Over at tgdaily they’ve posted about an interview with the CTO, David Flynn, of Fusion io talking about their new ioDrive. The ioDrive is a PCI Express card with 640 GB of flash memory that you can slip onto your motherboard to provide extra networked storage. The unit does indeed boast some impressive figures with a read rate of 800 MBps and 600 MBps for writing. Probably the single most impressive figure is the 100,000 operations per second which far out strips any standard HDD.

What confused me was that the claim by Fusion io that the tiny card could replace banks of hard drives. Err, I think not, with a 640 GB unit planned for early next year it’s certainly an alternative to standard HDDs but the implication is that it will save computing space. Whilst the max capacity is only 640 GB, I don’t think it will do that at all. Whilst I’m not going to calcuate the volume of a PCI express card compared to a HDD unit I think anyone can easily see that it’s going to be pretty close to 1:1 ratio on space used when comparing a 640 GB PCI express drive to one of the 1 TB HDDs out there at the moment. I agree that the io Drive will be able to serve files much more efficiently over a network but as usual a company has spouted off some marketing rubbish whilst ignoring the actual benefits of their product.

Another thing that annoyed me was the implication that their estimated cost at US$30 per GB would interest a lot of large organisations. May be it would but when current storage costs are around US$0.30 per GB any organisation investing in this storage technology would have to have some pretty serious file serving issues. So for the other 99.99% of the world (that’ll be you and me) we’ll be ’shackled’ with our oh so slow HDDs for a while yet!

Featured tags: flash drive Fusion io hdd ioDrive pci express

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The guys at Alienware have squeezed a couple of 320 GB 2.5 inch drives into their Area-51 m9750 and Aurora m9700 models. This makes these notebooks the first to sport such a capacity and if you were so inclined to have 640 GB of HDD space available you could squeeze in an amazing 163,000 tunes or 160 movies depending on what your passion is.

On the downside the Area-51 model weighs in at a hefty 8.5 lbs which doesn’t exactly make it a lightweight laptop but then who’s going anywhere when you’ve got so much music and vid to enjoy! It also sports a hefty price tag with a required US$2,400 just to get you the base model with 640 GB of storage. There’s a Solid State 128 GB option available too.

With the increase in popularity of external hard drives and their ever increasing capacity you may have thought manufacturer’s would have given up on trying to squeeze more capacity into a notebook but apparently not. So if you’re looking for a grunty notebook with copious amounts of storage you probably can’t go wrong with one of these offerings from Alienware. Oh yeah, deep pockets a requirement too.

Featured tags: alienware hdd laptop

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Western Digital have revamped their My Book range and added three new editions, the Essential, Home and Office. Each edition sports units ranging in capacity from 320 GB up to 1 TB and is aimed at specific users. The Essential Edition is a no nonsense plain jane storage range providing USB 2.0 connectivity. The Home Edition is aimed at the home user who is looking at something a bit more fancy with triple connectivity options of USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and eSATA plus automatic backup functionality. Whilst the Office Edition despite only sporting USB 2.0 connectivity not only provides the auto backup functionality but allows secure shared file access to the unit across a network. The Home and Office Editions also sport a capacity gauge for those of you who like that sort of thing ;)

All the drives are housed in similar sized boxes at 166 x 137 x 54mm and weigh 1.15 kg regardless of unit capacity with USB 2.0 connectivity providing the usual 480 Mbps. The Home Edition FireWire 400 gives users 400 Mbps with the eSATA connection pumping out 3Gbps.

The units are priced as follows - Essential Edition from US$130 (320 GB) to US$350 (1 TB), Home Edition from US$170 (320 GB) to US$380 (1 TB) and Office Edition from US$170 (320 GB) to US$380 (1 TB).

So there’s nothing new in terms of numbers but ther are a few extra bells and whistles that may just tempt you to take the plunge.

Source: PRNewsWire

Featured tags: extenal hdd hdd western digital

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I admit that I wasn’t overly impressed with the design of the last LaCie hard drive my eyes wandered over but LaCie may just have won me over with the Little Disk. Designed by a gentlemen called Sam Hecht, the Little Disk looks quite attractive with its extendable USB cable and flip off lid and who would know what lies inside the little black box when its not in use. Unfortunately any kudos built up as a man of mystery with his ‘little black box’ would soon be blown away when people realise it contains a series of zeros and ones. However for a while there you were ‘the dude with the mystery black box’.

