SSD

We can't remember the last time it snowed on Halloween weekend, but the cold weather kept all but one of us from dressing up today. Tune in to see who conjured up the spirits of Halloween!… Read more

Earlier this year, we were bombarded with news about Ultrabooks, a new category of laptop given a new name by Intel--these machines were meant to be improvements on the laptop as we've come to know it, with smartphone-like startup speed and wafer-thin, future-sexy designs.

So far, so good: the first few laptops we've seen that categorize themselves as Ultrabooks have all been excellent products. The Acer Aspire S3, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, and the Asus Zenbook UX31 all lived up to expectations, and all provide valid alternatives to the MacBook Air.

And yet, there's a problem. In my eyes, at least. And it's a big one. … Read more

Having up-to-date backups of your data is like insurance, we all need it and at the same time never want to have to resort to it.

Though backing up data is not required by law, the consequences of not doing it are often so huge that it's fair to call those who don't frequently back up their important data, well, reckless, irresponsible, or just simply foolish. The truth is, when you realize that the originals of your important documents or photos are gone because of a hard-drive crash or losing your laptop, being called names is the least of your worries.

Now there's an easy fix. Here's a list of our top portable hard drives that make backing up data a no-brainer. Take a look and get yourself one if you don't already have a backup solution in place. … Read more

Chipmaker LSI said today it has signed a deal to acquire privately held flash storage processor provider SandForce for $322 million in cash.

The acquisition will give the Milpitas, Calif.-based-semiconductor maker--previously known as LSI Logic--an expanded presence in the fast-growing market for solid-state drives made with NAND flash memory chips, like those typically found in smartphones and tablet computers. As flash prices decline, demand for flash SSDs is expected to overshadow traditional hard drives.

"Adding SandForce's technology to LSI's broad storage portfolio is consistent with our mission to accelerate storage and networking," LSI Chief Executive … Read more

OCZ yesterday announced a new lineup of solid-state drives called Octane that offer up to 1TB of storage space. The company says the top-capacity Octane model will cost just around $1,300, which is much cheaper than some 512GB SSDs on the market. Other Octane capacities, including 512GB, 256GB, and 128GB, are priced lower accordingly.

According to OCZ, the new SSDs are based on a next-generation controller called Indilinx Everest that offers better balance between capacity, physical size, and performance compared with previous controllers. The 2.5-inch-design SSDs support both SATA 3.0 (6Gbps) and SATA 2.0 (3Gbps) standards. … Read more

Toshiba announced today the Toshiba MK01GRRB/R series hard drive for the enterprise market. It offers up to 300GB of storage in the 2.5-inch design.

While 300GB doesn't seem like much, this is a high-speed hard drive that offers spinning speeds of 15,000rpm, as opposed to only 7,200rpm in high-end consumer-grade hard drives. In fact the new drive doubles the capacity compared with the previous model, without increasing the amount of platter, and is currently the largest among its peers, according to Toshiba.

The new drive features SAS connection with up to 6Gbps bandwidth. It offers … Read more

The Patriot Memory Pyro solid-state drive (SSD) is the "budget" version of the Patriot Wildfire that was reviewed a few months ago.

While costing some 90 cents per gigabyte less than the Wildfire, the Pyro is still one of the most expensive SATA 6Gbps SSDs on the market, with the 120GB version being priced at around $200 and the 240GB version at around $430.

The drive's data transfer speeds were relatively slow compared with those of other SSDs of the same standard, including the Wildfire.… Read more

Erasing an SSD (solid-state drive) not only sanitizes the drive, but recovers lost performance on systems with inefficient garbage collection. Utilities like CCleaner or DBAN are made for magnetic disk drives and won't work on SSDs. Fortunately, there are two free secure-erase utilities that do work with SSD drives.

The first utility is named Secure Erase (HDDErase.exe), and was developed by the Center for Magnetic Recording Research at the University of California, San Diego. It's free and effective, but requires DOS boot media. The biggest problem with Secure Erase, however, is that development ended in 2008, thus … Read more

Toshiba announced today the updated version of its Canvio portable drive, which now comes with USB 3.0 and cloud backup capability. The original version of the drive was announced more than a year ago and offers only USB 2.0 connectivity.

The Canvio 3.0 drive is available now in three capacities, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB, which cost $90, $110, and $140, respectively. The drive is preloaded with NTI BackupNow EZ software for Windows, which enables users to back up both to the portable drive and to the cloud. Toshiba says the software will scan a computer automatically for important documents and recommend which files to back up to the cloud and which to back up to the directly connected portable storage device. It's unclear, however, if the online storage is free, and if so how much storage is included with the drive.

Toshiba also announced that its entry-level Canvio Basics storage drive now comes with USB 3.0, too. The Canvio Basics 3.0 is also available now in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB versions that each cost $10 less than the Canvio 3.0 of the same capacity.… Read more