Western Digital launches 2TB hard disk drive .

Over 10 percent of the 3.5-inch hard drive market is already at 1TB or higher.
Melissa Perenson (PC World (US online)) 28/01/2009 07:37:00


Interesting times among hard disk manufacturers. Western Digital continues to solidify its role as a leader in the drive industry. Though the company is not normally known for being at the forefront of capacity jumps, today it became the first manufacturer to announce the jump to 2TB in a single drive. The previous capacity high-point was Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB drive.

Seagate, often first to market with new capacities, is currently drowning in issues with its flagship Barracuda 7200.11 series; drives in that series are reportedly having self-bricking issues.

The drive packs four 500GB platters, with 400 gigabits per square inch areal density. The drive is also part of WD's Green Power line of hard disk drives. This line of drives first shipped a year ago, and was the first to actively bill themselves as environmentally friendly drives due to lower power consumption. The 2TB drive has several WD technologies inside that enable its combination of capacity and power performance. StableTrac reduces vibration by securing the motor shaft at both ends, which in turn allows for accurate head tracking during read and write operations; IntelliPower, which WD says adjusts the balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms for optimal balance between performance and power consumption; IntelliSeek, which optimizes seek speeds to enable lower power consumption, noise, and vibration; and WD's NoTouch ramp load technology, which keeps the recording head from touching the disk media.

WD notes that, according to market research firm Trend Focus, over 10 percent of the 3.5-inch hard drive market is already at 1TB or higher.
More about Leader Computers, Seagate, Speed, Bill, Leader, Trend Focus, Western Digital, IntelliSeek,

What your hard drive will look like in five years?

Hard disk drives may soon be replaced by solid-state disk (SSD) drives
Lucas Mearian (Computerworld)
19 January, 2009 09:43:00


As solid-state disk (SSD) technology closes in on hard-disk drive (HDD) capacity and price, experts say it may not be long before spinning disks are a thing of the past and a computer's storage resides in flash memory on the motherboard.

By making the drive part of a system's core architecture -- instead of a peripheral device -- data I/O performance could initially double, quadruple or more, according to Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist with market research firm In-Stat.

"Instead of using a SATA interface, let's break that and instead of making it look like a disk drive, let's make it look like part of the memory hierarchy," McGregor said. "Obviously, if you break down that interface, you get more performance."

Currently, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) is the bus used to transfer data between a computer and storage devices, be it HDDs or SDDs in a 1.8-in., 2.5-in. or 3.5-in. disk drive form factor. SSD manufacturers have been fitting SSDs into a hard disk drive case to fit it into existing computer architectures.

Within three years, McGregor said SSDs with 256GB capacity -- already on the market -- will be close to the same price as hard drives. (A 256GB SSD for the new 17-in. MacBook Pro from Apple is a US$900 build-to-order option, for instance. A 250GB HDD goes for about a tenth that price.) That will signal to manufacturers that it's time to consider an interface change. And, while SSDs will be lagging behind the 500GB to 1TB capacities of hard disk drives for some time to come, McGregor argues that users don't need that much storage anyway.

"We've already seen this trend in the netbook space, and we will see it more in the notebook platform. Storage will begin to look more like a memory module than a hard drive," said Dean Klein, vice president of Micron Corp.'s SSD group. "There's a move afoot to make it more like a card-edge connector, so the SSD would not have the cost of a mechanical connector. It would just have gold-plated fingers on the edge: No enclosure, just the circuit board."

Disk drive vendors are doubling the capacity of drives every 12 to 18 months, but In-Stat's data indicates that the average storage requirements of users increase in a more linear way. And, while HD video can drive a huge swing in storage requirements, the advent of on-line libraries and storage services tend to even out the trends, McGregor said.

According to In-Stat, SSD prices have been dropping 60% year over year. Currently, the price of consumer-grade SSD costs from US$2 to $3.45 per gigabyte, with hard drives going for about 38 cents per gigabyte, according to Gartner and iSuppli.

"Two years ago, SSDs cost $17.50 per gigabyte, so it's obvious that consumer NAND flash memory will soon be a true contender to hard disk drives -- it's just not there yet," Gartner analyst Joseph Unsworth said. "I think you need to get to 128GB for around $200, and that's going to happen around 2010. Also, the industry needs to effectively communicate why consumers or enterprise users should pay more for less storage."
ntel's and Micron's upcoming SSDs are be based on 32Gbit chip technology. The companies are expected to be the first to break the US$1 per gigabyte barrier with their consumer SSD products, which will cost about 99 cents a gigabyte, according to Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis.

Klein argued that using an SSD in its native state, as NAND chips on a board without an enclosure, will reduce cost, weight, power use and space.