Anyway lets crank out the numbers on this puppy

* All models sport USB 2.0 connectivity at 480 Mbps with a couple of FireWire 400 ports at 400 Mbps on larger models
* Spinning speed is 5,400 rpm for all apart from an oh so slow 3,600 for the 30 and 60 GB models
* Most models measure up at 81 x 129 x 18 mm but the dinky 30/60 GB models square up at a mere 64 x 80 x 18 mm
* Again the larger units weigh in at 195g but the smaller ones are 126g
* Capacity starts at the 30 GB mark and goes up to 250 GB on the biggest model

Prices start at US$100 for the 30 GB up to $230 for the 250 GB although there is a 250 GB without FireWire for $180. So nothing to write home about but its sleekness and elegance - attributes fairly uncommon in the external HDD world - make the Little Disk stand out in the crowd.

Source: LaCie

Featured tags: extenal hdd hdd lacie little disk

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Samsung have announced that their 64 GB solid state drive (SSD) has been snapped up by Alienware and Dell and is now available in the manufacturers notebooks. Dell is offering the drive on its XPS M1330 ultra-portable notebook and Alienware have got dual SSDs tucked away in its Area-51 m9750 gaming notebook along side a spinning 200 GB oh-so-yesterday HDD.

Despite only having a 64 GB max capacity - that figure will, as with all figures techie, increase over time - SSD does boast a number of advantages over its older sibling the HDD

* No moving parts, so less bits to go wrong
* Noise free
* Produces little heat, always a bonus with a lap-burning laptop
* Handles shocks and knocks better

So hats off to Samsung for getting this little sucker out into the world, another step forward in the endless quest to squeeze more stuff into less space.

Source: BusinessWire

Featured tags: alienware dell hdd laptop samsung SSD

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The boffins at Toshiba have done it again, they’ve managed to squeeze more zeroes and ones onto a HDD through Discrete Track Recording (DTR) technology. Here’s the techie blurb and a pretty picture from Toshiba that for once made sense to me!

So what does this mean to you and me. Well for some reason DTR is best applied to small form factor HDDs, namely the 1.8 and 2.5 inch variations so it means more disk space for your iPod and laptop. Currently the 1.8 inch HDDs max out at 60 GB - Apple slap two of these platters together to make their 160 GB iPod - but with DTR the platters will reach a 120GB capacity allowing Apple to come out with a 240 GB iPod with the same physical size as the 120 GB model. Cool, eh?

1.8 inch HDDs are also used in other devices such mobile PCs, digital vid cams and car nav units, so their capacities should be increased as well. And for those of use who are keeping track of the score Toshiba now squeeze in 333 Gb per square inch on these new drives.

The downside? Well Toshiba doesn’t plan to start mass production of drives boasting the new DTR tech until 2009, so it’ll be a while before a bigger capapcity iPod appears, but at least it’s on the horizon.

Source: Toshiba

Featured tags: hdd ipod laptop hard drives toshiba

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Looks like the marketing department at Seagate have been working overtime and have come up with the next generation of Maxtor OneTouch storage units to be unleashed on the world. There are three flavours of unit, the secure Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus ranging in capacity from 250 GB through to 1 TB, the also secure yet portable OneTouch 4 Mini (80 GB to 160 GB) and finally the OneTouch 4 for everyone who doesn’t care who sees their files, ranging in capacity from 250 GB to 750 GB.

The drives sport an intriguing design that initially reminded me of building blocks for a space station from a 70s sci fi TV series, but on closer inspection do look quite snazzy and would not look out of place on your desk.

The secure units feature the Maxtor SafetyDrill software, which allows complete recovery of your hard drive’s contents if it goes belly up. Simply boot the stuffed PC from the supplied SafetyDrill Recovery CD and the software restores your PC’s drive using the data on the OneTouch drive - simple, eh?

Again both the OneTouch 4 Plus and Mini have a password protected folder to store secret squirrel data in and there’s also Maxtor DrivePass firmware, which restricts access to vital files if the hard drive is removed from the unit and attached to another PC.

Here’s a list of specs for each of the units for you to have a quick look at

	OneTouch 4	OneTouch 4 Plus	OneTouch 4 Mini
Interface	USB 2.0	USB 2.0/Firewire 400	USB 2.0
RPM	7,200	7,200	5,400
Cache	16 MB	16 MB	8 MB
Size	63.5 x 149.35 x 171.45 mm	63.5 x 152.4 x 171.45 mm	124.63 x 15 x 81.86 mm
Weight	1 kg	1.1 kg	0.167 g

All units play well with both Windows XP upwards PCs and Mac OS X (10.4.7 upwards) machines with the MSRP pricing as follows - OneTouch 4 $99.99 for 250GB, $169.99 for 500GB, and $269.99 for 750GB, OneTouch 4 Plus $129.99 for 250GB, $199.99 for 500GB, $289.99 for 750GB and $359.99 for 1TB, OneTouch 4 Mini $99.99 for 80GB, $119.99 for 120GB and $149.99 for 160GB - all prices USD. And they are all available at the Maxtor store now, apart from the 1TB beastie which will make an appearance in October.

Featured tags: hdd maxtor onetouch 4 seagate

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