It turns out there are still some ways to improve a USB flash drive that don’t involve just cramming more storage inside. The iStick Pro , coming sometime in March of this year, features a Lightning connector on one end for attaching to iOS devices, and a wonderful transforming USB/microUSB connector on the other making it also compatible with laptops and Android devices. Read more…
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The Magical USB Port On the iStick Pro Drive Transforms Into microUSB
Back in February, Google made a decision that upset a lot of users by limiting access to the SD card by developers . As of Lollipop, those limitations get a lot less limiting. Read more…
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Android Lollipop Will Open Up SD Card Access a Lot More
Just a few months ago we were impressed with Western Digital for cramming an entire terabyte of storage into a mobile hard drive that was just seven millimeters thick. But now Seagate’s come along to steal WD’s thunder with the ultra-slim 2.5-inch Spinpoint M9T that manages to double that capacity to two-terabytes inside a drive that’s just 9.5 millimeters thick. Read more…
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The World’s Thinnest 2TB Hard Drive Is a Mere 9.5mm Thick
When it comes to prolonging the life of your laptop, there’s no easier upgrade than adding an ultra-compact USB flash drive to expand its storage capacity—particularly if it’s got a small SSD on board. And a company called PKparis is now laying claim to the title of ‘world’s smallest USB 3.0 flash drive’ with its new K’1 that more than looks the part. Read more…
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You’ll Barely Notice the World’s Smallest USB 3.0 Flash Drive
Solid-state drives are so speedy these days that that even a SATA interface might not have the bandwidth to cope. It’s a good thing that Samsung has started mass-producing the first PCI Express-based SSDs for Ultrabooks, then. The new XP941 series uses PCIe’s wider data path to read at nearly 1.4GB/s — that’s 2.5 times faster than the quickest SATA SSDs , and nimble enough to move 500GB in six minutes. It also ships in a tinier M.2 format that makes past card-based SSDs look gargantuan, even when there’s up to 512GB of storage. Samsung hasn’t named laptop makers receiving the XP941, although it doesn’t take strong deductive skills to spot one of the (probable) first customers. When Apple is shipping a new 13-inch MacBook Air that just happens to use a very similar PCIe SSD from Samsung, there’s likely more than coincidence at work. Filed under: Laptops , Storage , Apple , Samsung Comments Source: Samsung
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Samsung makes first PCIe-based SSD for Ultrabooks, we see one likely customer
We were intrigued with the prospects of Western Digital’s 5mm Blue drive when we saw it last summer: finally, a 2.5-inch spinning disk thin enough to rival slimmer SSDs without the price premium of a hybrid like the WD Black SSHD . If you shared the same curiosity, you’ll be glad to hear that the finished product is shipping as the WD Blue UltraSlim. Device builders can now stuff 500GB into spaces that would exclude 7mm disks , yet pay just $89 for the privilege — a price low enough to let even frugal Ultrabooks shed some bulk. The 5mm disk reaches its miniscule dimensions through the use of a tiny edge connector that mates both power and a SATA interface, leaving more room for the drive machinery. We can’t guarantee that you’ll find a Blue UltraSlim in your next PC or set-top box when Western Digital hasn’t named any of its customers, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the wafer-like drive is commonplace in the near future. Filed under: Laptops , Storage Comments Source: Western Digital
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WD ships 5mm Blue UltraSlim drive, enables thinner budget Ultrabooks
Seagate has had some skin in the hybrid hard drive game for some time, but always in 2.5-inch wide versions — great for your laptop, not so much the cavernous spaces of a gaming tower. Its just-shipping Desktop SSHD fills that gap in a nearly literal sense. Along with slotting neatly into a 3.5-inch bay, the larger SSHD carries both 2TB of spinning storage and 8GB of flash to speed up disk-intensive tasks without throwing away capacity (or money) on a pure solid-state drive. It should be as much as four times faster than conventional desktop drives, Seagate claims. Whether or not that’s true, the firm isn’t neglecting its portable-owning friends: it’s shipping a new 1TB, regular-height Laptop SSHD and a 500GB, 7mm (0.28-inch) Laptop Thin SSHD, either of which is up to 40 percent faster than its predecessor. Seagate hasn’t mentioned pricing for any of the drives at this stage, although it’s safe to presume they’ll undercut SSDs with equivalent space. Filed under: Desktops , Laptops , Storage Comments Source: Seagate
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Seagate ships its first desktop hybrid drive, third-gen laptop models
Lucas123 writes “Electrical engineers at Oregon State University (OSU) said yesterday that they have found a technique to use high-frequency sound waves to improve magnetic data storage.The data write-technology breakthrough could allow greater amounts of data to be stored on both hard disk drives and NAND flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs), they said. Typically, when magnetic recording material is temporarily heated, even for an instant, it can become momentarily less stiff and more data can be stored at a particular spot. But, the technique has proven difficult to effectively increase capacity because heating tends to spread beyond where it is wanted and the technology involves complex integration of optics, electronics and magnetics, the researchers said. With the new technique, known as acoustic-assisted magnetic recording, ultrasound is directed at a highly specific location on the material while data is being stored, creating elasticity that allows “a tiny portion of the material to bend or stretch.” After the ultrasound is turned off, the material immediately returns to its original shape, but the data stored during the process remains in a dense form.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ultrasound Waves Used To Increase Data Storage Capacity of Magnetic Media
Everyone’s been making fun of the Surface Pro for being so stingy on hard drive space. The 128GB version of the Surface Pro only has 90GB of free space ( originally reported to be 83GB but since boosted). Where the hell did the other 38 gigs go? Well, you could ask the same question to the 128GB version of the MacBook Air. The MBA only has 92GB of free space. What! More »
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Which One Has More Usable Space: the 128GB Surface Pro or the 128GB MacBook Air?
It’s been relatively easy for awhile to get a solid-state drive with 2TB or more of storage — if you’ve been willing to buy a large PCI Express card , that is. Foremay is bringing that kind of capacity to a more portable form. It claims that both its TC166 (for end users) and SC199 (industrial) drives are the first to stuff 2TB of flash memory into a 2.5-inch SATA enclosure. The 9.5mm thickness should let them fit into many laptop hard drive bays and space-sensitive machinery without having to give up all those valuable extra bytes. Before reaching for a credit card, however, we’d warn that there aren’t many details so far — we don’t know the performance, or how much it costs to buy either model. We’ve reached out and will get back if there’s firmer details, but at least corporate customers who want speed and ample storage in one drive will be glad to hear that Foremay’s new SSDs are already in mass production. Continue reading Foremay claims to have the first 2TB, 2.5-inch SSDs Filed under: Storage Comments Source: Foremay (1) , (2)
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Foremay claims to have the first 2TB, 2.5-inch SSDs