Within the next year, Micron expects to bring to market a high-end SSD that could achieve 1GB/sec. throughput by using a PCIe interface rather than traditional SATA or SAS. The transfer speed is four times that offered by Intel Corp.'s newest, enterprise-class SSD, the X25-E.

In a video on Micron's blog site, Joe Jeddeloh, director of the vendor's Advanced Storage Technology Center, demonstrated the technology using a two-processor, eight-core Intel Xeon PC and a card with two SSDs and 16 flash channels. A blurry readout showed the SSD reaching 800MB/sec. throughput, with Jeddeloh claiming that it "will be hitting a bandwidth of 1GB/sec. and at least 200,000 IOPS," or I/O operations per second.

The card was directly connected to a PCI Express (PCIe) slot, bypassing SATA or Serial Attached SCSI interfaces. While PCIe has the same throughput as SATA II -- 3Git/sec -- PCIe offers more channels.

Using file transfers ranging from 2KB to 2MB, Jeddeloh demonstrated 150,000 to 160,000 random reads per second in the video. "That's what flash can do when it's managed correctly," Jeddeloh said.

While Micron's SSD technology is aimed at high-end applications that would run on Fibre Channel SANs, such as transactional databases or streaming video, Klein said consumer-grade computers using SSDs directly connected to a PCIe bus with four lanes (x4 slots) could soon achieve similar results.

Physical PCIe slots may contain from one to 32 lanes of data. Currently, PCIe Generation 1 offers 250MB/sec. throughput per lane. The second generation of PCIe is expected out next year and will offer twice the throughput, or 500MB/sec. per lane. While SATA 3.0, expected out this year, also doubles throughput, it only offers one lane.

"Each lane of that x4 PCIe is as fast as a SATA 3.0's 6Gbit/sec bus," Klein said. "So I can be four times as fast on that one slot as an SSD could be on a SATA 3.0 connection. That's really the direction things are going."

Seagate hard disk fix breaks some.

Craig Simms, CNET.com.au

21 January 2009 12:03 PM

Seagate yesterday released a fix to a bug in its current generation of drives that caused them to become undetectable by a computer. Users have found, however, that the fix breaks 500GB drives — the fix has since been retracted.

A member of Seagate's community forums raised the issue in November 2008, with Seagate taking close to two months to offer a fix.

The bug affects a significant portion of not only Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 drives, but Barracuda ES.2 SATA and Maxtor DiamondMax 22 drives. Forums across the internet have been filled with warnings not to buy drives that feature the SD15 revision of firmware; however, Seagate's own documentation shows that SD16, SD17, SD18 and SD19 are also affected within certain model numbers.

This is not the first time Seagate has had a firmware issue with the 7200.11 series of drives. The SD04 and SD14 firmware revisions were found to be under-performing because they weren't accessing the full cache of the drives, and were replaced with version AD14 to fix this.

The new SD1A firmware was meant to be preventative only, but some users have found success updating and reviving already dead drives, according to Seagate's forums.

Users of Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 500GB product, however, have found that the update "bricks" their drives — terminology used in the tech industry to mean that the unit is dead.

Seagate has since removed the firmware update, claiming that it is "In Validation".

US customers have been offered free data recovery should the firmware bug have resulted in data loss — CNET Australia is waiting on confirmation to see if this is also offered locally, and what impact this has on hard drives included in stand-alone units such as DVRs.

The affected drives are listed below.
Drive type Drive model Firmware revision
Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS
ST3640330AS
ST3750330AS
ST31000340AS SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18
Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS
ST31000333AS
ST3640323AS
ST3640623AS
ST3320613AS
ST3320813AS
ST3160813AS All
Barracuda ES.2 SATA ST3250310NS
ST3500320NS
ST3750330NS
ST31000340NS All
DiamondMax 22 STM3500320AS
STM3750330AS
STM31000340AS MX15 or higher
DiamondMax 22 STM31000334AS
STM3320614AS
STM3160813AS
All

Barack Obama Flag

More Barack Obama Widgets Here

Dear Valued Client,

Start 2009 off and get your workspace & electronic equipment cleaned!

WestCoastComputer is proud to bring you the best in:

Canned air and Cleaning wipes.

ENDUST Compressed Gas Duster
Prolongs the life of PCs, VCRs, stereos and other valuable electronic equipment. Quickly and safely blows away dust and lint from hard-to-reach places. Moisture-free. New nonflammable formula. Capacity (Volume): 10 oz




ORDER TODAY for Just $14.30

FALCON SAFETY Premoistened Monitor Cleaning Wipes



Use these premoistened cleaning wipes to keep computer monitors looking clean and neat. The thick, antistatic wipes help eliminate dust, dirt and lint. Non-streaking formula.


