ICY DOCK Community Blogs

Icy News: 2TB De-Dupe Backup NAS at $899

2012-01-27T16:30:00.000-08:00

"Highly Reliable Systems, Inc., in Reno NV, is shipping a NAS with an integrated removable drive based on Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008R2 Essentials. The Workstation Backup Appliance (WBA) has 2TB of deduped internal storage, along with Microsoft software to backup 25 Windows or Mac workstations. "Microsoft wrote the backup software for the WBA," said Tom Hoops, Chief Technology officer. "The central console they created for this unit manages all the backups from a single location using a dashboard concept. The appliance runs a Windows Server OS, so it can join existing domains," said Hoops. Multiple boxes can be ganged to support more than 25 workstations and server backup can be supported with 3rd party software. The appliance stores duplicate files (those that exist on multiple workstations) only once. The company says that this data deduplication ability means that data stored on 25 workstations will fit into much smaller backup space." - via Storagenewsletter

We don't post too much about NAS storage systems and this would be a good time to do so! HRS or Highly Reliable System, is a very large company who deals with backup system for different types of businesses. Your workplace may have something such as this without even knowing it! Or perhaps, if you are a medium business with a need for such a device, it seems to be the perfect solution. Let us know what you think!

Icy News: Mushkin Starts Its First PCIe SSD: Scorpion

2012-01-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

"Up to 960GB, 1,275MB/s sequential read, 1,500MB/s write

Mushkin,Inc. announced three flash memory data storage products.

PCIe SSD Scorpion

After Mushkin's Callisto and Chronos 2.5" SSD lines, several new productsare expanding the company's reach in the flash memory segment.

New to the Mushkin product lineup is a 1.8" form factor SSD calledChronos GO. For mobile computing, Chronos GO offers fast throughput in a smallpackage. Available in both standard (built with asynchronous NAND flash) andDeluxe (built with synchronous NAND flash) versions, Chronos GO touts read andwrite speeds of 560MB/s and 525MB/s, with the synchronous versions offeringperformance with multimedia data.

Mushkin also announced the Atlas mSATA SSD. This LSI SandForceSF-2281-driven MO-300B form factor drive will provide 3rd generation SATAperformance in 30 to 240GB capacities. Both value-oriented models (built withasynchronous NAND flash) and performance units (built with synchronous modeflash) are planned. Maximum sequential read and write speeds are 560MB/s and535MB/s, respectively.

Mushkin's first PCIe SSD, the Scorpion, with initial densities of 240, 480 and960GB, is poised to become the primary data storage device of enthusiasts andprofessionals requiring workstation-class performance and reliability. Rated atup to 1,275MB/s sequential read, 1,500MB/s sequential write, and120,000 4Krandom write IOPS, the Scorpion ushers in an era of SSD technology in whichboth speed and available storage are easily within reach.

"With the great success of our existing flash products, we're pleased tobe 'spreading our wings' into new market segments. The new flash products we'reannouncing at CES today cement Mushkin's position as the foremost supplier ofreliable and innovative high-performance flash storage products", BrianFlood, Mushkin's director of product development.

These new flash products will be available on the company's web site websiteand through authorized resellers and distributors in the first half of 2012." -via storagenewsletter.com

Mushkin has been a leader in the memory industry for years known for their quality products. The company is now releasing a new line of SSDs in both synchronous and asynchronous models. What is even more exciting is their new PCIe SSD called the Scorpion. The SSD features 240, 480 and 960GB capacities and up to 1,275MB/s sequential read, 1,500MB/s sequential write, and120,000 4K random write IOPS! This product is a very exciting new item from a quality company. Let us know what you think about their new SSD.

Icy News: Kingston SSDNow V+200 Released

2012-01-20T16:01:00.000-08:00

"Kingston released the new SandForce SF-2200 based SSDNow V+200, replacing the Toshiba-powered SSDNow V+100, and bumping speeds to take advantage of SATA 6.0Gb/s interfaces. The new V+200 will be available in a wide range of capacities, including 60, 90, 120, 240, and 480GB versions with peak read speeds topping out at 535MB/s and write speeds of 480MB/s. With a three-year warranty, Kingston is pricing these drives to start at $140 for the 60GB model and maxing out at $985 for the 480GB version...The SSDNow V+200 is aimed at small businesses and consumers who want a low-cost high-performance SSD. Compared to the SSDNow V+100 before it, this is a huge upgrade in the performance category. All the Kingston SSDNow V+200 models will include Intel 25nm asynchronous NAND, which will be comparable to OCZ Agility 3 and Corsair Force 3 models." -via Storagereview

Kingston has been working on their successor to the V100 series, and without a doubt, improved the performance of their SSD without much of a price increase. The $140 price tag for a 60GB SSD is cheap when you know that the product just came out and if you shop around, may be able to find a cheaper price. With so much difference choices that you can take, will you be purchasing this SSD? Let us know why or why not!

Icy News: One Million USB 3.0 Devices to Be Shipped in 2014

2012-01-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

"Up from 70 million in 2011, estimates NPD In-Stat

As the number of CE devices and their capabilities continueto evolve and converge, many require significantly more bandwidth to providethe quality interactive experience users have come to expect.

SuperSpeed USB brings performance enhancements to the ubiquitous USB standard,while remaining compatible with the billions of USB-enabled devices currentlydeployed in the market. New NPD In-Stat research forecasts SuperSpeed USB-enableddevice shipments are on a fast track and will surpass 1 billion in 2014, upfrom 70 million in 2011.

"Because the throughput of SuperSpeed USB, ten times that of high-speedUSB, is not required in some devices, adoption will not initially be as broadas for full- and high-speed USB," says Brian O'Rourke, Research Director."However, SuperSpeed USB will gain significant initial penetration inmarkets requiring transfers of increasingly larger pools of data. This processis already well underway, as evidenced in the USB Implementer Forum's Decemberannouncement that Intel's 7 Series PC Chipset and C216 PC Chipset familyachieved SuperSpeed USB certification, guaranteeing increased SuperSpeedpenetration of the PC market."

Other details from the report include:

Low-Speed and Full-Speed USB attach rates for keyboards will be 81% in 2013.
Notebooks will be the single largest device that will ship with SuperSpeed USB capability in 2015.
High-Speed USB-enabled device shipments will peak in 2012.
In 2015, 5.5 billion devices will ship with some type of USB capability.

Recent NPD In-Stat research, USB by Device, Q1'12 Forecast(#IN1205302MI, $3,995),provides forecasts of the worldwide USB device market for the 2010-2015 periodwith detailed segmentation by device type and technology.

Device forecasts are provided for:

Cellular devices (basic and feature phones, smartphones, external cellular modems, mobile hotspots)
Computing devices (desktops, mini-notes, notebooks, tablets)
Networking devices (broadband routers, cable modems, DSL modems, residential gateways)
Peripheral devices (Blu-ray drives, DVD drives, external web cameras, external hard drives/enclosures, discrete USB host controllers, flash card readers, flash drives, game controllers , hubs , keyboards, mice, mobile PC docking stations, multifunction peripherals, ink jet printers, laser printers, scanners, speakers, USB adapters)
Portable consumer electronics devices (digital still cameras, digital camcorders, e-readers, MP3 players, personal media players, personal navigation devices, handheld game consoles)
Stationary consumer electronics devices (A/V receivers, Blu-ray players, DVD players, DVD recorders, digital photo frames, digital televisions, cable set top boxes, IP/DSL set top boxes, standalone PVRs, streaming media players, satellite set top boxes, terrestrial set top boxes, video game consoles)" - via storagenewsletter.com

USB 3.0 is a very popular interface right now in the current market. It is amazing to think that there will be 1 million USB 3.0 devices to be shipped in 2014. It will replace most of the current USB 2.0 devices with the faster USB 3.0 interface. Let us know what you think about USB 3.0 and if you have made the switch to it. Also let us know if you are going to use a different interface.

Icy News: Blu-Ray Discs Break $2 Billion Barrier in USA 2011 in

2012-01-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

"Drives now at nearly 40 million homes, according to DEG

According to The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), Hollywood's home entertainment recovery continued in 2011 as consumers bolstered their home viewing experience with HDTVs, Blu-ray players and discs, as well as the expanding offerings through electronic sell-through (EST) and video on demand (VOD) services.

Sales of Blu-ray movies rose 20 percent over 2010.

Total consumer spending on home filmed entertainment for the second half of the year rose nearly one percent, fueled by a strong third quarter in which spending was up five percent, which marked the first quarterly increase since 2008. while overall spending for the category was slightly down two percent for the year, the industry's performance clearly stabilized in 2011.

The recovery continues to be driven by high margin products that are gaining a foothold among consumers, a further indication that the home entertainment market is rebounding and in a healthy state. Among the various services and platforms delivering filmed entertainment, these higher margin businesses - Blu-ray disc, EST and VOD - showed the strongest growth rates. " - via Storagenewsletter

In a world where digital content is dominant, it is good to see that the older technology (DVD, Blu-Rays) are still selling well. Now that the prices for a Blu-Ray player have gone down, the ability for the average consumer to purchase the higher quality video is easier to spend on. However, digital content is still the where most people get their entertainment from and most likely will not change over the next decade. Let us know what your thoughts are!

Icy News: Plextor Brings Out M3 Pro SSD

2012-01-13T16:28:00.000-08:00

"Plextor announced its latest SSD M3 Pro, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas...Plextor exceeds industry requirements with Enterprise Benchmark testing. Before leaving the factory, each Plextor SSD is put through a 20-hour high temperature burn-in test and strenuous simulations of real-world working environments. As a result Plextor SSDs have a 0.59% average annual failure rate, one of the lowest in the industry." -via Storagenewsletter

Plextor is not as known to the average consumer, but, their SSD lines are very good and of high quality. With their new iteration to the market, the M3 Pro seems to be a very good quality piece of SSD hardware. The high point would be the average annual failure rate is under 1% and is very good. The cost will most likely be higher due to the components used, but could be very good investment in a new machine. Let us know what you think!

Icy News: pureSilicon: 2.5-Inch 6Gb SATA Enterprise SSDs

2012-01-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

"MLC Nitro N2 (1.6TB, $1,995) and SLC Renegade 4 (200GB,$1,155)

pureSiliconInc., in high-performance storage technology, has launched a refreshedline-up of advanced SSD for customers who need performance and reliability.

At this year's Storage Visions Conference, pureSilicon is unveiling two newlines of SSD devices: the Nitro N2, which is aimed at high-end enterprise anddatacenter applications; and the Renegade R4, which leverages components of theNitro design and continues the evolution of the ruggedized device in thedefense, aerospace, and medical sectors.

"pureSilicon continues to blaze a trail by providing high-performance andruggedized storage solutions for the customers that cannot live withcompromises in their storage systems," said Jason Breakstone, founder andCEO of pureSilicon. "The enhancements we've made to the Nitro and Renegadeproduct lines mean our customers can store more data in a smaller footprint,improve their total cost of ownership, and boost performance, reliability,security and data integrity in their mission-critical applications."

Nitro N2 SSD:
For extreme enterprise and datacenter environments
The Nitro N2 SSDs delivers benchmark-setting performance of 6 Gb/second over aSATA interface. It features native command queuing, 32-bit DDR3 data buffer,and proprietary controller architecture that delivers twice the performanceover competing technologies at small block sizes and line-rate performanceduring sequential operations. Nitro utilizes a patent-pending PIPA (parallelinterface performance accelerator) architecture that increases I/O performancewhile reducing wear on the drive's flash array.

The Nitro N2, through the use of PIPA, is able to accelerate I/O performance byup to 400 percent while also boosting lifetime terabytes written by a similarfactor. This technology is further enhanced by an improved, third-generationSATA interface that yields up to two times the overall throughput, reaching upto 540 MB/second. Data integrity and reliability is enhanced through apropriety power-supply design called VoltStream that monitors power quality anduses solid-state capacitors to provide energy during a host-side power failevent. Nitro N2 is available in capacities of up to 1.6 TB, offering largecapacity in a 2.5-inch, 9.5mm low-profile device.

Technical specifications

Up to 1.6 TB usable MLC - the highest-density SSD availabletoday (2 TB RAW)
Up to 130K random read and random write IOPS- thefastest-performing SATA SSD
SATA 6 Gb/s interface delivering up to 540 MB/ssequential read, 520 MB/s sequential write
Low power - under 10 Watts active
Low profile - 7.0 or 9.5 mm height
Proprietary design, architecture, and controller
Proprietary power supply with safe power-fail mechanismusing solid-state capacitors
2X nanometer flash components
Pricing starting at: $1,995

Renegade R4:
For defense, aerospace and medical customers
The Renegade R4 SSD continues the evolution of pureSilicon's ruggedized productline. Renegade has demonstrated it can meet the needs of demanding defense,aerospace, and medical applications by providing a solution that generallywould not be available for these applications. This product builds upon theprevious Renegade line including the performance and reliability of the NitroN2 and then adds SiPher self-encryption and security features includingcustomer-defined and industry-specific secure-erase algorithms. Renegadeproducts meet MIL_STD_810F requirements and can be potted and/orconformal-coated for additional reliability in extreme environments.

Technical specifications

Up to 200 GB usable SLC - the highest-capacity rugged I-tempSSD available today
Up to 60K random read and random write IOPS - thefastest-performing rugged I-temp SSD
SATA 6 Gb/s interface delivering up to 540 MB/ssequential read, 520 MB/s sequential write
Self-encrypting drive with military-grade, secure-erasealgorithms for compliance
VoltStream, a technology that monitors power quality andprovides a safe power-fail mechanism using solid-state ceramic capacitors
Pricing starting at: $1,1
Energy-efficient

pureSilicon is committed to energy efficiency and designs storage products thatyield high performance per watt. Whether the goal is to increase productivityin a mobile environment or reduce energy costs in a datacenter, deployingpureSilicon SSDs will help achieve these objectives. Legacy storage productssuch as hard disk drives are becoming less energy-efficient as manufacturersstrive for higher performance, whereas SSDs offer superior performance andscalability, with lower energy consumption.

Availability
Pre-orders of Nitro N2 and Renegade R4 in sample quantities for late Q1shipment can be placed."

- via storagenewsletter.com

PureSilicon is releasing some new, very fast SSDs. They feature large capacities for 200GB to 1.6TB! Larger capacity SSDs are starting to become available but not cheap, the 1.6TB drive starts at $1995. Let us know what you think about these new enterprise drives.

Icy News: Corsair Accelerator Series Caching SSDs Announced

2012-01-10T12:40:00.001-08:00

"Corsair announced a new line of caching SSDs using the NVELO Dataplex software under a new product family called the Accelerator Series. Offered in capacities ranging from 30GB to 60GB, all of these caching solutions are offered at a pricetag under $99. Very similar to the OCZ Synapse caching solution, these SSDs are aimed at customers who want the capacity of a large hard drive but the speed of a fast SSD.

