sata

Seagate powers self-encrypting Dell PCs

UPDATED: Corrected the information that McAfee provides software security solution for Dell's self-encrypting PCs as previously suggested in the article.

According to credible sources, a notebook computer is stolen every 53 seconds--and 97 percent are never recovered. In most cases, the risk of losing data stored on the hard drive is much higher than the value of the notebook itself.

To address this issue, Seagate, Dell, and McAfee teamed up to announce on Monday data encryption solutions for PCs that work without you even having to know about it. The solutions include new self-encrypting hard drives, software managing systems, and computers that implements the two.

The new hard drives belong to the Seagate's Momentus FDE family. FDE stands for full-disk encryption, Seagate's self-encrypting method for 2.5-inch hard drives.

Dell is the PC vendor that implements the new hard drives in a variety of its business computers.

McAfee annouced that it has joined the list of security software providers that support Seagate hard drives' embedded hardware encryption. This offers customers another choice of enterprise management solutions required to secure notebook computers.

The new Momentus FDE notebook hard drives comes in two performance grades: one that spins at 5400rpm and the other at 7200rpm. Both are presently available in 320GB and 16GB storage capacities, with 500GB versions coming early next year. However, the 5400rpm Momentus FDE has only 8MB of cache as opposed to 16MB of the 7200rpm version.

These drives features SATA controller interface and built-in AES encryption, a government-grade encryption capable of encrypting a hard drive's entire content transparently and automatically. … Read more

Microsoft: Windows 7 to boost solid-state drives

Updated at 3:40 p.m.with additional comments and clarifications about solid state drives and ATA commands.

Will solid-state drives thrive on Windows 7? Microsoft is set to address that question at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week.

Microsoft will speak to both overall support for solid-state drives and Windows 7 support for Netbooks in Los Angeles at WinHEC 2008, which kicks off Wednesday.

In a conference abstract titled "Windows 7 Enhancements for Solid-State Drives," Microsoft states that "PC systems that have solid-state drives are shipping in increasing volumes" and that it is planning &… Read more

Solid-state drive gets tiny

Solid-state drives aren't always faster than regular hard drives, but they sure can be tinier.

The smallest regular hard drives are the 1.8 inchers that Toshiba has been making for ultracompact laptops. On Wednesday, Super Talent Technology announced two SSDs that come in a significantly smaller form factor: .85 inch and 1 inch.

The new SSDs use Intel Z-P140 NAND Flash-based SSD technology and employ the older parallel ATA (PATA/IDE) interface, as opposed to the current and popular SATA interface used in regular-size SSDs. Both offer rather modest read and write speeds of 40 megabytes per second … Read more

Intel ships enterprise solid-state drive

Not long after releasing the X-25M solid-state drive for general consumers, Intel announced on Wednesday its highest-performing SSD for servers.

The new drive, dubbed X-25E Extreme, shares a lot of similarities with the X-25M, including the 2.5-inch chassis, SATA interface, and 10-channel NAND architecture with Native Command Queuing. However, it features 50nm single-level cell NAND flash memory technology instead of multicell level NAND found in the X-25M.

The result, according to Intel, is that the new X25-E increases server, workstation, and storage system performance by up to 100 times over traditional hard-disk drives when measured in input/output per … Read more

Score giant Seagate hard drive for less than $200

I just got my hands on the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, which at 1.5TB is the largest consumer hard drive you can get presently, and now I realize just how big it really is.

If you bought a new computer in the last two years, chances are it came with a hard drive somewhere between 250GB and 500GB. This is already a huge amount of storage considering that just four years ago, most hard drives offered 100GB or less.

A 250GB hard drive offers about 16 times more storage space than the 16GB version of the iPhone 3G. For … Read more

The new MacBooks: Beauty more than skin deep

I couldn't be at the Tuesday morning Apple launch event for the new MacBook and MacBook Pro systems, but I've had a chance to review the announcements.

Normally I focus on the technology in new products, but this time, I have to say my first impression is dominated by the appearance of these systems. These are some good-looking laptops.

The most dramatic change is the new display surround, black glass that goes right out to the edge of the upper case just like on an iPhone. The lower case also looks significantly cleaner now that the old gray … Read more

LaCie 2big Dual: Big and heavy are in style

I got my hands on LaCie's new external hard drive, the 2big Dual, and it's not just big, but heavy too.

In fact, it's arguably the heaviest two-bay external hard drive I've run into. The drive is not ugly, however. Designed by Neil Poulton, the drive, though big and rugged, has an elegant industrial look with aluminum casing and a removable base for the vertical position.

The drive comes with eSATA and USB 2.0 connections and six RAID-based setups for hard drives that can be easily set with the switch on the back of the … Read more

Super Talent to release budget solid-state drives

Two weeks after announcing two new high-speed solid-state drives (SSD), Super Talent Technology on Tuesday announced it will release the MasterDrive LX as a budget solid-state drive later this week.

The MasterDrive LX comes in 64GB and 128GB versions and will cost about $179 and $300, respectively. Both drives are SATA-II and use NAND flash technology. They will be compatible with computers that support the ever-popular 2.5-inch SATA hard drive.

The low prices do come with a shortcoming: the throughput speed. The new MasterDrive LX drives are significantly slower than other SSDs; it's even slower than some regular … Read more

Get a 1TB external drive for $89.99 (AR)

I said it would happen, and here it is: a 1TB external hard drive for less than $100. Specifically, Buy.com has the 1-terabyte Cavalry CAXE3701T0 dual-interface drive for $89.99 shipped (after a $50 mail-in rebate). Yowza.

Because it's preformatted with NTFS, it's plug-and-play ready for Windows users. (Mac and Linux folks could easily reformat it, I'm sure.) The drive includes both USB and eSATA interfaces, and even comes with a SATA bridge cable so you can connect it to an internal SATA port (handy for those systems that lack an external one). Why bother? Oh, … Read more