Western Digital are apparently set to release a 2TB hard disk in the next week or so. With a 32MB cache and “Green” logo, this drive will spin down from 7,200rpm to 5,400rpm to conserve power. With capacities like this, the gap between SSDs and hard disks is still far from closing.
Posts Tagged ‘Solid State Drive’
2TB WD Drive
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009MEMRISTORS
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008To put it in a nutshell, this could be the future for storage technology. The memristor has been the missing link from back when resistors, inductors and capacitors were originally created. What has now changed is the use of nano technology which has allowed the creation of the fourth electronic component; the memristor.
This technology can “remember” how much current has passed through it and can save its electronic state even when turned off. This means that in theory it will be much faster and cheaper than flash memory (And SSDs), and eventually also replace the hard drive for data storage.
Seagate Mutant Hybrid Drives
Thursday, November 6th, 2008Hard disk manufacturer Seagate is reportedly working on combining cheap unreliable solid state storage technology with more expensive and reliable technology to bring low cost SSD’s to consumers. At least we won’t be seeing any more of those savage 2.5″ Momentus drive head crashes!
The Little-Big Drive
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008Toshiba has just announced the 1.8″, 160GB, 5400rpm MK1617GSG drive. Apparently designed for netbooks and other such small machines, it’s a shame that this drive is a tad on the bulky side. at 8mm thick, this drive would be bulging out the sides of a current iPod or MacBook Air. With a SATA interface though, this drive could make for some fun embedded type devices or mods. I would personally love to see one squashed into an eeepc. I also bet that this little baby will be far cheaper than an equivalent solid state drive.
Seagate May Sue Rival SSD Makers
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008The next battle in the war on SSDs may have just begun. Apparently Seagate are convinced that SSD makers such as Samsung and Intel are violating some of Seagate’s (and Western Digital’s) patents. The wizardry which relates to the way a storage device communicates with a computer is at stake, even though Seagate themselves don’t appear too taken with an SSD based future. CEO Bill Watkins is quoted as saying, “realistically, I just don’t see the flash notebook sell.” I would have to agree with that at the moment. Cost per GB, reliability and speed are among the many drawbacks currently facing solid state drives when compared to traditional hard disk drives. Once these issues are resolved then the need for regular backups will become all the more important in my eyes at least. There are currently many ways in which we can resurrect a failing hard drive but next to no ways to recover a failed SSD.
Hard Drives Vs Solid State Round 1
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008It seems the backlash may have already begun. As we expected the current batch of SSDs are no match for the long perfected hard drives. Reports of customers returning solid state laptops are apparently hitting the 10-20% mark. I would like to think that a new revolutionary data storage medium gets into the market place before SSDs really take hold. I have an SSD in my EEE pc which is fine but I can’t help thinking a 30GB 1.8″ drive would have been far more versatile. Let’s see what developments appear in round 2. Will the SSDs fight back? (I think not…)
1.6TB Ultra320 SCSI SSD
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008According to Engadget, BiTMICRO have announced a new solid state drive which packs in 1.6TB of storage into a 3.5″ form factor drive. The E-Disk Altima E3S320 promises sustained data transfer rates of up to 230MB per second and are also expected to be available in more modest 16GB varieties. Engadget suggest remortgaging your house which may not be too far wrong if current SSD costs are anything to go by.
Samsung Start Manufacture of 64GB 1.8" SSDs
Monday, June 25th, 2007Samsung has today started production of it’s 64GB solid state drive. (How long until we see that in an iPod hack?…) These 1.8″ flash hard drives would be a welcome addition to any portable device, provided you keep regular backups. At least if the drives do fail you won’t have to put up with the heart wrenching click of death. (but good luck trying to desolder and then resolder all those chips in an ill-fated and expensive data recovery attempt.)
PNY unveils SSDs for laptops, iPods and more
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007Engadget today posted news of the new solid state disks from PNY. In 1.8″ and 2.5″ flavours they feature 66MBps read and 55MBps write speeds with standard ZIF, Micro SATA, 44-pin IDE and SATA interfaces. These drives will be simple replacements for the likes of laptops and will eventually (by the end of the year) be shipping 1.8″ and 2.5″ drives up to 128GB capacity. Finally my whole music collection can follow me to the gym without fear of trashing the 1.8″ drive and it’s glass platters! It is now more important than ever that people start to put a decent backup routine in place because with solid state storage there is not much a data recovery company can do to resurrect them when they fail.
Samsung Predicts That Hard Drives Are here To Stay
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007An article on Engadget today predicts that the cost of flash drives (or SSDs) are not going to overtake Hard Drives in cost per gigabyte for many years to come. It gives a nice chart that shows that with the fall in SSD prices, Hard drives costs will continue to fall.