Corsair launched three new drives as part of the Accelerator Series, including a 30GB model for $69, a 45GB model for $84, and a 60GB version for $99. These drives all use a SATA 3.0Gb/s interface, supporting speeds up to 280MB/s write and 270MB/s read and offer three year warranties." -via Storagereivew

This is an interesting product line in general. Several manufactures are trying to push the SSD caching as a way to increase performance and still have a large capacity to work with. If you have a Z68 chipset from Intel, you will be able to use this to boost your system. Let us know what you think about this!

Icy News: Crucial 2.5-Inch m4 SSD in 7mm Height

2012-01-09T13:12:00.000-08:00

"Crucial, in brand of memory and storage upgrades and a trademark of Micron Technology, Inc., introduced a 7mm version of the Crucial m4 SSD to meet the need for thinner storage devices.

With the same performance delivered by the standard 9.5mm Crucial m4 SSD, the 7mm version supports the latest thin and light form factor laptop models, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad T420G, Acer Aspire 6920G, and new Intel-inspired Ultrabook devices. The 7mm Crucial m4 SSD is available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. The 512GB capacity offering is one of the highest-capacity storage drives - magnetic or solid state - available in the market today for laptops with a 7mm tall drive bay." - via Storagenewsletter

Not all 2.5" SSD or HDD will fit into a small form factor laptop, and Crucial has created a solution just for that. With their 7mm height clearance, the m4 should be able to work very well with the smaller laptops as well as in other applications. The price is also higher for the decreased height benefit and would not be a good way to spend the extra cash for use in a desktop, for example. Let us know what you think about this new line of SSD. Will there be more of these thinner type SSD's?

Icy News: ANALYSIS: Storage Trends in 2012

2012-01-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

"1Q12 to be a dramatic quarter

The amount of data continues to increase - about all storage predictions beginwith this one since many years - but what's new is that the price to store themincreases since few months and this trend will continue during the beginning ofthe year. As about all storage subsystems contains hard disk drives, thevendors have no choice but to increase the price of their configuration. Forhow long? Apparently, following the flood, the situation in Thailandimproved but it's difficult to know when the HDD makers will begin to lowertheir prices, probably not before June 2012. It's probably the first time inthe storage industry to see such a trend, price per gigabyte going up, and itwill affect all the users from home to enterprise. The need for more capacity isthere and they will probably wait for lower pricing before investing in newsystems. Consequently, in this period of economic crisis and recession inWestern countries, the first quarter of 2012 could be one of the worst one inthe industry.

Success of technologies to reduce data storage
To try to compensate the situation, the users will look more deeply to the datathey never or rarely use and to all the technologies enabling to store less andthen to buy less hard disk drives:

data reduction (compression and de-dupe)
thin provisioning
automatic tiering
new way of data protection (RAIN)
software to better manage the entire configuration like SRM

SSD to benefit of HDD shortage
Of course, price/GB of SSDs will continue to be higher compared to HDDs. But thegap is narrowing and some users will accept to pay more - but less than before- to get the three main advantages of solid-state memories: access time,transfer rate and lower power consumption. The vendors are also making bigefforts to provide longer writing cycles on flash chips. Here PCI is gainingmomentum, being the best interface to sustain the speed of SSDs for high-endapplications, SAS and SATA III being uded to replace conventional HDDs. Somecompanies are already offering all-flash storage subsystems competing inperformance with the fastest traditional monolithic SAN. SSDs willprogressively be used as cache, in tiering configuration with HDDs and then forthe complete storage memory with HDDs for backup only..

Cloud storage
Cloud, big data and virtualization, these words are dominating the speeches ofthe vendors. It will be the same along all the year. Cloud storage, private,public or hybrid, will evolve to try to solve two main problems: bandwidth andsecurity. When you think that some vendors offer to transport physically yourHDD to make the first complete backup ... That's why hybrid cloud withlocal storage and cloud backup service is a smart solution. Some new gatewaysto access to the cloud also can help. Synchronization of data between differentdevices is going to be a functionality more and more added to cloud storage.

Big Data
Here come new analysis tools to order out of the chaos of petabytes of bothstructured and unstructured data. Apache Hadoop, already adopted by a lot storagevendors, is at the forefront of this market.

Virtualization
Virtualization of both server and storage is unstoppable and will continue tobe a huge market for the vendors, more than anything.

NAS
NAS appliances continue to explode at all levels, from the home to the largestcompanies. Mid-range devices now get enterprise-class features, are scalableand can be clustered. In this field, we see a great future for the surveillancemarket. Another trend to follow: the possibility to access and manage a NASthrough smartphones and tablets with app based on iOS and Android.

Connection
The battle between 10GbE and 16Gb FC will arrive in 2012 but the cost of 10GbEports is dropping quickly as the demand is much higher. FC is abandoned by HDDmanufacturers now concentrating on SAS for enterprise HDDs. 12Gb SAS isstandardized and we are waiting to see in 2012 the first HDD or SSD with thisinterface.

USB 3.0
Intel will finally probably handle USB 3.0 this year. The new interface wasalready successful but its integration on all PCs will drastically boost it.

Thunderbolt
The new Intel/Apple interface is a dream for applications needing fast transferrates, like video. Apple is the only one to have implemented it on itscomputers and the offering of external storage systems with Thunderbolt islimited and pricey. If Intel decides to integrate it on its processors, itcould be an explosion but its high price will not affect USB 3.0. The is no wayfor FireWire to compete against Thunderbolt and USB 3.0.

HPC
There are a lot of innovations in the architecture of HPCs with Lustre or GPFSand now even EMC begin to be interested by this growing market of hugeconfigurations needing not only fast processors but also petabytes of data.

Data protection of notebooks in enterprises
A majority of employees now use their notebook to work when they travel or athome and they contain critical data for their company. Since two years somesolutions appear to protect them automatically and securely though the cloud.They are also needed following the proliferation of tablets and smartphones."

- via storagenewsletter.com

With the affect on the hard drive market still in affect, this article shows how it is affecting much more than hard drive prices. Hard drive prices are not expected to come down any time before June 2012. People will be very careful with how they use their storage. The shortage is affecting everything that has a hard drive in it, slowing down sales in Desktop PCs, Laptops, and Enterprise servers. Let us know if you will be holding off on buying any type of storage until hard drive prices come down to where they were before.

ICY TIP: Restore New Life Into Your Older Hard Drives to Maximize Available Free Space

2011-12-28T16:46:00.000-08:00

ICY TIP: Restore New Life Into Your Older Hard Drives to Maximize Available Free Space

Anyone that is a computer enthusiast, builds computers or maintains computers probably has accumulated a large collection of old hard drives over the years. The problem with these old drives is just that the low capacity does not allow for much practical use in many applications. It is hard to use these smaller drives if you are saving a large amount of data on them across many hard drives and which can quickly become unorganized. In most cases, people simply leave their old drive alone because they do not have the proper tools to help them organize their drives.

Many of the Icy Dock products provide solutions which breathe new life into old hard drives and also make them more organized to give you more “free space”. With hot-swap enclosures, you can easily install the drive and do all the transfers in no time. Even if you can’t fit all of your data on one drive, swapping drives in and out of our enclosures is easy to do. This is extremely useful during the current hard drive shortage. The increase of hard drives cost is very worrisome for many consumers and would strongly prefer to have a solution that reduce costs as much as possible, meanwhile, making full use of hard drives that they already own.

Here are the solutions we would like to introduce to you:

External Solution:
For: All-in-one type computers, PC Desktop, iMac, Mac Pro, Apple Macbook/laptop users, or people who prefer quick and convenient solutions.

MB981U3-1SA
Drive Fit: 2.5” & 3.5” HDD
Host Interface: IDE & SATA
External Interface: USB 3.0 & 2.0
Click HERE to learn more

MB881U3-1SA
Drive Fit: 2.5” & 3.5” HDD
Host Interface: IDE & SATA
External Interface: USB 3.0 & 2.0
Click HERE to learn more

Internal Solution:
For: Gaming & Desktop Systems – Quick & Easy Hot Swap

MB877SK-B
Drive Fit: 3.5” SATA HDD
Host Interface: SATA 6Gbps
Click HERE to learn more

MB973SP-B
Drive Fit: 3.5” SATA HDD
Host Interface: SATA 3Gbps
Click HERE to learn more

MB974SP-B
Drive Fit: 3.5” SATA HDD
Host Interface: SATA 3Gbps
Click HERE to learn more

2.5” to 3.5” Solution:
For: Convert your 2.5” SATA HDD into 3.5” SATA HDD

MB882SP-1S-1B (PC)
Drive Fit: 2.5” SATA HDD
(9.5mm HDD Thickness)
Host Interface: SATA 6Gbps
Click HERE to learn more

MB982SP-1S (Mac)
Drive Fit: 2.5” SATA HDD
(9.5 to 15mm HDD Thickness)
Host Interface: SATA 6Gbps
Click HERE to learn more

MB982SPR-2S (PC & Mac)
Drive Fit: Dual 2.5” SATA HDDs
(9.5mm HDD Thickness)
RAID Mode: RAID 0, 1, BIG & PM
Host Interface: SATA 3Gbps
External Interface: SATA 3Gbps
Click HERE to learn more

Since the HDD prices are so expensive right now, you should consider investing in an enclosure and organize your old drives and obtain free space available from them. You will be surprised to find a great amount of free space from your old drives. This will come in great savings, in comparison to purchasing a completely new hard drive. Once the hard drive prices go down, you will be able to buy new drives and simply swap the drives within the Icy Dock enclosure, providing the most effective solution for both old and new hard drives.

Icy Tip: HDD Prices Begin to Stabilize

2011-12-23T14:45:00.000-08:00

"Data from Dynamite

According to Dynamite Data LLC, a central repository for e-commercedata, HDD prices began to settle down after Thailand flooding and SSD pricingcontinue to decrease.

HDD Prices Index

(Source: Dynamite)

SSD Prices Index

(Source: Dynamite)" - via storagenewsletter.com

We are still seeing the affects of the flood in Thailand in theHDD market. This graph shows the price of a WD 150Gb Raptor drive over the lastyear. Hopefully the price of HDDs come down sooner than expected. The SSD price index is slowly inching down in price. Let us know if you are holding off on buying any HDDs now while the market is high.

Icy News: SSD Prices Falling Dramatically

2011-12-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

"Reports Pingdom

This is an article posted on the blog of Pingdom AB

Would you pay $7,260 for a 3TB drive?
Charting HDD and SSD prices over time

HDD or SSD, that is the question. Do you want the speed that the SSD offers orthe value and storage space the HDD can give you? That is an issue facing manycomputer buyers today. Although the price of SSD has fallen quite dramaticallyrecently there is still no doubt that you get a lot more storage space for themoney you spend on an HDD. So, when will SSD be as cheap as HDD? We took a lookat how prices for HDD and SSD have developed over the last few years and here'swhat we found.

SSD prices have fallen dramatically
We collected data of HDD and SSD prices going back to 1998 and you can readabout our data set at the end of the article. At first glance, the developmentsfor HDD and SSD look very similar although they are separated by 10 years.

Here are some key numbers:

The average price of SSD has fallen from $40 / GB in 2007 to $2.42 in 2011.
The average price of HDD has fallen from $56.03 / GB in 1998 to $0.075 in 2011.
For SSDs in 2011, the lowest price per GB we have in our data set is $1.50.
For HDDs in 2011, the lowest price per GB we have in our data set is $0.053.

In 2007, SSD memory cost 120 times as much as HDD memory. In2011, that has dropped to 32. If a 3TB HDD would cost as much per GB as theaverage SSD today, it would cost around $7,260. Right now, the cheapest 3TBdrive on NewEgg.com is $230. The current average price per GB for SSD is aboutthe same as it was for HDD in 2002.

For 2012 we added a prediction for where the average price will be next year.

This prediction is based on:

According to technology research company Gartner, mainstream PC SSD will hit the almost magical $1 / GB price point in the second half of 2012.
The price per GB for HDD has decreased on average 28% per year since 2003.

If this prediction comes true, it would bring SSD pricesinto range of many more consumers and businesses, thereby potentiallyincreasing the market, leading to larger volumes, lower manufacturing costs,and so on.

Will SSD prices ever match HDD?
With regards to the average cost per GB for HDD it is now getting so low -cents rather than dollars - that it's almost negligible. If the capacity of HDDcan keep increasing, the manufacturers will still get a decent price out ofsuch drives. But if capacity can't keep up with price decreases, HDDs will beall but free in the near future.

But when will average SSD pricing match HDD? Based on our data we cannotpredict when that will happen but it's safe to say it will take a long time, ifit ever happens.

We think that customers will keep buying SSD though, given the clear benefitsit offers over HDD. And if the prediction we make in this article comes true,it may be that 2012 will be the year of SSD.

Note about the data: We started with the list of HDD prices by Matt Komorowski.Then we sifted through AnandTech and Tom's Hardware to find prices of drivesover the years. This included mainly SSDs but to supplement Matt's list in thelast few years we added HDDs as well. We looked only at internalconsumer-oriented drives and added their prices in the year they startedselling. In total, included in the chart, we had 171 HDDs and 101 SSDs. Thechart is based on the average price for drives in each respective year."

- via storagenewsletter.com

This really shows the drop in price for both SSDs and HDDs have gone through, throughout the years. With HDDs now in the cents per gigabyte it will take a long time for the SSD to match that low price. When do you think SSDs will be as cheap as HDDs or will it ever happen? Let us know!

MB994SP-4S review - hardwarebistro.com

2011-12-21T18:58:00.000-08:00

Just about two months ago, we have completed a review of Icy Dock MB662USEB-2S; an incredible dual-bay FireWire 400/800 eSATA & USB Raid 3.5" HDD enclosure and today we are going to bring you another existing product from Icy Dock; MB994SP-4S. Icy Dock MB994SP-4S is not an external HDD enclosure but an internal multi-bay HDD RAID cage; able to support up to four 2.5" SATA/SSD/SAS HDDs.........read the full review

MB994SP-4S review - usingwindowshomeserver.com

2011-12-21T18:45:00.001-08:00

Introducing the Icy Dock MB994SP-4S Quad Bay 2.5″ SATA/SAS Mobile Rack for use in a single 5.25″ device bay. This product is constructed of heavy duty metal to hold up in the toughest of conditions. It includes ventilation slots on the front, back, top and bottom for maximum airflow to keep both SATA and SAS drives running cool, and an LED is placed on the front of each drive tray to give the user drive status at all times. Dual 4-pin power connectors are used to ensure a consistent power supply to all 4 drives, whether they are low power SSD’s or power hungry 15000 RPM SAS drives........read the full review

Icy News: Seagate Completes Acquisition of Samsung HDD

2011-12-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

"Retaining certain HDDs under Samsung brand name for 12 months, maintaining or establishing a number of independent operations

Seagate Technology PLC announced the closing of the transaction to acquire the HDD business of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Under the terms of the transaction, Seagate has gained select elements of Samsung's HDD business, including assets, infrastructure and employees that enable Seagate to drive scale and innovation. These assets include Samsung's leading M8 product line of high-capacity, 2.5-inch HDDs.

