Dell, Alienware price up Samsung solid-state drive options
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Ow, that hurts Want to equip your next laptop with a Flash-based solid-state hard drive? You can if you're after a Dell XPS or an Alienware m9750. Samsung said this week it's sending 32GB and 64GB SSDs to both companies. But fitting them will cost you.â¦
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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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(InfoWorld) - IntelÂ  threw down a gantlet today by entering the solid-state drive market with its first NAND flash memory product. The Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive represents a challenge to Samsung Corp., which is the world's largest producer of NAND flash memory for hardware and gadgets such as USB flash drives. The Z-U130 comes in capacities ranging from 1GB to 8GB and uses industry-standard USB interfaces, the company stated in a press release. The flash drive comes with reads rates of 28MB/sec. and write speeds of 20MB/sec. Intel expectsÂ its solid-state disk to be used in everything from servers and PCs toÂ gaming consoles. Intel's first entry into the solid-state disk market is still four times smaller in capacity compared withÂ otherÂ industry-leadingÂ products from companies such as SanDisk Corp. SanDiskÂ announced aÂ 32GB solid-state disk product in January (see "SanDisk shows solid-state drive "). But Intel also touts extreme reliability numbers, saying theÂ Z-U130 has an average mean time between failure of 5 million hours compared with SanDisk, which toutsÂ an MTBF of 2 million hours. Intel touted solid-state disk as a faster storage alternative that speeds through common PC or embedded application operations such as locating boot code, operating systems and commonly accessed libraries. It said its productÂ offers "cost-effective," high-performance storage with advantages over hard disk drives or removable Universal Serial Bus storage devices. Samsung recently announced its first hybrid drive, which uses NAND flash memory with spinning disk. That drive offers capacities of 80GB, 120GB and 160GB, along with 4GB of flash memory for caching data (see "Samsung ships its first hybrid disk drive"). Solid-state drives deliver faster boot times, embedded code storage, rapid data access and low-power storage alternatives for value PCs, routers, servers, and gaming and industrial applications. "Solid-state drive technology offers many benefits over traditional hard disk drives, including improved performance and reliability," said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager of Intel's NAND products group. The Z-U130 solid-state drive is the company's first product in what Intel said will be a family ofÂ  value solid-state drives. The Z-U130 comes in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB densities. Intel said it has already made deals with server, notebook and PC manufacturers to include the Z-U130. The company's solid-state disk will also be used in Intel-embedded products for routers and point of sale terminals, it noted.
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Producing a 100-percent solid state drive is a gamble for Samsung, but the benefits include power savings and stability.
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While adding a lot of cost to the system, for some mobile users, solid-state storage is a compelling alternative to traditional hard drives.
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'We didn't say that' Dell has been rumbling about "changing the economics" of data center storage for months, but little has slipped out, until now, in terms of a method for such madness.â¦
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roundup Plus: Think local, act Google...SanDisk to supply Samsung with miniSD...Hitachi unleashes 100GB notebook drives.
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(InfoWorld) - South Korea's Mtron Co. Ltd. is adding to its line-up of already speedy solid-state disk drives with new models that offer faster reading and writing of data. The new drives offer a maximum sustained read speed of 120M Bps (bytes per second) and a maximum write speed of 90M Bps compared to 100M Bps and 80M Bps respectively on current models, said Ahn Ji-young, a spokesman for the company. Mtron is unveiling the new models at the IFA trade show in Berlin this week. The speed jumps are important because they should directly translate to an increase in performance in the system in which they are used. When a computer needs to store or retrieve data there is often a slight delay while the information is transferred to or from the disk. By increasing the speeds the delay is shortened. SSDs are already fast compared to standard hard-disk drives. The drives use flash memory chips in place of a rotating magnetic disk to store data and that brings a significant performance increase. In previous demonstrations PCs running SSDs have been able to boot Windows in about 20 seconds compared to more than 30 seconds for hard-disk drive-based computers. Mtron is planning to begin production of the drives in late September or early October. They will be available in 16G byte, 32G byte and 64G byte capacities and in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors with Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. The drives are plug-in replacements for existing hard-disk drives. The company offers three families of product: a basic model for consumer applications, a professional model for server applications and an industrial model for harsh environments and military applications. Mtron is planning to introduce a higher capacity 128G byte model in the fourth quarter of this year and at about the same time will introduce a 1.8-inch drive, said Ahn. The smaller drive will debut at 32G bytes and a 64G-byte version should be available in early 2008, he said. Â
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Look for more consumer electronics products and services from the PC behemoth. Also: SuSE Linux for Dell servers.
