SSD

If the definition of a thumbdrive is a storage device that's about the size of, well, your thumb, then LaCie has just redefined it in terms of performance.

The company announced today what it calls "the smallest solid-state USB 3.0 drive" on the market, the LaCie FastKey.

About the size of an adult's thumb but much thinner, the FastKey can also be considered one of the first USB 3.0-based thumbdrives. Most, if not all, thumbdrives on the market support the much slower USB 2.0.

LaCie claims that its new FastKey can deliver speeds … Read more

Intel's deep commitment to flash memory technology was on display today with two announcements centered on large business customers.

The world's largest chipmaker announced it was a lead investor in a company that makes flash storage more palatable to the enterprise, while Hitachi announced the fruits of joint flash development with Intel aimed at large businesses.

As part of 18 new investments by Intel Capital totaling $77 million, the world's largest chipmaker led a group that invested $32 million in Anobit. The Israel-based company has patented technology that increases the long-term reliability of lower-cost-per-bit flash memory, referred … Read more

On Friday, Intel introduced its most competitively priced solid-state drive yet and will be selling the drive to consumers through major retail outlets. Are SSDs finally becoming a worthy upgrade?

The Intel X25-M 120GB Solid-State Drive is set to be offered at Best Buy and Fry's Electronics for a suggested retail price of $249. Newegg is already selling the drive. Competitive SSDs would include a 128GB drive for $269 from Crucial.

Though still pricey by traditional spinning hard disk drive standards (1 terabyte desktop HDDs can be had for less than $100), it's a dramatic change from two … Read more

The hybrid hard-disk drive market is expected to reach 600 million units in 2016, according to market researcher Objective Analysis. This would mean an explosion of mainstream drives that integrate the performance-boosting benefits of flash memory.

The first generation of hybrid drive technology was "well conceived but poorly implemented," according to a report released on Monday by Objective Analysis. "Now that working versions have been implemented the hybrid drive promises to sweep the PC hard drive market."

"We expect the hybrid drive market to nearly double every year for the five years following its initial adoption, reaching 600 million units by 2016," said analyst Jim Handy, who authored the report, in a statement. "This blazing growth will result from hybrid drives replacing standard HDDs in mainstream PCs."

Hybrid drives, in their current form, add a small amount of flash memory to a traditional spinning HDD. But this pinch of flash can deliver a big boost to performance on certain tasks at relatively little extra cost, as CNET Reviews demonstrated with the 500GB Seagate Momentus XT and as other reviews of the Seagate drive have shown.

"The NAND [flash memory] in these hybrid drives will be pretty small. Seagate's Momentus XT does a really good job with only 4GB of flash, and Nvelo's Dataplex software accelerates HDDs very well with only 16GB of NAND," said Handy, responding to an e-mail query. … Read more

The new MacBook Air offers a window into the future of Apple's laptops. And if you ask Steve Jobs, it's the future of all laptops.

During his 90-minute presentation at Apple headquarters yesterday, Jobs introduced two models of a redesigned MacBook Air, an 11-inch and 13-inch. Both are supremely skinny (less than .11 inches at the tiniest point) and weigh in at just under three pounds. Two very explicit feature choices enabled that: leaving out the optical drive for loading discs, and the decision to drop the hard drive. Instead, there's just a flash-based solid-state drive. And … Read more

Iomega today announced its--and possibly the world's--first portable storage solution that's based on a solid-state drive (SSD), the Iomega External USB 3.0 SSD Flash Drive.

Traditionally, most portable drives are based on internal laptop (2.5-inch) hard drives. As the name suggests, the new drive also supports USB 3.0, which offers a ceiling speed of up to 5Gbps.

According to Iomega, the new SSD Flash Drive features built-in 256-bit hardware encryption and rugged housing, and is bus-powered, meaning it uses only one USB cable for both data and power connections.

Iomega claims that the new drive'… Read more

On Tuesday, Hitachi-LG Data Storage announced a hybrid optical drive that can obviate the need for a traditional hard disk drive in thin laptop designs.

Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) disclosed a second-generation Serial-ATA (SATA) 6.0-gigabit-per-second (Gbps)-based "hybrid drive" at Ceatec 2010, held this week in Makuhari Messe, Japan. The drive is meant to eliminate the need for a separate traditional (spinning) hard disk drive in laptops, allowing PC makers to bring out optical-drive-equipped systems with only one drive.

Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology also announced today that it is supplying 25-nanometer NAND flash chips for the drive. … Read more

Not too many years ago, any laptop $999 or less was considered a budget machine, and spending between $1,000 and $2,000 was the standard buy-in for constructive computing. Starting around the same time as low-cost Netbooks came onto the scene, laptop prices across the board took a dive, and today's mainstream user can easily get away with spending less than $700 for a fully functional midsize laptop, or just a few dollars more to add high-end extras like Blu-ray or discrete graphics.

What this means is that one of the hardest things to find right now is … Read more

Transcend's solid-state drives got a radical upgrade Tuesday, as the company announced a new breed of SSDs that offer speeds of up to 260MBps and come in capacities of up to 512GB, which the company claims is the highest in the industry.

According to Transcend, to boost overall performance, the 2.5-inch SATA SSDs feature an upgraded controller chip that supports a maximum sequential transfer speed of 260MBps read and 200 MBps write. The company claims that this will significantly improve the system bootup and application launch speed and at the same time will offer lag-free responsiveness. The new … Read more