Samsung employees joining Seagate include a number of senior managers and design-engineering employees from Samsung's Korea facility, who will focus on development of small form-factor products for the mobile compute market. N.Y. Park, senior vice president and general manager, will oversee Seagate's product development activities in Korea and serve as country manager of the Korea design center, reporting to Bob Whitmore, Seagate's executive vice president and CTO..." - via Storagenewsletter

It seems that the marriage between Samsung and Seagate is official now. This may be good for Seagate, as they are affected by the Thailand flood, among other hard drive manufacturers. Samsung's hard drive business was selling very well, with their Spinpoint line. Hopefully, the buyout will also lead Seagate to produce even higher quality hard drives. Let us know what you think!

Icy News: ADATA Announces Budget S396 SSD Line

2011-12-19T14:45:00.000-08:00

"ADATA's new S396 SSD is aimed at budget-conscious consumers. It's available in a 30GB size and backed by a three-year warranty. It features a SATA 3.0Gbps interface; ADATA says it has up to 44,000 IOPS of 4KB random write and up to 250MB/s and 280MB/s sequential read and write, respectively.

ADATA S396 Specifications:

Capacity: 30GB 25nm MLC NAND
30GB(25nm) performance
Read: Up to 280MB/sec
Write: Up to 250MB/sec
Form Factor: SATA 3 Gb/sec (SATA II)
DIMENSION: 100 x 69.85 x 9.5mm (L x W x H)
WEIGHT: 76g
OPERATING Temp: 0°C ~ 70°C
Storage Temp: -40°C ~ 85°C
WARRANTY: 3 YEAR
Shock resistance: 1500G
MTBF: 1,000,000 hrs

No word on pricing on availability." - via Storagereview

With hard drive prices expensive, this is a very good alternative to look to. A very fast, inexpensive SSD to boost your system performance is nice to have. Although the price is not available, we suspect it to be pretty close to $1 per GB as the specification is still SATA II, however, have a nice 3 year warranty in case of problems. Let us know what you think about this!

Icy News: OCZ Petrol SATA 6Gb SSDs Closer to HDD Prices

2011-12-15T11:38:00.000-08:00

"512GB unit $1.27/GB

OCZTechnology Group, Inc. launched the Indilinx Everest-based Petrol SSDSeries.

It enables further adoption of MLC SSDs in cost-sensitive applications, whiletaking advantage of performance and feature set of the Indilinx Everestplatform.

"Until today, SSD adoption has been limited to high performanceapplications due to the high cost of SSDs in relation to slower rotating discs,and we are proud to once again close the gap in pricing without sacrificingdurability," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "The newPetrol Series showcases the flexibility of the Indilinx Everest platform andNDurance Technology, allowing OCZ to deliver the benefits of SSDs to a wide newset of applications while retaining the superior real world performance andreduced latency that separate Everest-based SSDs from our competitors."

The OCZ Petrol Series delivers bandwidth up to 400MB/s and 35,000 IOPS,and is optimized for the complete spectrum of file types and sizes.Additionally, features to Indilinx, such as proprietary page mappingalgorithms, allow for steady mixed-workload performance, and latency reductiontechnology enables access times as low as 0.06ms. Petrol ensures the mostconsistent and reliable performance as well as minimized performancedegradation even after the drive's storage capacity is highly utilized.

The OCZ Petrol SSD Series will be available in models ranging from 64GB to512GB capacities throughout OCZ's global channel in the coming weeks.

Prices: $90 (64GB), $150 (128GB), $339 (256GB) and $650 (512GB)." - via storagenewsletter.com

OCZ has always been a leader in SSDs due to their high performance SSDs. Now they have made a low cost SSD that is perfect for anyone wanting to get the benefits of SSDs without breaking the bank. The new SSD does not sacrifices performance to keep the cost down, with 400MB/s it is plenty fast. Let us know what you think about OCZ's new SSD.

ICY TIP: Expensive HDD Price? Increase Your PC & Mac System Performance Using an SSD

2011-12-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

Storage was one of the major components of computers that have been growing, and in recent years, the capacity of hard drives has increased to the point where it is relatively cheap to purchase, say, a 1TB hard drive for under $100. However, with the flood in Thailand and the rise of hard drive costs has seen a trend of nearly tripling of what the market price was for the same capacity drive. The prices will eventually decrease, but, purchasing a HDD at this time may not be the best option for building new systems. Solid State Drives (SSD’s) are much better in terms of performance, power and shock resistance.

SSD’s are still considered a fairly new technology, and we have seen drastic improvement year after year. Being so new, it is quite surprising to know the performance when using one. Intel has published an article about their Value Performance SSD line, comparing between SSD & HDD cost and performance. Intel claims that the random data transactions per second are over 100 times to a traditional hard drive. Some additional significant numbers are: 1.5 times sustained data transfer, 2-50 times power efficiency, and 5-50 times shock resistance. Suffice to say, the SSD outperforms the HDD in almost every single category.

Intel 320 Series SSD versus HDD comparison chart by Intel. Check HERE to read the article.

	320 Series SSD	HDD	SSD vs HDD
Random Data Transactions per Second (IOPS)	Read: up to 39,500 Write: up to 23,000	less than 200	More than 100x better
Sustained Data Transfer	Read: up to 270 MB/s Write: up to 220 MB/s	up to 145 MB/s	More than 1.5x better
Power	Idle: 100mW Active: up to 4W	Idle: 5-10 Watts Active: 8-13 Watts	2 to 50x better
Shock Resistance	1,500 G	30-70G when operating 300G when idle	5 to 50x better

Upgrading your system with an SSD is well worth the steeper cost, as the current bottleneck in system performance is of the hard drive. The performance per gigabyte is second to none and with the costs of hard drives gone up, purchasing an SSD would be the most effective way to improve performance. The fact remains that SSD’s do not have as much capacity in comparison to the HDD is true; however, many more users looking to upgrade already have an external solution such as NAS or an external hard drive device for storage purposes. This allows users to boost their daily tasks, video games, and video watching, all with a blazing fast SSD.

The important issue to note is that, SSD’s uses a 2.5” dimension standard, rather than a 3.5” as seen with traditional hard drives. So, many desktop cases will not be compatible with just an SSD. This prompts manufacturers to create a solution to use SSD’s that can be mounted correctly to systems. Using the Icy Dock MB882/982 2.5” to 3.5” converter product line, one will be able to use their SSD in any system that uses 3.5” hard drive. What completely separates the MB882/982 converters from other brackets and converters is the universal compatibility design of the MB882/982. The converter line uses the exact 3.5” external design dimensions to fully be compatible with PC cases, Mac Pro, iMac, 3.5” HDD duplicator, 3.5” SATA HDD enclosure, mobile rack, backplane modules, DVR system, rackmount server and more.

MB882SP-1S-1B 2.5" to 3.5" SATA SSD & HDD Converter
Solid, Patented Tool-Less Design Drive Installation
Support SATA SSD & HDD up to 9.5mm in height
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=80

MB882SP-1S-1B 2.5" to 3.5" SATA SSD & HDD Converter
Light Weight, Economic Version. Tool-Less Drive Installation
Support SATA SSD & HDD up to 9.5mm in height)
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=77

MB982SP-1S 2.5" to 3.5" SATA SSD & HDD Converter
Heavy Duty. Support High Capacity SATA Hard drive
Support SATA SSD / HDD up to 15mm in height
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=134

MB982IP-1S 2.5" to 3.5" SAS/SATA SSD & HDD Converter
Heavy Duty. Support Any 2.5” SAS/SATA SSD & HDD
Support SAS/SATASSD & HDD up to 15mm in height
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=117

MB982SPR-2S Dual 2.5" to 3.5" SATA SSD & HDD RAID Converter
Heavy Duty. Support 2 x 2.5” SATA SSD & HDD w/ RAID 0, 1 JBOD & BIG
Support 2x SATA SSD & HDD up to 9.5mm in height
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=121

MB662USEB-2S-1 review - posted by hitechlegion.com

2011-12-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

The Icy Dock MB662USEB-2S-1 is just one of their hard drive enclosures that not only can house two hard drives, but it can set your drives up in a RAID for some added peace of mind. The MB662USEB-2S-1 isn’t much larger than a 3 ½” hard drive, so it can be considered portable as well. Icy Dock's MB662USEB-2S-1 features 1394b fire wire, e-SATA and USB 2.0 connectivity, and it supports up to 3TB HDD for a total of 6 Terabytes of storage on the go. The MB662USEB-2S-1 is constructed of solid aluminum for added portability, strength, and protection........read the full review

MB981U3-1SA review - eteknix.com

2011-12-13T16:13:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, IDE Hard Disk Drives were all the rage, and if you do still have some of these, soon to be, legacy drives then you will be surprised to see a company creating products that allow you to dock an IDE drive, on top of that, this dock also allows you to use SATA drives too.

While this product in itself is not unique, it is certainly a rarity and something we were very interested to take a look at. Most docks that are readily available on the market currently can usually fit 2.5″ or 3.5″ SATA drives only and sometimes only one or the other of these sizes. This Icy Dock creation takes both IDE and SATA drives of both sizes due to a very cleverly designed adapter.

This product certainly has a bit of style to it, and from the front we can see the Icy Dock branding........read the full review

MB981U3-1SA review - posted by vortez.net

2011-12-13T16:08:00.001-08:00

Since 1994, ICY DOCK have been supplying the market with storage enclosure products. They have established a good name in this sector and continue to push the boundaries, delivering some of the most useful products that you could ever imagine.

Storage solutions are fundamental to any company and they have become a necessity to the household because data is something we cannot afford to lose. Though there is no direct foreseeable advantage to backing up data and it may not even ultimately benefit the individual – when something catastrophic does occur we are so relieved that we had a procedure in place that meant our important data was securely kept from harms reach. Data loss can happen at any time and it usually happens when you least expect it – I’m talking from personal experience here.

So with this in mind, today we will be taking a look at one of ICY DOCK's latest addition, the MB981U3-1SA. The letters and numbers won’t mean much to you but the MB981U3-1SA is a USB 3.0 SATA Docking Station for 2.5 and 3.5” drives and with the ability to support legacy IDE devices via a special adapter.......read the full review

Icy News: Intel Also Affected by HDD Shortage

2011-12-13T15:00:00.000-08:00

"Intel Corporation announced that the company's fourth-quarter results are expected to be below the company's previous outlook due to hard disk drive supply shortages.

The company now expects fourth-quarter revenue to be $13.7 billion, plus or minus $300 million, on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis, lower than the previous expectation of $14.7 billion, plus or minus $500 million.

Sales of personal computers are expected to be up sequentially in the fourth quarter. However, the worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages. The company expects hard disk drive supply shortages to continue into the first quarter, followed by a rebuilding of microprocessor inventories as supplies of hard disk drives recover during the first half of 2012.

The company now expects the fourth-quarter gross margin to be 64.5 percent, plus or minus a couple of percentage points, lower than the previous expectation of 65 percent, plus or minus a couple of percentage points. The expectation for a non-GAAP gross margin is 65.5 percent, plus or minus a couple of percentage points, lower than the previous expectation of 66 percent, plus or minus a couple of percentage points.

All other expectations are unchanged." -via Storagenewsletter

This is interesting seeing Intel reporting to be lower than what they expected due to hard disk drive shortages. The fact that storage is not their main focus, with microprocessor being their bread and butter. However, this report shows the importance of hard drives as being an essential component to function and thrive. What other companies do you think would report a lower revenue for Q4? Feel free to let us know!

Icy News: 4TB Internal HDD From Hitachi GST Available in Japan

2011-12-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

"On the web site of Akiba PC Hotline, it is written that a 4TB internal desktop HDD of 4TB from Hitachi is available on some stores in Japan, for ¥26,800. Assembled in China with components from Thailand, this SATA III Deskstar unit with 32MB of cache has not been officially released by Hitachi GST." -via Storagenewsletter

The price of a 4TB is up there in price, for something that is new technology. The 26,800 Yen or approximately $344 US dollar will take quite a bit of convincing to purchase. There are some useful advantages to having more capacity, while taking up less physical space. Does the advantages outweigh the costs? Let us know!

Icy News: Icy Dock: SATA Dual Bay 3.5-Inch HDD RAID Enclosure

2011-12-09T10:51:00.001-08:00

"Icy Dock: SATA Dual Bay3.5-Inch HDD RAID Enclosure

This is a Press Release edited byStorageNewsletter.com on Fri, December 9th, 2011

With FW 800, eSATA and USB 2.0 host interfaces

ICY DOCK introducedthe upgraded version of its dual bayMB662USEB-2S FireWire800, eSATA & USB 2.0 3.5" RAID enclosure for media professionals andhome users.

The MB662USEB-2S-1 offers all of the features from the previous MB662USEBSeries, and further builds upon it with increased functionality, while at thesame time, offering a combination of reliability and performance.

Specs:

Model Number: MB662USEB-2S-1
Color: Pearl white
Host Interface: 1x USB2.0 + 1x eSATA + 2x FireWire 800
Drive Fit: 2 x 3.5" SATA I, II & III
Chipset: Oxford 946
Drive Type: Standalone with horizontal or vertical positioning
Transfer Rate: Up to 480 Mb/sec. via USB 2.0; Up to 3 Gbit/sec. via eSATA; Up to 800 Mb/sec. via FireWire 800
Insert and Extract Connection: Direct SATA hard drive connection
RAID Modes: JBOD, BIG (spaned), RAID-0 (fast), RAID-1 (safe)
RAID Setting: Rotray switch
Structure: Aluminum body w/ partial plastic
Drive Cooling: Quiet Sunon MAGLev cooling fan w/adjustable fan speed VR control; Aluminum body heat dispersion
Indication: Mini LED located on front panel
HDD Idling Indication: LED off
HDD Access Indication: Flashing white LED; No HDD In position
Indication: Red LED
HDD Failure Indication: Flashing red LED
Rebuilding and Verifying Indication: Solid white LED; RAID setup confirmation; Flashing white LED then turn off
OS Requirement: Windows XP/2003/Vista/7 ; Mac OS 10.2.8 and higher
Dimension (L x W x H): 8.1 x 5.3 x 2.4 inches
Weight: 1.83 lbs." - via storagenewsletter.com

Here at Icy Dock we are proud to announce our new and improved MB662USEB-2S-1. Taking our popular MB662USEB-2S we took feedback from you the end user and made an improved version. The enclosure now features true JBOD mode but still includes BIG (spanned), RAID-0 (fast), and RAID-1 (safe). Let us know how you feel about the new enclosure!

