CDRLabs News

Toshiba Announces 250GB 1.8-inch Hard Drive With Native USB Controller

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:42:22 +0000

Strengthening its line up of portable 1.8” hard drives for external storage markets, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced its 250 Gigabyte (GB) 1.8 inch hard disk drive, the Spinpoint N3U which incorporates a native USB controller on its printed circuit board. This optimized design results in a smaller foot print, less power consumption and optimized performance, which is ideal for portable external storage devices. The Spinpoint N3U stores up to 125 Gigabytes per platter for a total 250GB data storage capacity.

Most external hard drives require the addition of a bridge circuit board to convert the hard drive’s PATA interface into a USB interface. Samsung’s N3U drive, however, uses a native USB interface and as such does not require this bridge board.

Patriot Releases Torqx M28 Series SSDs With 128MB Of Cache

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:40:36 +0000

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer technology, today announced the release of their Torqx M28 Series with capacities in 128GB and 256GB, backed by a new industry leading 10 year warranty for all Torqx SSD products.

The Torqx M28 SSD has been specifically designed with cutting-edge technology by increasing the DRAM cache from 64MB to 128MB of cache in conjunction with its current NAND flash technology. The ultimate result is an SSD that allows faster transfer rates between the controller and the host device. Compared to today’s hard drives, the Torqx SSD provides for better stability, faster access times, and lower power consumption. Consumers will also find added value with Patriot's included SSD bracket which makes using SSDs universal across all platforms; desktop or mobile.

LaCie Announces LaCinema Rugged HD Multimedia Hard Drive

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:24:25 +0000

LaCie announced today its LaCinema Rugged multimedia hard drive is now available in High Definition – LaCinema Rugged HD. The LaCinema Rugged product range has the most compact, reliable, and mobile multimedia players on the market. Now, with enhanced HD capability, the LaCinema Rugged HD is the first multimedia player in its class, to allow users to store and play High Definition content – on any HDTV in Full-HD 1080p resolution.

The LaCinema Rugged HD comes with 500GB* of built-in storage capacity, allowing users to store and instantly watch their favorite television shows and movies, listen to music, and display photo slideshows with their family and friends. Compatible with any HDMI supported display, the LaCinema Rugged HD brings multimedia functionality to users while in the home or on-the-go.

Compatible with both Windows and Mac environments, the LaCinema Rugged HD requires a single USB 2.0 cable, connected to the computer for easy, bus-powered multimedia loading. Once the media content is transferred to the LaCinema Rugged HD, it is ready to be viewed on any display with an HDMI connection. The HDMI cable is included for user convenience. For optimized viewing, the LaCinema Rugged HD supports most of standard and high-definition video codecs (H.264, MKV, WMV9, MPEG-4) to ensure easy High Definition playback.

A-DATA Launches 500 Series S592 SSD

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:48:02 +0000

A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd., the worldwide leader in DRAM modules and Flash application products, recently launched its 500 series 2.5” SATA II S592 SSD, a highly anticipated product that is compatible with Microsoft® Windows® 7.

Taking advantage of the latest technical breakthrough, the S592 adopts new controller design and utilizes mobile SDRAM as cache to decrease data access time, enables the SSD to quickly access and seek the data. In terms of performance, S592 achieves a sustained read rate at 230MB/sec and write rate at 170MB/sec with an impressive performance of 6,740 IOPS at sequential read and 2,851 IOPS at write.

Silicon Power Releases Unique 520 USB Flash Drives

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:35:58 +0000

From the Sea of Eternal Kingdom, Mia, Eike and their loving and trustworthy pet whale, “Jing-Bao” venture to the dry lands in search of the “Memory Seal” that has been long lost and forgotten! Their adventures begin here. Silicon Power releases Unique 520, a cute eastern style figurine USB flash drive. Figurines are based on the characters Mia and Eike that can be used as storage devices or as decoration accessories.

Silicon Power’s Unique 520 is a product based on the new chain-hook design concept. Showing off creativity, it was sought after by buyers who attended the 2009 Computex. The chain-hook design allows users to use the product as a decoration accessory to their purse, clothing, keychain, etc. The ID design outline is of a whale shape with a cheerful look figurine design. The words whale and cheerful in Chinese are abbreviated and pronounced as “Jing-Xi”, phonetically identical to “surprise” in Chinese. This is the feeling Silicon Power wants to bring to their customers, a chain-reaction of cheerful surprises every time! Another design concept is that Unique 520 offers couple matching ID design. Users can choose according to their preferences.