ORDER TODAY for Just $8.25

WEST COAST COMPUTER PRODUCTS

Based in Southern California, WestCoastComputer has been providing a full line of computer related products including Data Storage, Imaging & Ink products and Office supplies for over twelve years.


We ship hundreds of orders daily throughout the country, from a network of 16 regional warehouses and strive to make sure you get your important business supplies in the most timely & inexpensive manner.

With the many challenges facing business today, you can trust us to work with you to keep your offices running smoothly.

Thanks for shopping with us. We look forward to working with you for many years to come.


Visit WestCoastComputer Today | 800-270-9885 x202

Sandisk intros world's fastest MLC SSD family.

Affordable third-generation SSDs based on multi-level cell (MLC) flash technology, equivalent to a 40,000 rpm HDD



CES 2009, LAS VEGAS, USA: SanDisk Corp. unveiled its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory technology, SanDisk's G3 Series establishes new benchmarks in performance and price-performance leadership in the SSD industry.

Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5" and 1.8" form factors respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface. Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB*, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively.

The G3 SSDs are more than five times faster than the fastest 7,200 RPM HDDs and more than twice as fast as SSDs shipping in 2008, clocking in at 40,000 vRPM1 and anticipated sequential performance of 200MB/s read and 140MB/s write3. The G3 SSDs provide a Longterm Data Endurance (LDE) of 160 terabytes written (TBW) for the 240GB version, sufficient for over 100 years of typical user usage. (2,3)

Sandisk's MLC SSD family"SanDisk's G3 SSD has met the demand of a 120GB SSD at less than $250 with an exceptional user experience" said Rich Heye, sr. vp and general manager, Solid State Drives (SSD) business unit, SanDisk. "Three key features developed by SanDisk enable this new design: a new SSD algorithm called ExtremeFFSTM allows random write performance to potentially improve by as much as 100 times over conventional algorithms; reliable 43nm multi-level cell (MLC) all bit-line (ABL) NAND flash; and SanDisk's new SSD controller, which ties together the NAND and the algorithm."

"With large capacities and aggressive pricing, SSDs are poised to enter mainstream corporate notebooks in 2009." Heye explained, "Given the current economic environment, corporate IT managers have also described a desire to extend the service life of existing notebooks. These notebooks are already maxed out on DRAM, and struggle to meet users' performance expectations. These existing WinXP notebooks can be upgraded to a 60GB SSD for $149, resulting in a system that frequently outperforms a new notebook with a HDD, thereby delaying the need for large capital purchases."

"Web-Feet Research has tested the replacement of the HDDs in three year old Notebooks with SSDs and has found an improvement in boot times, application loading and general user responsiveness that, in many cases, exceeds what a new notebook with an HDD can deliver," said ,Alan Niebel, Principal at Web-feet Research. "In these challenging economic times, IT managers are looking for ways to reduce IT spending without adversely affecting their user base and the SanDisk G3 SSD solution extends the notebook replacement cycle an additional two years at minimal cost."

The SanDisk G3 SSDs will be available to this market in mid 2009, in a 2.5" PATA configuration expressly for this purpose. In addition, the SanDisk G3 SSDs will be available on sandisk.com for do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiasts. "An SSD upgrade improves the user experience like nothing else you can do to a computer." Heye concluded.

SanDisk's flash technology is produced at fabrication plants in Yokkaichi, Japan, where SanDisk and its partner, Toshiba, share the output. The SSD controller and firmware were designed by SanDisk expressly for the G3 SSD.

SanDisk and Sony Expand Memory Stick Capacity

Monday, January 12 06:43 am
Computer Business Online ComputerWire Staff

SanDisk and Sony have announced the joint development of two expanded Memory Stick formats to achieve a maximum storage capacity of 2-terabytes and enable a maximum data-transfer speed of 60 mbps. Skip related content

The new Memory Stick Format for Extended High Capacity of up to 2TB of data is 60 times higher than the Memory Stick PRO format's current 32GB limit. The new format is scheduled to support the MagicGate copyright protection technology and Access Control Function.

Memory Stick HG Micro format has an 8-bit parallel interface and offers an increased interface clock frequency of 60MHz, enabling 60Mbps data transfer speed, which is three times faster than the conventional serial 4-bit parallel interface and 40MHz interface.

Yoram Cedar, executive vice president of OEM and corporate engineering at SanDisk, said: "SanDisk and Sony share a long collaborative history of developing products and technologies. Both companies have enjoyed great successes with the Memory Stick PRO format, and the expansion of these formats to improve capacity and performance that will significantly impact mobile and consumer electronics markets."

Since September 1998 when the Memory Stick format was introduced, shipments are estimated to have surpassed 500 million units.