Icy News: HDD Shortage Pushes CCleaner Software Downloads

2011-12-07T19:25:00.001-08:00

"Piriform Inc. reports an increase in CCleaner PC optimization software downloads to nearly one million per day and a dramatic uptick in CCleaner Network Professional software sales since early reports of computer hard disk shortages. Recent flooding in Thailand has reduced computer hard disk supply as much as 20%, according to DigiTimes, resulting in reported three fold increases in storage costs..." - via Storagenewsletter

Not all is bad with the rise of HDD prices, as we can see more users leaning towards cleaning their systems to maximize the amount of capacity they are able to use. With the prices at this high of a price, will you also conserve your data using such methods, or still purchase more hard drives? Let us know!

MB662USEB-2S-1 review - posted by storagereview.com

2011-12-01T13:41:00.001-08:00

The Icy Dock MB662USEB-2-1 is a simple two-bay enclosure designed to be used in RAID0/1, JBOD or Concatenation modes with 3.5-inch hard drives. The enclosure offers a quad-interface, allowing users to connect via FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0 and eSATA. In the box Icy Dock includes everything you need to get rolling (except the drives); power adapter and cables for each interface are standard equipment.

The MB662USEB-2-1 is aimed at users who need either high transfer speeds or data redundancy through use of various RAID modes such as RAID0 and RAID1. By supplying either their own 3.5-inch desktop hard drives.......read the full review

Icy News: Thailand October Factory Output Collapses Due to Flooding

2011-11-30T19:11:00.001-08:00

"BANGKOK, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Factory output in Thailand dropped a far worse-than-expected 35.8 percent in October from a year before due to severe flooding that shut seven big industrial estates, the Industry Ministry said on Monday, and some economists said that raised the chances of a deep interest rate cut this week.

A Reuters poll had forecast that factory output would fall 12.5 percent in October. In September, output slipped a revised 0.3 percent from a year earlier.

Compared with September, output in October plunged 38.9 percent..." - via XE.com

This little fact of the output says quite a bit about how the flood has affected operations in Thailand. Not to mention this, the jobs that were once there and of course, the recovery period. Do you expect the drop to be even more for November? Or perhaps this is the worst it can it? Let us know!

Icy News: With New Momentus XT 750GB, Seagate Continues to Believe in Hybrid HDD

2011-11-29T10:25:00.001-08:00

"SeagateTechnology LLC is shipping the second generation ofMomentus XT, its solid state hybrid drive for consumer andcommercial laptops and the company's fastest drive ever for PCs.

With a drive upgrade, users can boost boot-up speed and overall performance toturbo-charge their laptop PC. Seven OEMs are gearing up to ship laptops poweredby the Momentus XT drive. The drive is now available at online retailers Amazon, CanadaComputers, CDW, Memory Express, NCIX, Newegg, and TigerDirect.

Powering the Momentus XT drive are Seagate's Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies.Adaptive Memory technology works by identifying data usage patterns, and thenmoving the most frequently retrieved information to solid state memory forfaster access. Adaptive Memory effectively tailors hard drive performance toeach user and the applications they use. FAST Factor technology blends thestrengths of SSDs and HDDs for faster access to applications, quicker bootupand higher overall system speed.

"Laptop users want faster access to all of their content, from gaming,music and video to spreadsheets and documents, creating strong demand for thehighest performance," said Scott Horn, vice president of WorldwideMarketing at Seagate. "Seagate is excited to answer this need with asecond-generation Momentus XT drive that delivers SSD speed, greater storagecapacity and easy installation at an affordable price."

"High-speed storage devices make a difference when it comes to improvingoverall PC performance," said John Rydning, research vice president atIDC. "Seagate's newest Momentus XT drive gives notebook PC users aneconomical option for boosting PC performance while at the same time providingspacious storage capacity all in one device."

(Source: Seagate)

Momentus XT For speed
The Momentus XT drive is nearly 70 percent faster than the prior Momentusdrive version and up to three times faster than a traditional HDD whileproviding 750GB of storage capacity. The Momentus XT hard drive's SATA6Gb/s interface and 8GB of SLC NAND flash double the interfaceand NAND read-write speed of the previous generation. The design of Momentus XTdrive makes installation and upgrading simple and easy for any laptop ordesktop computer and with any OS.

The Momentus XT drive is now shipping in volume worldwide.MSRP for Momentus XT750GB is $245.

Tuning Momentus XT for Performance
The hard drive industry is transitioning from the current 512-byte sectorstandard to a newer Advanced Format 4K (4,096-byte) sector size that helpsmaintain data integrity at higher storage densities and capacities. Momentus XTtakes advantage of this newer Advanced Format 4K standard and is already tunedfor optimal performance on the latest PC OS.

Momentus XT customers can optimize Momentus XT to work with Windows XP andolder versions of Microsoft Windows with simple steps." - via storagenewsletter.com

Hybrid drives have been a popular alternative to the speedy SSD, with Seagate being one of the best manufacturer of hybrid drives. Seagates newer version of their Momentus drive is 70 percent faster then the previous version and 3 times faster than traditional HDDs. This is a great improvement from their previous model. Even with faster speeds and greater capacity do you think consumers will go with the hybrid route as opposed to SSDs? Let us know what you think about hybrid drives and if you would rather go with hybrid drives or SSDs.

Icy News: Kingston Says Lower NAND Prices Will Quicken Adoption of SSDs

2011-11-28T18:53:00.001-08:00

"The high cost of flash has been a major obstacle for the mainstream implementation of SSDs in the market place. According to Kingston Technology, however, the use of SSDs are expected to expand significantly with falling NAND flash prices. The average price for 1GB of NAND flash memory is predicted to drop to $1 USD and will help trigger the replacement of HDDs with SSDs by late 2012, claims Nathan Su, flash memory sales director of Kingston APAC.

Su also stated that lower-per-GB costs will be another factor in prompting major flash chipmakers’ transition to 19nm and to other advanced manufacturing processes. The Thailand floods, a major factor in the current shortage of HDDs in the area, will also spur a demand for low-capacity and industry grade SDDs.

Since the beginning of 2011, Kingston has improved its SSD products to target entry-level and medium-range segments. The world’s independent memory leader changed its business focus to NAND flash-related products because of the shrinking demand of DRAM modules.

In addition, Su added that Kingston has developed a new line of products featuring portable external drives, which are intended to be used as accessories for consumer technology products including smartphones and tablets. Its new Wi-Drive product line, for example, offers pocket-sized portable storage and easy file-sharing for all Apple devices." -via storagereview

According to Kingston, the cost of NAND flash memory going down will help with sales. Will this price per 1GB drop be enough for the consumer that is currently on the fence? Let us know!

What Separates the ICY DOCK MB981U3-1SA From the Rest of the Docking Stations?

2011-11-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

Click on comparison chart to enlarge. Click here for more product information.

Icy News: Arbitration Award of Half Billion Dollar Rendered vs. WD

2011-11-21T18:47:00.001-08:00

"Western Digital Corp. reported that, on November 18, 2011, an arbitration award of $525 million was rendered against the company by a sole arbitrator in a pending confidential arbitration action in Minnesota." -via StorageNewsletter

With WD being fined for the amount seems bad at the time where their hard drive production will be lower for the coming months. With the company planning to challenge the result, it could lead to more issues as they go into drought with HDD's. Will WD stock drop further because of this? Or perhaps have no influence? Let us know what you think about this!

Icy News: Corsair Expands 6Gb SATA Support With Performance Pro SSDs

2011-11-18T10:16:00.001-08:00

"$530 for 256GB, with Marvell controller

CorsairMemory, Inc. announced the 2.5-inch Performance Pro Series SSDs.

The Performance Pro Series, designed with the Marvell SATA 6 Gb/s SSDcontroller, delivers an ATTO Max performance of up to 515MB/s sequentialread and 440 MB/s sequential write, and can sustain similar performance whenreading and writing compressed and non-compressible data, such as audio,images, and video files.

Additionally, the Performance Pro Series has built-in background garbagecollection to allow for consistently performance even with operating systemsthat do not support the TRIM command. This integral performance optimizationmakes Performance Pro SSDs a solution for RAID configurations, which typicallydo not support TRIM.

Performance Pro SSDs provide fast SATA III connectivity that pushes the limitsof the new SATA III 6Gb/s interface. They are also backward compatible withSATA 2 3GB/s, and include an 3.5" adapter for installation in both laptopand desktop PCs.

"We are pleased to provide a fast SATA 3 SSD that's designed specificallyfor real-world performance," said Thi La, Vice President of MemoryProducts at Corsair. "High-performance PC users work heavily with mediafiles, and unlike some other SSDs, the Performance Pro can save, load and movemusic, photos and movies without significantly reduced performance. It offersconsistent, reliable speed regardless of whether you're running Windows, OS Xor Linux, and whether you’re using a single drive or a RAID configuration."

The Performance Pro Series SSDs are backed by a three-year warranty and are available in 128GBand 256GBconfigurations from authorized distributors and retailers worldwide." -via storagenewsletter.com

Corsair has always been one of the top manufacturers in memory devices, and they are showing it in their new SSD. The new SSD has a unique built in garbage collector that is not found in many SSDs. The SSD is super fast with 515MB/s read and 440 MB/s write using the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Let us know what you think about Corsairs new SSD.

Icy News: Kingston Targets Consumers With SSDNow V200

2011-11-17T13:08:00.001-08:00

"Kingston Digital, Inc., the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., announced the next generation of its entry-level, budget SSDNow V200 Series.

The SSDNow V200 helps consumers revive their current PC and extend the life of their investment. The SSDNow V200 brings value and performance to consumers who are looking for an inexpensive upgrade option to boost their computer..." - via StorageNewsletter

Kingston providing a refresh for their SSDnow line, most noteably, the better performance and 20% less in price is the result of technology moving quickly. Another feature is the SATA III support, which allows it to be updated with the newest SATA standard. They have really made this for the consumer with the bundle kits, providing DVD cloning and a how to guide. The price for the performance is good, but will these refreshes convince you to purchase/upgrade from your current system?

Icy News: Intel Shows Knights Corner Processor

2011-11-16T18:45:00.001-08:00

"Intel has stated that it will deliver the most efficient and programming-friendly platform for highly parallel applications. At a private briefing at SC11, Intel discussed the benefits of the Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture in weather modeling, tomography, proteins folding and advanced materials simulation. The ahah moment occurred with they broke out a sample of the Knights Corner processor, the first commercial Intel MIC architecture product..." - via Storage Review

The 1TFLOP performance on a single chip is outstanding, with the new IMC architecture being a more efficient method for computing purposes. The main benefit of this is the parallel processing without porting to a new programming environment. Will consumer processors be able to reach this type of performance within the next 5-10 years? Let us know what you think about this!

Icy News: Prices of HDDs Already Tripling for SATA 3.5-Inch Units

2011-11-15T12:10:00.001-08:00

"Doubling for SATA 2.5-inch disk drives

Camelegg.com trackshistorical price of many products including HDDs.

To evaluate the consequences of the Thailand's floods on the HDDprices, we have selected three examples of popular capacity internal units.

1/ 1TB, 3.5-inch, 7,200rpm, 3Gb SATA,
Samsung Spinpoint F3:
Price has more than tripled.

Lowest price: $49.99 on August 25, 2011

Current price: $159.99 on November 10, 2011

2/ 1TB, 2.5-inch, 5,200rpm, 3Gb SATA,
WD Scorpio Blue:
Price has more than doubled.

Lowest price: $99.99 on July 30, 2011

Current price: $229.99 on November 03, 2011

3/ 300GB, 3.5-inch, 15,000rpm, 6Gb SAS,
Seagate Cheetah 15K.7:
Up only 66%, probably because enterprise drives are not manufactured in Thailand.

Lowest price: $209.99 on August 26, 2011

Current price: $349.99 on October 27, 2011

Per comparison, here is the evolution of the price of a popular internal SSD:
120GB, 2.5-inch, MLC, 3Gb SATA,
Intel 320:
Highest price was $239.99 in June 2011, now 20% cheaper at $190.99. The 300GBIntel 320 SSD costs now $539,99 or only 54% more than the 300GB 15,000rpmCheetah HDD. "

-via storagenewsletter.com

This really shows how much the flood in Thailand has affected the hard drive market. All of the HDD graphs have a huge spike in price since the flood. What is interesting is that the enterprise HDD market has only increased a minimal amount. This is due to the location of the manufacturing of the enterprise drives. The SSD market seems to be unaffected by the flood and is continuing its steady decline in price. It will be interesting to see where the SSDs market will be in terms of sales by the end of the HDD crisis. Will it have a dramatic increase? Let us know how you feel about these results.

Icy News: HDD Industry Will Run Close to Normal Only in Second Half of 2012

2011-11-11T10:28:00.001-08:00

"Due to flooding in Thailand, predicts IDC

Widespread flooding is bringing unprecedented devastation tothe people and economy of Thailand.With operations disrupted at more than a dozen HDD factories, damage to the HDDindustry is significant.

And this will have a direct impact on worldwide PC shipments through the firsthalf of 2012, according to a new International Data Corporation report.

In the first half of 2011, Thailandaccounted for 40-45% of worldwide HDD production. As of early November, nearlyhalf of this capacity was directly impacted by the flooding. In addition toassembly and component facilities being inundated with water, the industryfaces work stoppages due to poor access and power outages. The full extent ofthe damage to HDD industry factories will not be known until the floodwatersrecede, although it's already clear that there will be HDD supply shortagesinto the first quarter of 2012.

The severity of HDD shortages in the coming months largely depends on theindustry's ability to recover lost production capacity in Thailand. WhileIDC believes HDD industry participants will recover and restore HDD productioncapacity relatively quickly, HDD supply will remain constrained for an extendedperiod of time.

As a result, PC vendors should plan
for and expect the following:

Significant HDD shortages by mid-November 2011 that will continue into 1Q 2012.

A large part of PC production for Q4 2011 shipment has already taken place or can be completed with existing HDD inventories, limiting the impact on Q4 PC shipments to less than 10%. But in a worst-case scenario, total PC shipments could be depressed by more than 20% in Q1 2012 vs. previous forecasts as a result of the HDD shortage.

Higher HDD prices as demand exceeds supply and manufacturers face increased costs for components, expedited shipments, and shifting of production to new locations.

The HDD industry begins to recover in 1Q 2012, and HDD pricing stabilizes by June, with the industry running close to normal in the second half of 2012.

Opportunities for larger PC vendors to capture enterprise accounts from smaller competitors and accelerate industry consolidation, particularly in faster growth markets.

"In response to the crisis, priority will be given tothe large PC manufacturers that drive HDD shipment volumes as well as to thehigh-margin products used in enterprise servers and storage," said JohnRydning, research vice president, Hard Disk Drives and Semiconductors. "Butthe HDD vendors can't neglect their smaller customers, whose business willcontinue to be important once capacity is fully restored. Some interestingproduction and partnering arrangements with customers can be expected as HDDvendors scramble to bring production back up while simultaneously angling for astrategic advantage."