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Acting immediately on its recent EqualLogic acquisition, Dell announced a new line of network storage products on Monday that the company claims are easy to install and manage.Targeted at SMBs, the Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series of arrays includes controllers, disks, and chassis with 16-bay enclosures that are scalable to store up to 192TB of data and execute up to 60,000 transactions at once, said Brad Anderson, senior vice president of Dell's business product group, at an event in San Francisco.The product can be plugged into existing IT infrastructure and be up and running rapidly, in some cases under an hour, Anderson said. It is also compatible with existing EqualLogic systems.The arrays operate over a SAN using the iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) interconnect protocol to transfer data and manage networked storage.Because storage disks can be attached on the fly, system administrators don't have to plan the amount of storage needed, saving money and resources in the long run, said Praveen Asthana, director of enterprise storage at Dell.On installation, software that comes with the arrays senses network topology, conducts a system health check and ensures that components are fully functional before serving up storage on a network. Software included with the array manages virtualized storage environments to provide optimized performance, including load balancing by shifting storage loads between arrays and by provisioning data to prevent poor utilization of disks.With remote replication capabilities over IP networks, the software enables continuous access to data, protecting potential data loss from disaster or system failures, Anderson said.Few SMBs have storage specialists on staff to set up and manage storage, so it makes sense for them to adopt iSCSI arrays to consolidate disparate storage environments that users can dip into for data access, said Mike Karp, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates. Familiar technologies like IP communication and the iSCSI interconnect protocol make iSCSI SAN products easy to install and operate, Karp said.In addition, the arrays make it easier for users to squeeze maximum value from network storage, he said.The initial products will come in three models. The EqualLogic PS5000E iSCSI Array supports up to 16 SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) II drives with up to 1T byte of storage per drive. The Dell EqualLogic PS5000XV and EqualLogic PS5000X iSCSI arrays support up to 16 SAS (serial-attached SCSI) drives with varying storage capacities.Pricing for the storage devices begins at $19,000, which includes the management software, Dell said. They are available immediately through channel partners.The new arrays come just five days after Dell completed the $1.4 billion acquisition of network storage vendor EqualLogic. The acquisition was part of Dell's new strategy to expand hardware and IT services to large enterprises and SMBs.EqualLogic has offered solid iSCSI arrays with virtualization management capabilities in the past and the new product is no different, Karp said. With Dell, EqualLogic products will be largely distributed -- though it may take a few months until Dell's staff is fully trained to support the products.Dell is already offering iSCSI-based storage products to SMBs through its partnership with EMC. It is a good revenue stream for Dell, and the company will not turn it off to exclusively sell EqualLogic products, Karp said. Dell will find a balance to sell both products, he said.
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Solid-state drives are increasingly an option for laptop purchasers -- but while manufacturers are pushing the option, few consumers are taking the bait.
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How about a $269 server? PC maker turns on rebates, special offers to breathe life into its direct-sales efforts.
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SSDs cost $400 to $500 more than ordinary hard drives of the same capacity. To justify the price difference, SSD notebooks must demonstrate significant performance benefits over notebooks equipped with standard hard drives. To find out whether they do, we tested three pairs of ultraportable notebooks from Fujitsu and Dell.
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A little over a year after it premiered the first commercially available solid-state hard disk drives at about 32 GB capacity, Samsung said it's now mass-producing a package announced last March at an electronics show in Taiwan, that clusters eight 8 GB flash components together, while still maintaining the 1.8-inch form factor needed for portable devices.
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Load-time lowerer Samsung has begun sending out hybrid hard drives to computer manufacturers, according to a variety of reports coming out of Asia today.â¦
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Samsung is producing a flash memory-based solid-state disk drive for mobile computing applications.
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InfoWorld - If you&#39;re in any doubt that flash memory-based solid-state disks are on a course to quickly replace hard-disk drives in laptop computers, just take a look along the aisles of this year&#39;s Computex trade show.