Solid-State Drives Coming on Strong
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Flash-based solid-state hard drives and machines containing them are plentiful at this year's Computex.
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A look back at where hard drives have been--and where they're going.
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Storage Expo Iomega punts a hard disk autoloader
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Samsung Electronics has begun shipping a flash memory-based solid state disk drive (SSD) that offers better performance than many of the flash drives currently available, the company said.The 64GB drive has a SATA II interface that can support data reading at speeds of 100MBps and writing at 80MBps. That makes it 60 percent faster than SATA I drives of the same type and two to five times faster than conventional hard-disk drives, according to Samsung.SSDs use flash memory rather than magnetic storage, which means faster reading and writing of data, lower power consumption and zero noise. They&#39;ve been around for several years although it is only recently, after flash memory chip prices fell, that they have become practical for use in laptop computers.The drives were announced back in November when Samsung started supply samples of the drives to PC makers. Commercial versions of the drive are now available and will be offered as options on some Dell and Alienware laptops in the coming weeks, said Samsung. Prices were not announced.Samsung is also planning to target the enterprise server market and other applications that demand high-speed data transfer.Despite their advantages over hard-disk drives, SSDs are only taking off slowly because they are much more expensive. To get around this problem Samsung showed a 128GB SSD based on MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash, at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It&#39;s a cheaper but not as powerful or efficient version of flash chip than the SLC (single level cell) used in most SSDs drives until now. The SLC-type memory chips last about 10 times as long as MLC chips.&#160;
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Enhanced midrange storage array, network hardware released.
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Higher-capacity hard drives will be available by the end of the year.
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Miniature drives can continue their success in consumer devices but must get roomier, more rugged and more efficient, industry observers say.
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Storage devices such as external hard drives are becoming more popular as data protection and backup requirements get more complex.
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The Z-P140 PATA solid-state storage drives will be offered in its upcoming platform for ultramobile PCs.
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Military disks: Get in da choppa! Flash storage specialist BitMicro has already jumped past the one terabyte marker with 1.6TB solid-state drives in a Fibre Channel flavor. This week, it's moving that capacity to its line of SCSI flash drives too.â¦
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Dual-layer disc to smooth hi-def format adoption
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Western Digital has boosted the capacity of its My Book line of external drives.
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Company's ND-3500A drive is not just for OEMs anymore.
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Pricey but fast IDF Intel plans to shakeup the storage market in 2008 with the introduction of solid-state disks designed for data center hardware.â¦
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Prototype products include the first such drive for use in a PC.
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A new DVD-based storage appliance is aimed at making archiving data faster and retrieving it easier.
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Analysts solid state drives, online storage gaining steam to deal with performance, energy and compliance issues.