"The HDD shortage will affect smaller PC vendors and lower priced productsmost, including mininotebooks (aka netbooks), emerging markets and entry-levelconsumer PCs. However, even the largest vendors are expected to face HDDshortages, particularly for portable PCs where the market is more consolidated,"added Loren Loverde, program vice president, IDC Worldwide Consumer DeviceTrackers. "Nevertheless, the shortage will relieve some pressure onpricing and margins, and present some opportunities for strategic share gainsamong the larger players."

The IDC study, The PC Market Is Disrupted By HDD Shortages: The Severity,Resulting Opportunities, And Expected PC Market Reactions (forthcoming),assesses the impact of hard disk drive shortages caused by widespread floodingin Thailandon the PC market in calendar Q4 2011 and the first half of 2012. Assumptionsabout the recovery period for the HDD industry, as well as the timing forrestoration of HDD inventories are factored into determining the impact on thePC market. Expectations for HDD pricing over this period are also addressed." - via storagenewsletter.com

The flood in Thailand is really affecting the PC HDD market. Now the expected time for things to be back to normal is not until June. With the HDD market at an all time high will SSDs have their chance to take over a larger portion of the market? Or do you think that consumers will just hold off on buying HDDs till the prices come back down? Let us know what you think about the flood and the current HDD prices.

Icy News: PC Makers, Microsoft May Be Hurt as Floods Crimp Sales, IDC Says

2011-11-10T13:55:00.001-08:00

"Hewlett-Packard Co., Lenovo Group Ltd., Dell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are among companies that may be hurt this quarter and in 2012 as flooding in Thailand strains personal-computer supplies and raises prices, IDC said.

PC shipments will decline between 2.2 percent and 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, down from a prior forecast for 5.1 percent growth, IDC said today in a report. In the first quarter, shipments may drop by 1.8 percent to 13.4 percent. IDC had projected a gain of 8.2 percent..." - via Bussinessweek

The news is out that the hard drive market will take a plunge for OEM, resellers and end users. This is unfortunate as the holiday season is coming up and is unclear how long it will really take for end users to see decreased prices. Once the flooding has been sorted out, the production will go first to OEM, followed by resellers and end users. Anything that uses hard drives will most likely take a hit from the disaster, but notice Seagate plants seems to be not flooded but their supply chain has. If you look at the prices for hard drives, externals seem to be about the same or lower price in comparison to bare hard drives. Yesterday, we posted similar news which focused on India's demand, but event really caused a world wide change in the market. What do you think about this? Let us know!

Icy News: HDD Prices More Than Double in Two Weeks in India

2011-11-09T18:56:00.000-08:00

"To read this article from Moneylife, click on:
Hard disk prices more than double in two weeks due to flood in Thailand
A 1TB HDD that used to cost less than Rs3000 before Diwali is now selling for Rs5700 and more. Consumers, especially those who want to buy or upgrade computer and laptop in India have been shocked to discover that floods in Thailand have caused HDD prices to skyrocket. Disks that were ranging from Rs1,200 to Rs3,000 for 250GB to 1TB have almost doubled to Rs3,000 to Rs6,000 within past 10 to 15 days." - via Storage Newsletter

We had talked about this earlier last month about the flood in Thailand, and now, we see the result of what has occurred. What you all think about this? As hard drives pricing more than double, it will be difficult to sell for the upcoming black friday and following holiday season. Will you purchase more hard drives even at this price? Let us know.

Icy News: Hardware and Software Caching Explained

2011-11-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

"With the price of platter based hard drives as low as they are (under normal conditions) and the price of solid state drives still relatively high, the concept of hybrid storage solutions; combining the low price of platter based storage with the speed of solid state drives, will become increasingly common. We are going to break down two different approaches for a hybrid storage setup; hardware-based and software-based implementations..." - via Storage Review

SR (Storage Review) has a nice article, going over some of the available software and hardware caching options. Some of the more common solutions to end users are the Momentus XT OCZ synapse and Intel RST. We talked about SSD caching being a trend in the upcoming years and so far, everything has come true. We think about this and say, 'would this be the best solution to the storage wall with either SSD or HDD?' We have to rethink about how a hard drive should look like, especially with SSD's. On SR's article, they mention two of the more intense solutions, which both use PCI express interfacing. This improves the connection and performance dramatically.

Here at Icy Dock, we also have our solution to SSD caching, which is not to use it. At this time, the technology is still expensive and can be a hassle. Our MB882HX-1SB uses a RAID implementation to not cache, but to have two separate partitions (Hybrid and HDD).

Check out our ICY TIP about this:

http://icydock.blogspot.com/2011/08/icy-tip-keep-your-cheap-low-capacity.html

So let us know what you think about this. This is interesting as the trend may keep going this way or perhaps go a different direction!

Icy News: Seagate Kills Off Green Hard Drives, Plans to Launch Barracuda Hybrid Hard Drive

2011-11-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

"As part of today's announcement of 1TB hard drive platters shipping in the 3TB Barracuda XT, Seagate also released news that they'll cease production of their line of Green hard drives. Seagate also will be migrating the Barracuda XT line to a new Barracuda Hybrid line of hard drives, implementing the caching technology seen in their wildly popular notebook hybrid hard drive, the Momentus XT.

Seagate says the move to drop the green drives comes in response to demand largely from OEM customers. OEMs and channel customers want to reduce overhead costs by having fewer products to qualify and manage inventory for. Seagate went on to say that end users want big capacities and big performance, reducing the need for low-power desktop drives. Production of Seagate's Barracuda Green will end in February.

Moving the Barracuda XT to a hybrid hard drive solution is less of a surprise. Seagate's performance line of drives stands to benefit from the knowledge gained from shipping over a million Momentus XT hybrid drives. Seagate did not release any details around the desktop hybrid solution, however in a prior news release, they indicated the Momentus XT 2 would be released this year. It stands to reason that a Barracuda XT Hybrid could also see release before the end of this year." - via Storage Review

Seagate discontinuing their Green hard drive line seems to be a good move, as they go towards the hybrid technology seen with the Momentus XT hybrid drive. Yesterday, we talked about caching technology being what is next for the storage industry and Seagate is one example that is moving towards this trend. What you you think about this? What would be the benefits and disadvantages for moving towards caching technology? Let us know!

Icy News: Improve Write Performance With SSD

2011-10-31T18:51:00.000-07:00

"In our last entry, we covered some of the differences between automated tiering and caching. An area that deserves specific examination is how each of these technologies deals with inbound writes. Writes are one of the most resource-consuming things that a storage system has to do, and how these technologies help you--or not--with write I/O is important in product selection..." - via Informationweek

This article talks about the future of SSD writing and is compared to spindle hard drives. What can be altered would be the tiering technologies that are automated now. By doing this, one could increase the write performance of a hard drive by creating a cache system that would be to send all the writes to the SSD tier first. If it does not get used, move it to the mechanical hard drive. This sounds similar to what Intel has achieved with their RST (Rapid Storage Technology), of course, more on a limited basis as the maximum that can be cached is 64GB. This article explains with some information on how and why this is the next step. If this does catch on, will you purchase some sort of system such as RST or perhaps something that is more all-in-one solution? Let us know what you think!

Icy News: Thai floods boost PC hard drive prices

2011-10-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

"(Reuters) - Prices for hard drives are jumping as flooding in Thailand creates a shortage of the major component used in personal computers and one big customer is complaining of price gouging." - via Reuters

With hard drive prices going up due to the flooding in Thailand, it may change how the pricing will be for Black Friday 2011. What do you think about this? Will it have any changes in the next couple months? Let us know!

Icy News: LSI to Buy SandForce

2011-10-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

"LSI Corporation (NYSE:LSI) has announced an agreement to purchase SandForce. Under the agreement LSI will pay roughly $322 million in cash and assume $48 million of unvested stock options and restricted shares held by SandForce employees. The acquisition obviously gives LSI an immediate competitive boost, especially with their WarpDrive PCIe SSDs (WarpDrive 2 Preview), which leverage SandForce processors... Moreover, because OCZ and SandForce previously contemplated this scenario, we expect that this combination will have no material impact to our existing product lines or business," concluded Mr. Petersen." - via StorageReview

Now, this is pretty interesting. We wonder now how LSI will take advantage of this purchase to produce a native advantage since they will own the company. They mention that the importance of a planned no change in material use. We will see how that plays out once everything has settled. Do you think this is a good move by LSI? Should OCZ or perhaps a different company have tried to purchase the company? Let us know what you think!

Icy News: OCZ Octane 2.5-Inch SSDs Up to 1TB

2011-10-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

"3/6Gb SATA, up to 560MB/s and 45,000 IO/s, 0.06ms read,0.09ms write

OCZTechnology Group, Inc. launched the Indilinx Everest-based Octane SATA3.0 and SATA 2.0 SSD series, striking the balance between capacity, physicalsize, and speed.

In addition to to achieve up to a 1TB capacity in a 2.5 inch format, OCZ'sOctane SSD series combines fast data transfer rates with record access times.

"OCZ has reached an important milestone in the development of its owncontroller technology," said James E. Bagley, Senior Analyst with StorageStrategies NOW. "The high sustained performance, even with compressed files,the rapid boot feature and high access speeds using SATA 3.0 protocol putstheir controller technology in the major league."

"Until now SSDs have been tailored for specific applications, forcingusers into a product which maximizes performance for a narrow band ofapplications, but is significantly lacking in others," said Ryan Petersen,CEO of OCZ Technology. "The Octane Series solves this problem by providingthe highest level of performance across varied workloads including mixed filesizes and mixed compressible and uncompressible data, all while nearly doublingNAND flash endurance."

The Octane series leverages the Indilinx Everest platform to deliver up to560MB/s of bandwidth and 45,000 IOPS and is optimized for the complete spectrumof file types and sizes. In particular, the Octane's proprietary page mappingalgorithms allow for steady mixed-workload performance, mirroring real worldconditions across a range of applications.

The Octane series also includes a number of features of Indilinx, includinginnovative latency reduction technology, enabling both read and write accesstimes as low as 0.06ms and 0.09ms respectively. This enhances applicationresponsiveness and enables features such as fast boot in consumer applications.

Octane SSDs also come equipped with Indilinx's proprietary NDurance technology,increasing the lifespan of the NAND flash memory, ensuring consistent andreliable performance as well as minimizing performance degradation even afterthe drive's storage capacity is highly utilized. In addition, Octane seriesdrives support AES and automatic encryption to secure critical data.

Octane Product Features:

Dual core CPU
Up to 512MB DRAM cache
128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB models
High sequential speeds: Octane (SATA 3.0) Read: 560MB/s, Write: 400MB/s; Octane-S2 (SATA 2.0) Read: 275MB/s; Write: 265MB/s
High transactional performance - Optimized for 4K to 16K compressed files: Octane (SATA 3.0) 45,000 random read 4K IOPS; Octane-S2 (SATA 2.0) 30,000 random read 4K IOPS
Low latency: Read: 0.06ms; Write: 0.09ms
Strong performance at low queue depths (QD 1 -- 3)
Up to 8 channels with up to 16-way Interleaving
Advanced BCH ECC engine enabling more than 70 bits correction capability per 1KB of data
Proprietary NDurance Technology: increases NAND life up to 2X of the rated P/E cycles
Efficient NAND Flash management: Dynamic and static wear-leveling, and background garbage collection
Boot time reduction optimizations
NCQ support up to 32 queue depth
End-to-end data protection
TRIM support
SMART reporting

The OCZ Octane SSD Series will be available November1st in models ranging from 128GB-1TB capacities throughout OCZ's globalchannel." -via storagenewsletter.com

OCZ once again is pushing the envelope in the SSD market. OCZ has now developed its own controller technology that will put them up with some of the bigger names in the SSD market. The new OCZ Octane SSD is not only very fast but it is also up to 1TB! Let us know what you think about OCZs new SSD.

Icy News: Intel's New 520 Series SSD Codenamed "Cherryville"

2011-10-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

"Intel continues to establish itself as a leader in the SSD market with its planned successor to the popular 510 Series SSD, the 520 Series SSD (Codenamed - "Cherryville").

"Cherryville", Intel's new high-end 520 Series SSD, is based on 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s form-factor and comes in 60 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB capacities (versus just 120 GB & 240 GB with the 510 Series). The drive will utilize 25 nm multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory made by Intel and features support for TRIM, SMART, NCQ, and ACS-2 compliance. Intel looks to be setting up to battle the SandForce SF-22xx SSDs at each capacity level and price-point...." - via Tom's Hardware

This is a interesting new announcement by Intel as you look at the highest is now 480 GB. The 25nm is also pretty good and we will have to see how it will perform. Let us know what you think about this!

Icy News: OCZ Identifies Bug on SandForce Controller

2011-10-21T17:44:00.000-07:00

"OCZ Technology Group, Inc. announced that the cause of a BSOD issue experienced by some SF-2000-based drive owners has been identified by OCZ and SandForce, Inc..

A new firmware update which directly addresses this BSOD occurrence related to SF-2000 based SSDs is available here.

All newly-manufactured OCZ SF-2000 based SSDs will feature the new 2.15 firmware revision (which is based on SandForce firmware version 3.3.2.).

We highly recommend that any customers that have experienced the BSOD issue update their firmware to 2.15." -via StorageNewsletter

Fixing a very big issue with SF-2000 based SSD has hopefully is a start of less problems with these higher performing controllers. Now that it seems to be fixed, will you purchase a SF-2000 SSD? Let us know!

Icy News: OCZ Octane SSD Announced

2011-10-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

"OCZ has announced their latest family of SSDs, the Octane. Leveraging the Indilinx Everest platform and SATA 6Gb/s interface, the OCZ Octane delivers read speeds up to 570 MB/s and writes of 400 MB/s. It's not all about performance though, the Octane is the first 2.5" SSD to hit the 1TB capacity mark and that's within a 7.5mm height.

Within the processor and firmware combination, OCZ is also promoting several software benefits of the Octane. Indilinx nDurance increases NAND life two times longer than the 3,000-5,000 PE write cycles currently seen for 2Xnm NAND, pushing the lifespan back into the ranges we saw at the 3xnm die size. "Fast Boot" technology delivers 50% speedier boot times and there are no data compression limiations as in SandForce-equipped models, so users can expect better performance with certain operations with media files and the like..." - via StorageReview

Using the new Indilinx Everest platform, it seems that the Octane can read and write pretty quickly. But the most important thing is the 7.5mm height! If this would be the new standard, it could bring up more possibilities with hardware design. What do you all think about this? It should be releasing soon, so will you purchase? Let us know!

Icy News: EU Approved Acquisition of Samsung HDD Unit by Seagate

2011-10-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

"Decision still pending for WD/HGST

The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation, following an in-depth investigation, the acquisition of the HDD business of Samsung Electronics of Korea bySeagate Technology of the US. HDDs are data storage devices used in computers, laptops or camcorders.

