hard drive ever -- the new My Book 3.0 desktop external drives are among the first devices certified with the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface. With an interface that's up to 10 times faster than the previous-generation USB 2.0 interface, the high-performance My Book 3.0 drive significantly reduces the time it takes to open and save large files.
Offered standalone, or in a kit that includes a USB 3.0 PCIe (gen2) adapter card, the 1 TB My Book 3.0 drive is available now at select retailers and shopwd.com. The 2 TB model is expected later this week.
The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface on My Book 3.0 drives provides transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits-per-second, allowing users to open and save files up to 4.7 times faster than USB 2.0. The new My Book 3.0 drive is compliant with the USB-IF SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard to provide compatibility with other USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 products. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1.
ioSafe today announced the availability of the new ioSafe Solo SSD - a solid state, highly ruggedized model of the award-winning ioSafe Solo desktop external hard drive. Combining ioSafe’s new proprietary ArmorPlate, a military grade steel outer casing with SSD technology, the new ioSafe Solo SSD adds unprecedented shock, drop and crush protection to the existing fire and water protection.
The ioSafe Solo SSD combined with ArmorPlate helps to protect data in a two story building collapse, 5000 lb. crush forces, 20’ drop into rubble and up to a 1000g shock. In addition the original HydroSafe™, FloSafe™ and DataCast™ work to keep the drive cool during normal operation and protect the data from fires up to 1550°F for 1/2 hour and complete water submersion of 30’ for 30 days in fresh or salt water. Like all ioSafe products, the ioSafe Solo SSD comes with ioSafe’s Data Recovery Service, a “no questions asked” policy to help customers recover from any data disaster including accidental deletion, virus or physical disaster.
"Our goal over the last year was to establish our digital delivery platform on leading consumer electronic devices and with major retailers," said Mark Ely, executive vice president of strategy, Sonic Solutions. "Having achieved that goal, our plan for 2010 is to further advance the Roxio CinemaNow entertainment platform and enable our partners to deliver an exceptional user experience through rich interactivity, and amazing high definition video and audio quality."
Compared to a standard DVD, Blu-ray's 50GB of storage capacity seems fairly large. Nevertheless, companies have continued to look for ways to squeeze more data onto a single disc. Along with the multi-layer discs developed by Pioneer, Hitachi and TDK, companies are now looking at partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) signal processing as a possible way to store up to 33.4GB of data per single layer. Thanks to Sony and Panasonic, PRML is one step closer to becoming a reality. The two companies recently announced that they've developed a new evaluation technique known as i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) that can be used to judge the optical quality when reading and writing to 33.4GB media.
Sony and Panasonic Corp. resolved this by developing the i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) evaluation index. Details of i-MLSE were announced at International Symposium on Optical Memory 2009 (ISOM '09), held in October 2009. The first of the two key characteristics is that i-MLSE has a strong correlation with the error rate (Fig. 1) even in read/write at 33.4 GB using PRML. The second, according to Sony, is that "i-MLSE exhibits the same relationship to signal quality as conventional jitter." In other words, it will be relatively simple to estimate the read error rate from the i-MLSE, just as can be done now with jitter.
Add a commentQNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Video Players today unveiled its new series of ultra-high performance Turbo NAS servers TS-259 Pro, TS-459 Pro, TS-659 Pro and TS-859 Pro (a QNAP exclusive) that have been certified as compatible with VMware's vSphere4 (ESX 4.0) virtualization platform, ideal for departmental file sharing, storage, and advanced server applications in the office environment. VMware's vSphere is the industry's first cloud operating system that offers a way to reduce IT costs and increase responsiveness. Shared networked storage is an essential component of a Cloud Computing infrastructure.
The new Turbo NAS series incorporates the Intel® Atom™ D-510 dual-core processor, which delivers exceptional performance and maintains high reliability for multiple concurrent tasks and intensive data transfer with very low power consumption. Businesses of all sizes are able to enjoy the interoperability between VMware virtual machines and QNAP high performance, low power consumption certified storage, take the advantages of VMware Cloud Computing environments.
According to DigiTimes, CMC and Ritek recently signed new licensing contracts with Philips that are effective for the next 10 years. In return, Philips reduced the royalty rate for CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW media by more than 70% from US$0.035-0.036 per disc to US$0.01.
Royal Philips Electronics has reduced royalty charges for CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW optical disc formats by 71.4-72.2% from US$0.035-0.036 per disc originally to US$0.01 for CMC Magnetics and Ritek, Taiwan's two largest optical disc makers. The new licensing contracts are effective for 10 years from December 31, 2009 to December 30, 2019, according to industry sources in Taiwan. Both CMC and Ritek confirmed the new licensing but did not confirm the rates.
Add a commentIn the digital age, people are creating and accessing digital content like never before. As such, they require a storage device that is powerful enough to store and serve this content, but friendly enough to manage quickly and effortlessly. Today, digital storage leader Thecus® Technology is proud to announce the Thecus® N4200. Fast, secure, and incredibly easy-to-use, the N4200 is the ideal home NAS for the digital lifestyle.
The N4200 was designed to enable users to access their data both quickly and easily. It begins with the new Intel® Atom™ dual-core processor D510, which runs at 1.66GHz and, in combination with 1GB of DDR2 memory, delivers both blistering data transfer speeds and increased system response. Users can easy manage their unit with the N4200’s dual displays. The LCD offers a wealth of system information, including hard disk and network status, while the big and bright 2.8” OLED display allows users to modify a number of settings directly on the device including WAN, LAN, Link Aggregation, languages and more, making the N4200 the friendliest Thecus® NAS ever.