OCZ Announces Vertex Turbo Series Solid State Drives

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:21:33 +0000

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today released the latest addition to their premium Vertex solid state drive series, the Vertex Turbo Edition. The tried-and-true architecture and performance of the original Vertex has been upgraded to meet the demands of enthusiasts and other performance-seeking users who benefit from SSD technology. The Vertex Turbo Series maximizes the potential for ultimate productivity and state-of-the-art computing experience, by increasing both the host clock-speed and the SDR DRAM Cache to 180MHz versus 166MHz on the original series.

“OCZ is constantly looking for ways to advance our solutions, and based on feedback from our enthusiast consumers and top system integrators we looked for ways to further push the performance envelope in our popular Vertex Series of SSD’s,” commented Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management for the OCZ Technology Group. “The new Vertex Turbo makes use of the fastest SDR DRAM cache available and a proprietary FTL level firmware that provides an even faster solid state drive for enthusiasts looking for the ultimate desktop or laptop storage upgrade.”

Fusion-io Develops High-Performance, Lower Cost Enterprise SSD Solution

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:12:20 +0000

Fusion-io today announced it has developed a new engineering technique for managing multi-level cell (MLC) flash technology, that combines the enterprise reliability of single-level cell (SLC) technology with the economical consumer-grade MLC flash. Fusion-io products utilizing this technology, called single mode level cell (SMLC), offer a cost-effective MLC-based solid-state solution with the endurance and performance of SLC at a much lower cost per gigabyte (GB). SMLC-based products from Fusion-io will be available starting this quarter.

The SMLC technology features bandwidth equal to SLC, with comparable endurance and write performance levels, at a cost that is substantially lower than traditional SLC solutions. Fusion-io products utilizing SMLC build on all of the innovation and reliability of the company's existing enterprise-class solid-state solutions, including its PCI Express-based form factor, chip-level redundancy and RAIDing, global wear leveling, advanced error correction and many other features beyond just performance leadership.

Fusion-io's SMLC serves as the foundation for an enterprise product line that is tailor-made for customers requiring greater performance or endurance than MLC can provide, at a lower price point than existing SLC solutions.

Sony Introduces VRD-MC6 DVDirect DVD Recorder

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:04:27 +0000

Sony today debuted its next-generation multi-function DVDirect™ DVD recorder, which can transfer both high-definition and standard-definition home videos and digital photos to DVD discs without using a computer.

The new VRD-MC6 model has a 2.7-inch color LCD screen for previewing video or up to six digital photos at a time, and its overall size is almost 60 percent smaller than its predecessor.

“Many customers still have their old home movies on tapes and are looking for an easy solution to archive their personal digital imaging content on DVD discs. With the larger built-in LCD color screen in a smaller body, the new DVDirect model makes it easier for customers to transfer the content to DVD discs for archiving, enjoying and sharing with family and friends,” said Shige Nakayama, manger of the DVDirect business at Sony.

Super Talent Introduces Pico Mini USB Drives

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:55:54 +0000

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today introduced their new line of colorful and trendy Pico Mini USB drives, available this week in capacities from 2GB to 16GB.

Like their siblings, the Pico drives, Pico Mini drives are built using COB technology which enables squeezing impressive Flash capacities into extremely small packages. At 32 x 15 x 3 mm (1.3 x 0.6 x 0.1 inches), Pico Mini drives are surprisingly tiny. Even more impressive, they tip the scales at merely 1.5 grams.

Synology Introduces 4-bay Disk Station DS409slim NAS

ian@cdrlabs.com (Ian) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:09:00 +0000

Synology® Inc. today launched the new 2.5" 4-bay Disk Station DS409slim, a highly anticipated addition to the 09 series product line that brings lower power consumption, virtually quiet operations and an extremely small footprint both physically and financially while providing the same reliable data sharing and backup solution that Synology is well known for.

The DS409slim is equipped with a 1.2 GHz CPU, 128MB DDRII RAM, one Gigabit LAN port, two USB2.0 ports and one eSATA port. The snap-in disk tray requires minimal effort to install and replace disks. Supporting up to 2 TB with the combination of four 2.5" SATA or SSD hard drives of 500GB which is the largest capacity on the market, it remains stylish and compact (120 x 105 x 142 mm).

The adoption of 2.5" hard drives helps to increase shock tolerance and MTBF and reduce power consumption. The DS409slim consumes only 19 watts under normal operation with four hard drives installed. The smart fan design keeps the DS409slim's fan off under normal operations and brings quiet operation.