Although the merger will further consolidate markets that are already highly concentrated, the Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in EEA or any substantial part of it..." - via StorageNewsletter

With Seagate attempting to buyout Samsung's HDD division, we wonder about the lifespan of the traditional hard drive industry. How long will it last if the sole limitation of speed is of the speed of sound? So far, there has not been a breakthrough of a dramatic increase in performance in the last decade. Meanwhile, SSD's are rapidly increasing at a much higher rate currently. So let us know what your thoughts are!

Icy News: Thailand Floods to Significantly Impact HDD Industry

2011-10-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

"For WD only: primary manufacturing site inundated, secondsite at risk

WesternDigital Corp. has extended the suspension of its operations in Thailand.

Over the weekend, rising water penetrated the Bang Pa-in Industrial Park flooddefenses, inundating the company's manufacturing facilities there andsubmerging some equipment.

At the other company manufacturing location in Thailand,Navanakorn Industrial Park, the park flood defenseswere breached on Monday morning local time and water has begun to flow into thepark threatening the company's facilities there.

All WD employees in Thailandremain safe.

The company's other facilities in Malaysia,Singapore and the U.S. are fullyoperational.

The company now expects that the flooding of its Thailandfacilities, combined with flood damage to the company's supply chain in Thailand, willhave significant impact on the company's overall operations and itsability to meet customer demand for its products in the December quarter.

The company will provide further updates on the situation on its investmentcommunity conference call on Wednesday, October 19, 2011." - via storagenewsletter.com

The article is focusing on WD but in fact, a majority of hard drive manufacturers have been affected by this flood. Do you think that this will cause an increase in HDD prices while the supply is low? Let us know what you think about the flood and how it will affect the HDD industry.

ICY TIP: The Best 2.5/3.5 IDE/SATA USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station with Portable Adapter

2011-10-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

The docking station has been the IT and average user’s biggest asset as the biggest features are its compatibility and flexibility. With an abundant variety in the market however, it makes it difficult to distinct from the good ones to the great ones. Most docking stations only come with the most basic features that do not provide anything else to be multi faceted when faced with different situations. With the MB981U3-1SA, we have taken the docking station and make it how it should be used.

One of the biggest complaints is the ease of use with many other docking stations. But with the MB981U3-1SA, we have improved the design to provide an excellent experience without very much hassle. Many docking stations either have a very small eject button or none at all depending on the design. The MB981U-1SA uses a large eject button to make it easy to eject a hard drive. Another improvement is with the two part dust cover. This is one design that is important because other docking stations lack the same feature. This benefits greatly with use of a 2.5” hard drive, as the smaller portion of the dust cover will open up and protect the electronics from such as dust or debris.

Improving on just a couple of features may or may not sell the product, so the world’s first detachable mobile adapter has been integrated into the MB981U3-1SA. This is what the average IT dreams about when they sleep, an ultra portable USB 3.0 adapter that can also be used as a docking station. It is so small that it can fit in the palm of your hand. The MB981U3-1SA takes the versatility even further by providing compatibility for both 2.5/3.5 IDE and SATA hard drives. IT people do not have to worry about bringing an IDE and SATA adapter any longer as they can just bring the MB981U3-1SA in either its mobile form or the docking station.

The MB981U3-1SA changed the way of thinking on how the docking station should be used. By incorporating the newest interface with USB 3.0, adding impressive compatibility of 2.5/3.5 IDE and SATA hard drives, the MB981U3-1SA is the most versatile and unique enclosure on the market.

MB981U3-1SA 2.5” & 3.5” SATA & IDE SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station with Adapter
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=133

Icy News: One SSD Currently Sold for 49 HDDs

2011-10-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

"For IHS iSuppli

Shipments of storage devices for computers rose across theboard during the second quarter, resulting from the March earthquake in Japan afterpanicked manufacturers strove to replenish stockpiles, according to a new IHS iSuppli Storage Market Tracker from informationand analysis provider IHSiSuppli.

Combined shipments in the second quarter for the three major storage segmentsof hard disk drives (HDD), optical disk drives (ODD) and solid state drives(SDD) amounted to 248.8 million units, up 4.5 percent from 238.1 million unitsin the previous quarter.

"In an ironic twist, the earthquake disaster in Japan had the effect ofstimulating the storage market, as manufacturers accelerated orders andincreased inventory to ensure adequate supply," said Fang Zhang, analystfor storage systems at IHS. "The effect was felt most in the HDD space,the largest storage segment, resulting in higher HDD shipments."

In all, HDD shipments during the second quarter amounted to 167.1 millionunits, up 4.2 percent from 160.4 million in the first quarter.

The HDD industry, however, faced challenges on the profitability front withmargin declines suffered by Seagate Technology and Western Digital Corp., thetwo main players in the space. Forces contributing to a decline inprofitability included price erosion resulting from higher competition;elevated research and development costs coming from technical issues associatedwith next-generation drives with higher densities; and the mounting cost ofmaterials, such as rare-earth metals from China.

In the second largest storage segment, ODDs, shipments rose approximately 4.4percent to 78.3 million units, but revenue was flat because of decliningprices. Despite the growth, some computer original equipment manufacturers areabandoning ODDs - such as DVD-ROMs and Blu-ray disc players or recorders - incertain PCs because of the ongoing transition from disc-based usage tostreaming media, as well as the popularity of thin-type PCs like the MacBookAir from Apple Inc. that eschew ODDs altogether.

In the third storage segment of SSDs, shipments in the second quarter climbed ahefty 21.4 percent to 3.4 million units, up from 2.8 million in the firstquarter. As the newest storage sector, SSDs continue to deepen theirpenetration into the market, and the technology is expected to pick up moresteam with the recent debut of consumer NAND caching technology from Intel Corp.

Companion cache SSDs represent an easier and less expensive means to boostsystem performance compared to replacing HDDs, as caching requires less NANDand works alongside the hard disk drive.

The technology also addresses common customer and manufacturer complaintsassociated with standalone SSDs, including high average selling prices andlimited densities.

However, the expected proliferation of cache SSDs in emerging end markets likethe Ultrabook—a type of ultraportable laptop—will lower the industry's averagedensities and pricing in the upcoming years, IHS projects, especially impactingthe smaller participants of the SSD landscape.

The SSD market also faces the challenge of a crowded manufacturer base weigheddown by a relative lack of experience. In particular, overreliance onthird-party controllers and NAND flash sourced from the spot market contributedto a recent spate of drive errors and recalls.

Like any fast-growing semiconductor segment, SSDs are experiencing teethingpains on the way to becoming a stable market with healthy revenues and margins.A thinning of the supplier base, however, will be necessary in order for SSDsto experience more sustainable dynamics, IHS believes." -via storagenewsletter.com

The statistics do not lie, HDDs are still out selling SSDs. It is largely due to the price per gigabyte comparing the two. How long do you think or will we see SSDs out sell HDD? Let us know what you think about the recent statistics. Also what will it take for SSDs to out sell HDDs, price, performance, capacity? Let us know!

Icy News: Thunderbolt vs. SuperSpeed USB 3.0

2011-10-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

"Intel will tell you its new high-speed interconnect technology,Thunderbolt, is not in competition with Universal Serial Bus (USB), the ubiquitous standard for connecting computers with other devices.

Apple has gone all in with Thunderbolt-enabled products, and there are a dozen or so manufacturers ready to ship Thunderbolt-enabled systems next year, according to an Intel spokesman. At the Intel Developer Forum in September, a dozen new products were displayed with Thunderbolt ports.

"You can look forward to seeing Windows-based systems with Thunderbolt in market in the first half of 2012," said Intel spokesman Dave Salvator. Microsofthas also already demonstrated Windows 8 support for Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt, announced earlier this year, offers twice the performance of the latest SuperSpeed USB (3.0) interconnect. So there is reason to believe it could someday overtake USB, the most ubiquitous external I/O technology ever created." - via Computerworld

This is a very interesting article as both protocols are new and very fast. Of course Thunderbolt has the advantage of different types of connections sharing the one cable. However, this cost is shown as the cabling cost is much greater than USB3.0. Disregarding these two mentioned items, it seems that Thunderbolt scales pretty nicely for the most part (double speed, double Wattage support). In the coming months, will you purchase a Thunderbolt enabled product? Let us know!

Icy News: Toshiba 2.5-Inch (SFF) 15,000rpm HDD at 300GB

2011-10-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

"With 6Gb SAS and self encrypting model, in 1Q2012

Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit, a division of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., announced the industry's highest-capacity 2.5-inch high performance enterprise-class drive.

The Toshiba MK01GRRB/R series supports the exacting requirements of compute-intensive environments with a 15,000 RPM spin speed, 6Gb/s SAS interface, and top capacity of 300GB. In addition, the Toshiba MK01GRRR models offer drive-based encryption to help companies manage data security.

"Enterprise customers are increasingly satisfying their performance and capacity needs with power efficient small form factor drives. Enterprise drives with the latest self-encryption features are helping data centers to more cost-effectively achieve compliance with information security mandates," said Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing at Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit. "Toshiba small form factor enterprise drives deliver the performance, capacity and security features IT administrators require for today's mission critical server, storage and cloud appliance markets."

Toshiba's third generation 2.5-inch 15,000 RPM enterprise drives leverage an enhanced power condition state that reduces drive spin in idle states, significantly lowering power consumption. Lower power consumption also means lower heat dissipation, which increases system stability, and less energy use. This saves enterprises money and reduces the impact on the environment.

As part of its commitment to improved security, the Toshiba MK01GRRR drive features self-encryption technology designed to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) 'Enterprise SSC' specification. SED technology provides simple and complete data security throughout the drive's usable life cycle - with no performance impact - and enables organizations to crypto-graphically erase protected data securely, enabling the ability to return, service, repurpose, or retire drives without lengthy data overwrite operations or physical destruction of the drive.

"Increasing the capacity of 2.5-inch enterprise class HDDs is expanding the market opportunity for this form factor given its inherent power and data density advantages as compared to 3.5-inch models," said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives. "Toshiba's new MK01GRRB/R series drives give server and storage system customers the capacity they want with the performance they need, as well as the ability to secure data on the drive with Toshiba's SED technology option."

The Toshiba MK01GRRB/R series is scheduled to begin volume shipments in Q1 2012." - Via Storage Newsletter

With Toshiba preparing for a new SAS 6Gb self encrypting hard drive, it will be interesting to see how consumer's in the enterprise market react. Would this be easier than software encryption? Let us know what you think!

Icy News: Corsair Adds 480GB Force GT, 180GB and 480GB Force 3 SSDs

2011-10-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

"Corsair in now shipping high capacity SSDs in both their Force 3 and Force GT (Force GT Review) lines, along with a new 180GB capacity in the Force 3 line. The new 180GB is designed to give those looking for a little more than 120GB a gentle step up, the 480GB capacities are the top capacity available for a single processor SandForce SSD.

Both families of drives leverage a SandForce SF-2280 processor and SATA 6 Gb/s interface. The Force 3 uses asynchronous NAND to deliver 550 MB/s reads and 520 MB/s writes. The Force GT has synchronous NAND to deliver 555 MB/s reads and 525 MB/s writes.

Corsair includes a mounting bracket so that you can also use these in a standard desktop PC 3.5” drive bays.

Pricing and Availability

All three SSDs are shipping now, the Corsair Force 3 180GB carries an MSRP of $249, the 480GB $799. The Force GT 480GB has an MSRP of $999." - via Storage Review

The HC (high capacity) SSD are starting to get bigger as of 2011. The question is still the status quo, "Should I pay more a bigger SSD or go with a spindle or even a lower capacity SSD?" What do you guys think? Let us know!

MB882HX-1SB review - posted by hitechlegion.com

2011-10-09T17:42:00.001-07:00

The Icy Dock MB882HX-1SB 2.5” SATA SSD Xpander Hybrid Adapter can bring new life to your previous generation SSDs. The MB882HX-1SB 2.5” SATA SSD Xpander Hybrid Adapter can double the sequential transfer rate of the HDD in the hybrid partition when paired with a moderate or 2nd generation 2.5” SSD. Once installed, the MB882HX-1SB Xpander Hybrid automatically creates two partitions: an SSD Hybrid partition, equal to twice the size of the SSD inside the adapter, and a useable storage partition, equal to the size of the HDD minus the SSD Hybrid partition.......read the full review

Icy News: TDK to Get Doubled HDD Recording Capacity

2011-10-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

"TDK Corp. said it has developed new technology that more than doubles the recording capacity of hard disk drives, an advance that will lead to significantly improved performance of televisions and personal computers.TDK said it intends to mass produce hard disk drives with enlarged recording capacities late next year.The new technology makes it easier to write data by adding heat to the disk through a laser. The laser source is contained in the magnetic head." - via StorageNewsletter

There isn't much information, but this looks promising as spindle hard drives seem to hit a plateau. With the new technology being developed further for mass production we could be seeing these type of hard drives sooner than later! The question is, will it be faster than the current hard drives? Let us know what you think!

Icy News: 30GB 3Gb SATA SSD for $68 or $2.3/GB at OW

2011-10-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

"Other World Computing (OWC) announced the addition of its lowest-cost SSD line.

The OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G SSD combines SandForce, Inc.'s technologies and Tier 1/Grade A NAND to deliver data rates over 275MB/s in a noiseless, more reliable form factor over conventional magnetic hard disk drives.

Designed and manufactured in the U.S. with imported parts, the new OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G 30GB SSD's $67.99 MSRP makes it one of the lowest-priced, high-performance SSDs on the market.

Maximizes Computer's 3G Data Bus
Consumers using a Mac or PC equipped with the Serial ATA data bus will find the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G 30GB is able to deliver near bus saturating speed. Independent tests have confirmed the OWC Mercury EXTREME 3G SSDs deliversustained data rates over 275MB/s and provide significant benefits in overall system responsiveness and sustained workflow.

No Slow Down With Repeated Use
While ordinary SSDs initially offer fast read/write performance; they experience significant write speed degradation over repeated usage. Independent simulation tests conducted by drive performance experts like MacPerformanceGuide confirm OWC Mercury SSD's ultra-efficient Block Management & Wear Leveling technologies are able to eliminate virtually any reduction in data transfer speeds over heavy, long-term usage without dependency on less-than-effective OS TRIM management...." -via StorageNewsletter

With OWC releasing their newest SSD, it seems pretty interesting given the second feature. The no slow down with use sounds nice, but will it be able to do so when consumers put it to the test? If it does and this is the future, how will the market look like? Let us know!

ICY TIP: Build a Compact Industrial Server with MB994SP-4S, MB994IPO-3SB & MB991IK-B mobile racks

2011-10-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

Building a compact server always has compromises to be made. The different choices of available server chassis and other components tend to limit certain features of what the server can accomplish. We notice that SSD’s are then becoming increasingly important to have in compact servers. This is a great idea except, many pedestal server chassis currently completely lack any 2.5” hard drive storage bays. To address the need for a complete backup system, the MB994SP-4S in all aspects provides an excellent solution for system builders and enthusiasts alike.

The MB994SP-4S internal multi-bay enclosure improves functionality further in a multitude of RAID and non-RAID setups by minimizing and simplifying the installation and removal of the hot swappable disks. So this gives the user more choice on how to implement the server be it half RAID 1 and half RAID 0 or many other configurations. Because of this feature, replacements of backups are a thing of the past. The normal process would be to shut down the server computer, un-mount the bad drive, and then repeat the process to remount the replacement drive. Given that for a small form factor case, this makes the job even more difficult physically. The MB994SP-4S only requires to press the eject lever to release the drive and then swap with the replacement drive. There are no cables or screws while swapping to deal with which guarantees no issues with loose cables and less time troubleshooting.

The MB994SP-4S is accompanied by 4 EZ Slide Mini Trays as well with dual fans to insure that the four drives remain cool. It reduces the foot print inside the enclosing computer, protecting the disk from vibration and external forces with its all metal and anti-vibration constructions. Full metal construction of the cage and the EZ Slide Mini Tray are used in order to give the best quality possible for industrial use. Because of this reason, it ensures secure swapping and stability. If four 2.5” slots are not enough however, the floppy disk bay can be exchanged for an additional 2.5” hard drive slot. The MB991IK-B is a single bay mobile rack that fits into a 3.5 device bay. It uses the same EZ Slide Mini Tray as the MB994SP-4S, so the drives can be exchanged in and out of these hot swap bays for backups or repair between the two devices. Meanwhile, if a DVD disk drive is required for added versatility, the MB994IPO-3SB (Coming soon) will fit the bill. The MB994IPO follows the MB994 series with its full metal multi-bay design including 1 x Slim Optical Disk Drive (ODD) slot and 2 x 2.5” hard drive slots for use.

The MB994SP-4S is a very solid device, making it especially ideal for rugged environments. Configurations such as RAID 5 in a compact space make it great to work with given the application. The solid metal construction, along with the EZ Slide Mini Tray makes swapping out drives in case of a server crash quick and simple. Likewise, the MB991IK-B mobile rack allows for mobile transfer of data with ease. This is the perfect solution for system builders who require different types of backup but have a very small workspace and time to deal with any issues that may occur.

MB994SP-4S - 2.5” SAS/SATA Hot Swap Backplane RAID Cage with Four HDD Bays For Single 5.25” Device Bay
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=114

MB994IPO-3S - 2.5” SAS/SATA Hot Swap Backplane RAID Cage with Two HDD Bays & One Slim ODD Bay For Single 5.25” Device Bay (Pre Order)

MB991IK-B - 2.5” SAS/SATA Mobile Rack For 3.5” Device Bay
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=34

MB991TRAY-B - 2.5” SAS/SATA Drive Tray for MB991IK, MB994SP Series Internal Mobile Rack Hot Swap Backplane RAID Cage
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=125

Icy News: Rebirth of 1.8-Inch HDD (or not)

2011-10-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

"A report from TrendFocus

He is an article, The Rebirth of 1.8-Inch HDD (or not),written by TrendFocus,Inc., a team of analysts following deeply since many years all the aspectsof the worldwide storage industy:

The topics of ultrabooks and how the HDD industry will fend off the latestthreat to demand (weak PC market, tablets, SSDs, etc.) were at the forefront ofour latest swing through Japan this week.

Of course, Japanese companies lamented the disappointing demand trends in 2H11,but on the heels of several quarters of rather tepid orders and a weak globaleconomy this comes as little surprise to anyone. Much of the talk centered onthe potential of the ultrabook platform and whether HDDs could adequatelycompete for this 'new' market segment.

So, a few thoughts:

Ultrabook potential difficult to gauge and its reach unclear:Although some believe that "together with Windows 8, ultrabook is thefuture of the PC markets ..." it is clear the ultrabook opportunity isunclear. Simple questions on target markets, price points, storage capacities,and so on are not yet answered definitively. And despite Intel's seeminglywhopping promotional budget, the 2009 failure of the CULV platform weighsheavily on the outlook.

Storage? Some of the ultrabook design platforms canaccommodate HDDs (7mm 2.5") but early information suggests a tendencytoward SSDs. However, didn't the 'netbook' start off this way only to fall backinto the HDD realm? The Macbook Air is the obvious benchmark for the ultrabook,but does anyone really believe that >$1,000 PCs can be a large market (otherthan for Apple)? And is the world ready for >$1,000 PCs with small storagecapacity or can HDDs once again enable innovation in the PC world and keepprices in the mainstream? We suspect that HDDs will play a significant role inultrabooks.

5mm 2.5" HDDs: The notion of the thinnest-ever2.5" HDD was popular in Japan, but eyebrow-raising design challengesprevented any consensus of opinion on the topic - except that it is likely totake 18-24 months to get this proposed format into mass production. BUT THE HDDINDUSTRY ALREADY HAS A 5mm Z-HEIGHT DEVICE - it's a 1.8" HDD. Could theperceived need for even thinner HDDs spell resurgence in 1.8" HDDs?Announced about 20 years ago, the 1.8" form factor has seemingly died manytimes only to be revived by specialized applications. Will the HDD industry'ssearch for sustained relevance cause widespread reengagement in 1.8" orwill it be a passing dalliance?" - via storagenewsletter.com

With technology getting smaller and smaller the components need to shrink as well. One of the major parts of any computer or tablet is the storage memory. Do you think that the thinner smaller 1.8 inch hard drive will be the more popular choice in smaller computers? Or do you think that consumers would rather pay the extra money for the faster yet smaller capacity SSD? Let us know if you would rather have cheaper and more capacity or expensive and faster.

Icy News: HBA With Four USB 3.0 ports and RAID Support

2011-10-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

"HighPoint Technologies, Inc. launches its USB 3.0 HBA, theRocketU 1144AR.

Four dedicated 5Gb/s ports deliver 20Gb/s of throughput, and support single disk and RAID configurations including 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD.

Conventional USB 3.0 Card + RAID Enclosure packages restrict performance with a maximum transfer bandwidth of 5Gb/s. Such solutions effectively handicap today's fastest external devices, including the latest generation of SSDs, which now meet or exceed this 5Gb/s limitation.

HighPoint's RocketU Quad-Port HBA's eliminate this performance bottleneck, and represent a cost effective external USB 3.0 storage solution for PC platforms.

With a potent combination of PCI-E x4 bus speeds and dedicated 5Gb/s per-port transfer rates, the RocketU 1144AR delivers performance while saving you hundreds of dollars over existing RAID solutions.

Flexible, High-Performance External Storage
The RU1144's integrated RAID technology allows users to configure arrays using combinations of USB external hard drives, SSDs, enclosures and docking bays. Mix and match SSDs and hard drives of any USB generation, into high-performance stripe configurations, or secure valuable data with mirrored arrays.

For the gaming and multi-media experience, configure RAID 0 arrays using multiple, external USB 3.0 drives for maximum performance. Configure mirror and 5 arrays to provide additional layers of security, and protect valuable data from the risks of hardware failure.

The RocketU 1144AR's web-based Management interface allows you to configure RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD arrays using a variety of external USB 3.0 storage devices.

RocketU HBA's are backwards compatible with any PCI-E 1.0 x4/x8 and x16 slot, and will automatically recognize any external USB hard disk or SSD's that are pre-configured or already contain data. RocketU HBA's are compatible with USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 hard drives, SSDs, multi-bay enclosures and docking bays." -via StorageNewsletter

Had enough of USB 3.0? HighPoint releasing this kind of device is something to note. With USB 3.0 enclosures on the trend up, it can make transferring data much faster. Let us know what you think!

Icy News: HighPoint Shipping RocketRAID 2711 HBA

2011-09-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

"4-port SAS 6G PCIe 2.0 x8 RAID

HighPointTechnologies, Inc. is shipping its latest SAS 6Gb/s HBA, the RocketRAID2711.

Designed for workstations and entry-level servers, theRocketRAID 2711 is an external 4-port, SAS 6Gb/s PCI-E 2.0 x8 RAID controllersupports SAS/SATA devices in a variety of storage configurations includingdirect connectivity, SATA JBOD, and SAS expansion.

External SAS 6Gb/s Storage for PC and Mac
The RocketRAID 2711 delivers enterprise management and connectivity features atentry level costs. The industry standard external Mini-SAS port (SFF-8088)simplifies installation procedures and is compatible with a range of storagedevices available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac platforms, including therecent Mac OS X Lion. The low-profile design allows the card to be integratedinto a variety of rack-mount and chassis designs.

The RocketRAID 2711 can support SAS and SATA devices in a multitude of configurations,including non-RAID JBODs, single disks, and RAID arrays including 0, 1, 5, 6,10 and 50, and includes Highpoint's Unified Web-Based Management interface,which allows to configure, manage and monitor storage configurations.

Integration with Existing Storage Infrastructure
The RocketRAID 2711 is backwards compatible with SAS/SATA 3Gb/s devices,PCI-Express 1.0 motherboards, and can be integrated into existing storageinfrastructure. Clients benefit from the upgrade path; storage configurationscan be scaled, shared, and migrated between all RR2700 series HBA's, includingfuture product releases." - via storagenewsletter.com

HighPoint has always been one of the top RAID controller card companies. With their new 4-port SAS 6G PCIe 2.0 x8 RAID you can have enterprise level performance for a lower consumer grade price. HighPoint has loaded their new card with features found on higher end cards. Let us know if you will be purchasing one of HighPoint's new cards.

Icy News: Toshiba Canvio External Hard Drives Released with Cloud Backup

2011-09-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

"Backing up data to an external drive is a good idea, but backing it up to an external drive and the cloud is even better. That's the spirit behind Toshiba's latest release of the the Canvio line of hard drives. Ranging in size from 500GB to 1TB and with a selection of colors, the drives now support USB 3.0 and come preloaded with the Windows-based NTI BackupNow EZ software.

Dubbed the Canvio 3.0, they also come with integrated cloud backup capability and a 30-day free subscription to the service. Pricing for continuing the cloud backup service were not announced. If the software and cloud backup capabilities aren't of interest but the addition of USB 3.0 is, Toshiba has you covered. The Canvio Basics 3.0 line features the faster port, a smaller enclosure and comes only in black.

The drives are shipping now. Prices for the Canvio 3.0 drives are $89.99 (500GB), $109.99 (750GB) and $139.99 (1TB). The Canvio Basics 3.0 prices are $10 less for each size" - via StorageReview

There has been a push to get the external hard drive market in gear with addition of the cloud storage feature. With the nature of external portable devices, will the average user want to spend the extra money in order to get this feature? Feel free to let us know what you think!

Icy News: Hitachi SSDs Shipping in HP 3Ppar

2011-09-26T18:03:00.000-07:00

"Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced its 3.5-inch FC Ultrastar SLC-based SSDs are shipping in HP 3PAR F-Class, T-Class and the new P10000 V-Class storage systems for enterprise and cloud datacenters, as well as for SMBss.

Developed in conjunction with Intel, the Hitachi Ultrastar SSD400S SSD family provides value to OEM customers who are increasingly looking for high-performance, high-endurance enterprise-class SSDs for integration into new or existing enterprise storage systems or designs..." - via Storagenewsletter

With Hitachi revealing their support in HP's server's, this makes a big move onto the SSD. How long will it take before SSD's are in and the spindle is out? Let us know!

Icy News: Half of IT Decision Makers Favor SSD Technology

2011-09-20T15:30:00.000-07:00

"IBM survey conducted by Zogby International

IBM Corp. releasedthe findings of a customer survey that demonstrates pent-up demand for SSDtechnology as a successor to flash and hard-disk drives.

Customers are embracing high-performance SSDs to support growing data storagedemands driven by cloud computing and analytics technologies.

More than half of the customers surveyed (57 percent) responded that theirorganization needs to develop a new storage approach to manage future growth.The survey of 250 U.S. IT professionals in decision-making positionswas conducted by ZogbyInternational in August 2011 on behalf of IBM.

The survey demonstrates a need for a new class of storage that can expand themarket for SSDs by combining their ability to speed the delivery of data withlower costs and other benefits. Nearly half (43 percent) of IT decisionmakers say they have plans to use SSD technology in the future or are alreadyusing it. Speeding delivery of data was the motivation behind 75 percent ofrespondents who plan to use or already use SSD technology. Those surveyrespondents who are not currently using SSD said cost was the reason (71percent).

Anticipating these challenges years ago, IBM Research has been exploringstorage-class memory, a new category of data storage and memory devices thatcan access data significantly faster than hard disk drives-at the same lowcost.

Racetrack memory,a solid-state technology, is a potential replacement for hard drives andsuccessor to flash in handheld devices. A storage device with no moving parts,it uses the spin of electrons to access and move data to atomically preciselocations on nanowires 1,000 times finer than a human hair. This techniquecombines the performance and reliability of flash with the low cost and highcapacity of the hard disk drive. It could allow electronic manufacturers todevelop devices that store much more information - as much as a factor of 100times greater - while using much less energy than today's designs. Racetrackmemory is featured as one of IBM's top 100 achievements as the companycelebrates its Centennial this year.

These new storage technologies could also alleviate critical budget, power andspace limitations facing IT administrators. Today, an average,transaction-driven datacenter uses approximately 1,250 racks of storage, takingup 13,996 square feet and 16,343 kilowatts (kw) of power. By 2020,storage-class memory could enable the same amount of data to fit in one rackthat takes up 11 square feet and 5.8 kws of power.

"Technology shifts and market forces are fundamentally changing thecomposition and design of storage systems," said Bruce Hillsberg, directorof storage systems, IBM Research, Almaden. "Evolving current storagetechnologies alone would not answer customers' diverse and rising data storagedemands. We're constantly researching new materials and processes to extendexisting storage technologies and get ahead of the performance and capacityrequirements of future systems."

In the last year, IBM Research recorded a number of storage breakthroughsincluding a 29-gigabit per-square-inch tape demonstration; a world record ofscanning 10 billion files on a single system in 43 minutes; and the creation ofa 120-petabyte data system that is roughly 10 times larger than the biggestsingle data repository on record.

IBM storage products also include more than five significant storageinnovations invented by IBM Research. One example, IBM Easy Tier, automaticallymoves the most active data (such as credit card transactions) to faster SSDs toprioritize and provide quick access to data for emerging workloads likeanalytics. The system moves secondary data (less urgent data to be saved, forexample, for regulatory requirements) to more cost-effective storagetechnologies. This is an important technology in preventing what IBMcharacterizes as 'SSD sprawl' or the overuse of the technology, helping clientsuse SSDs appropriately to maximize data access while keeping costs in check.

The survey also found that:

Nearly half (43 percent) say they are concerned aboutmanaging Big Data.

About a third of all respondents (32 percent) say theyeither plan to switch to more cloud storage in the future or currently usecloud storage

Nearly half (48 percent) say they plan on increasing storageinvestments in the area of virtualization, cloud (26 percent) and flashmemory/solid state (24 percent) and analytics (22 percent).

More than a third (38 percent) said their organization'sstorage needs are growing primarily to drive business value from data. Adheringto government compliance and regulations that require organizations to storemore data for longer - sometimes up to a decade - was also a leading factor (29percent)."

- via storagenewsletter.com

With SSDs slowly taking over the storage market is strange to see only half of IT professionals favoring SSDs. This survey is primarily based on corporate applications, but how do you feel about the issue with your home computer? Do you have the same issues as the IT professionals? Let us know how you feel about switching to SSDs.

Icy News: Kingston Digital 6Gb SATA SSD With SandForce Controller

2011-09-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

"KingstonDigital, Inc. is shipping the SSDNow KC100,the company's first SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) business-equipped SSD.

KC100 utilizes the SandForce controller.This SSD delivers boosts the productivity of any client system.

KC100 is backed by a five-year warranty to match the industry average forproduct refresh cycles in the enterprise. Utilizing SandForce's DuraClasstechnology, KC100 delivers data integrity protection. Corporations can restassured their data is safe as the drive offers advanced wear leveling and garbagecollection to maintain optimal endurance and performance. Data integrityprotection runs transparently in the background so it never disrupts dailybusiness.

KC100 offers enterprise-level S.M.A.R.T attributes. The SSD's usage statistics,health and life stage can be monitored with industry standard and publiclyavailable S.M.A.R.T monitoring tools. This provides peace of mind for ITdepartments knowing their employees are taken care of as the KC100 client-sideSSDs are reliable and running optimally.

"Kingston is thrilled to offer the newbusiness-equipped KC100 SSD to enterprises," said Ariel Perez, SSDbusiness manager, Kingston."Data integrity is important to every company and the KC100 is sure todeliver the highest standards of data protection on the client systems in whichit is installed. Users can rest assured that with the combination of itsendurance, reliability and performance, KC100 will become a very importantasset in the workplace."

The new KC100 self-encrypts to provide client-level data encryption. With twoembedded encryption engines, running in both AES-128 and AES-256, encryption isperformed at the drive level without draining host system resources and slowingdown data transfer rates. KC100 is also backwards-compatible with current SATA2 systems for the next client system upgrade.

SSDNow KC100 ships in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities, as a standalone or asan upgrade bundle kit. It is backed by a five-year warranty, 24/7 tech supportand legendary Kingstonreliability.

Kingston SSDNowKC100 Features and Specifications

Sequential Reads 6Gb/s:

SATA Rev. 3.0 - 120GB & 240GB: 555MB/s; 480GB: 540MB/s

SATA Rev. 2.0 - 120GB, 240GB & 480GB: 280MB/s

Sequential Writes 6Gb/s

SATA Rev. 3.0 - 120GB & 240GB: 510MB/s; 480GB: 450MB/s

SATA Rev. 2.0 - 120GB, 240GB & 480GB: 260MB/s

Sustained Random 4K Read/Write:

120GB: 20,000/60,000 IOPS

240GB: 40,000/60,000 IOPS

480GB: 60,000/45,000 IOPS

Max Random 4K Read/Write:

120GB: 90,000 / 70,000 IOPS

240GB: 95,000 / 60,000 IOPS

480GB: 77,000 / 45,000 IOPS

Other Specs

Form factor: 2.5"

Interface: SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s) andSATA Rev 1.0 (1.5Gb/s)

Guaranteed: five-year Kingstonwarranty, 24/7 tech support

EnterpriseS.M.A.R.T Tools: Reliability Tracking, Usage Statistics, Life Remaining, PowerLoss, Wear Leveling, Temperature, Drive Life Protection

Capacity: 120GB, 240GB, 480GB

Storage temperatures: -40°C - 85°C

Operating temperatures: 0°C - 70°C

Dimensions: 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm

Vibration operating: 2.17G

Vibration non-operating: 20G

Operating shock: 1500G

Power specs: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.6 W (TYP) Read / 2.05 W(TYP) Write"

-via storagenewsletter.com

Kingston is now releasing an enterprise grade SSD that is backed by an excellent 5 year warranty. The drive is no run of the mill SSD with advanced wear leveling and garbage collection. The new SSD runs at blazing speeds with its 6Gb interface. Let us know what you think about Kingston's new SSD!

Icy News: Corsair Enters the Gaming Keyboard & Mouse Market with Vengeance

2011-09-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

"In a private media event this week Corsair unveiled its latest contribution to the PC industry: gaming keyboards, mice and headsets. All of these new peripherals fall under the Vengeance brand. The motivation behind this move is simple: starting with memory and eventually expanding into power supplies, SSDs and cases, Corsair wants to be your one-stop shop for nearly everything you need for your PC. The CPU, motherboard and video card markets are either impossible to get into or undesirable for a manufacturer that doesn't already play in those spaces, leaving peripherals as one of the only options for expansion..." - via AnandTech

This is an interesting move by Corsair with dipping into Peripherals (Keyboards, mice and headsets). With the likes of Microsoft, Logitech and Razer, can Corsair create a market for their new products? Let us know what you think!

Icy News: Intel Shows Off Thunderbolt On New Windows PCs (IDF 2011)

2011-09-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

"Intel announced that Thunderbolt, their high speed I/O data port, will be coming to non-Apple computers at IDF 2011 today. Thunderbolt, which is based off of Intel’s Light Peak, was demoed running off of their upcoming Haswell chipset, due in 2013. However, Acer and ASUS both have products planned for a 2012 launch supporting Thunderbolt.

Intel demoed Thunderbolt's capabilities on a Windows 7 system, streaming four uncompressed HD videos simultaneously over Thunderbolt. As you can see below, this interface has no trouble handling even the most demanding situations, averaging a continuous transfer rate of 726MB/s.

Thunderbolt itself is a high-speed I/O port with a mini-displayport interface and a 10Gb/s bi-directional data interface. It allows for both high-speed data transfer and multiple displays to be connected via a single port. While Sony has a laptop with a high speed dataport based on Intel’s Light Peak, it is not Thunderbolt compatible, making Apple the only current computer manufacturer to implement it at the moment." - Storage Review

Light Peak is a very fast interface and with great promise. With Acer and ASUS both have planned products with the interface, will you be one to purchase? Or is it too soon? Let us know!

Icy News: Windows 8 Developer Preview: Come and get it

2011-09-14T16:28:00.000-07:00

"Those of you interested in taking the current flavor ofWindows 8 for a spin can now download and install the Developer Previewedition.

Being demoed at Microsoft's Buildconference this week, the Developer Preview isa prebeta version showing off the operating system at its current stage. Thoughtechnically designed for developers, no registration is required, so anyone candownload and install it.

The Windows 8 Preview is being offered in three differentpackages--a 64-bit version with various developer tools, a 64-bit versionof just the operating system, and a 32-bit version of the OS.

All three come as ISO files--image files of the contents ofa CD or DVD. Since each of the packages is several gigabytes in size, you'llneed a DVD if you want to burn the files to a disc.

In Windows 7,you can burnthe ISO file to a DVD by double-clicking it to open the Windows DiscImage Burner. For older operating systems, you can use a tool such as ISO Recorder toburn the file. Alternatively, you can use such utilities as Virtual CloneDrive or DaemonTools to "mount" the ISO file as a drive, eliminating theneed to burn it onto a disc.

Since this is a prebeta version, you'll want to install theOS on a spare PC or in a virtual environment so that it doesn't interfere withyour production or work machine.

Those of you who want to know what you're getting intobefore you attempt to install the Developer Preview can check out a hands-onearly look at Windows 8 from CNET's Seth Rosenblatt.

What's next after the Developer Preview?

Speaking at the Build conference yesterday, Steven Sinofsky,senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows division, confirmed earlierreports that Windows 8 will next segue into one beta version, followed by oneRelease Candidate. Assuming all goes well, we can then expect the final RTM(release to manufacturing) edition sometime after that.

Sinofsky didn't reveal a specific timeframe for the beta orRelease Candidate. However, the company has been expected to launch the beta atthe 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January, according to WinRumors." -via news.cnet.com

It is finally here a preview version of the new Windows 8 OS! We can now finally see what this new OS is all about and see what rumors were true or false. Let us know if you have downloaded and tried the preview of the new OS.

Icy News: Corsair With 6Gb SATA 90GB SSDs

2011-09-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

"Force Series 3 ($159) and GT ($199)

Corsair announcedretail availability of ForceSeries 3 and ForceSeries GT SSDs in 90GB configurations.

Corsair Force Series 3 SSD upgrades have native support for SATA 6Gb/s, with a maximumsequential read speed of 550MB/s and a maximum sequential write speed of 500MB/s.

The Force Series 3 uses asynchronous flash memory to provide performance.

Force Series GT, designed for enthusiasts who demand the fastest performanceavailable, uses ONFI synchronous flash memory and boasts read speeds of up to555 MB/s and write speeds of up to 505 MB/s. The use of synchronous flashmemory makes the Force Series GT SSD particularly adept at reading and writingnon-compressible data, such as video and music files.

All Force Series 3 and Force Series GT SSD models are also backward compatiblewith SATA 2, and include a 3.5" adapter for use in both notebook anddesktop PCs.

"We're happy to add the world's first 90GB SSD to our product lineup,"said Thi La, Vice President of Memory Products at Corsair. "With 50% morestorage capacity than our 60GB models and at pricing significantly lower thanour 120GB models, they help make the Force Series 3 and Force Series GT amongthe most robust and flexible SSD lines on the market."

The 90GB SSD configurations are available from authorized distributors andretailers worldwide at a US suggested retail price of $159 USD for the ForceSeries 3 90GB and $199 USD for the Force Series GT 90GB.

Note that stated capacities are unformatted and actual capacities will varydepending on the formatting and operating system used." - via storagenewsletter.com

Corsair is now releasing a 90GB SSD that is still high performance with read speeds of 550MB/s and Write speeds of 500 MB/s that is much cheaper than a comparable SSD. It seems that SSD manufactures are slowly bringing down the price of their SSDs without sacrificing performance. Who do you think will be the next manufacture to produce an inexpensive, high performance SSD?

Icy News: ADATA S510 SSD Released

2011-09-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

"ADATA has expanded their 500 Series of SSDs with the S510, which slots in as a mainstream offering alongside their enthusiast class SSD, the S511. The S510 leverages a SATA 6Gb/s interface, SandForce SF-2281 processor and 25nm asynchronous NAND to deliver speeds of 550 MB/s read, 510 MB/s write and 4K random write IOPS of 85,000.

True to the plan of reaching out to mainstream users, ADATA has opted to offer a single capacity point of 120GB, which at this time is the sweet spot for SSDs interms of the capacity/price equation. The S510 comes with a three year warranty and ships with a 3.5" mounting bracket." - via Storage Review

With ADATA releasing their new S510, it's pretty spec'd to be very fast including with the SATA III standard. The size and speed seem to be good. Will you be purchasing this SSD or wait for others? Let us know!

Icy News: 4TB HDD - Record in Industry - by Seagate

2011-09-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

"Seagate Technology PLC is shipping a new 4TB GoFlex Desk external hard drive - the highest capacity hard drive in the industry.

This latest addition to the GoFlex Family of external hard drives showcases Seagate's new desktop design. It delivers a smaller footprint and better reflects the aesthetic of today's modern offices while providing the benefits of previous generations of the GoFlex drives.

The new 4TB GoFlex Desk drive is now available and will beavailable from select online retailers within the month for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $249.99 USD. The entire line of GoFlex Desk products will also adopt the new industrial design in the coming weeks. The GoFlex Desk for Mac external drive featuring both FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 will be available in Apple stores by the end of the month.

"Yet another industry first for Seagate, we have reached a new high-capacity in the 3.5-inch hard drive form factor. At Seagate, we are committed to pushing the limits for our customers and will continue to adapt and innovate our products based on customer needs," said Patrick Connolly, vice president and general manager of Retail products for Seagate. "This latest GoFlex Desk drive offering, with its new industry-leading capacity point, is a statement of our continued commitment to meet consumer needs."

The new GoFlex Desk 4TB drive has the space to contain over 2,000 HD movies. This new GoFlex Desk external drive comes at a time when people are archiving more of their memories in the form of digital photo and video.

"IDC foresees there being an increase in global demand for personal storage capacity driven by the growing creation and acquisition of digitized videos, photos and music," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems, IDC.

Debuted in May of 2010, the GoFlex Family of hard drives provide an alternative approach to external storage solutions by allowing users to change interface adapters to stay current with the latest in interface technology. With USB 3.0 still undergoing adoption and the emergence of Thunderbolt technology in the coming months, the GoFlex adapter concept has been proven as an idea that works and Seagate plans to continue with this design for future iterations of the company's external hard drives. The GoFlex drives are also Windows and Mac OS X compatible and have the flexibility to go between both operating systems. In addition to cross-platform compatibility, the GoFlex Desk drive can also be utilized with the GoFlex Home adapter if one chooses to use it as a network drive.

With the pre-loaded backup software, the GoFlex Desk external drive provides automatic, continuous back with encryption for all files. The included USB 3.0 adapter also works with USB 2.0 ports to connect to your Windows or Mac computer. The adapter also features an illuminated gauge to display available space on the drive." - via Storage Newsletter

Just when 3TB hard drives were available, a 4TB has come out in the market! But when you look at the price, a whopping $249.99! 3TB haven't been out recently, is this too soon for a 4TB? Another thing to consider is will this be able to move with prices of 1TB and 2TB being lowered? Let us know!

Icy News: OWC 60GB SSD at $130 or $2.2/GB

2011-09-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

"Other WorldComputing announced the $129.99 MSRP 60GB capacity model to its builtin the USA OWC Mercury Electra 6G Solid State Drive line.

Offering a lower starting price point, the SandForce Driven6Gb/s 60GB capacity OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD utilizes quality components,including Tier 1/Grade A NAND, to deliver 556MB/s read and 523MB/s writesustained data rates for over 7X faster performance than a standard factoryhard drive found in Mac and PC computers.

Two Consumer/Prosumer Models
in Seven Capacities Starting at $129.99
OWC Mercury 6G SSDs come in two models (Mercury Electra 6G and Mercury EXTREMEPro 6G) offering seven capacities from 60GB to 480GB, priced starting at$129.99.

Mercury Electra 6G SSD: offers over 500MB/s sustained datarate performance of a 6G SSD for high speed personal computing, home officeenvironments, gaming, and production workstations, but is priced like a 3G SSD.In addition to single drive use, it can be incorporated into a RAID 1 or SPANconfiguration and is available for ordering in 60GB, 120GB, 240GB, and 480GBcapacities.

Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD: offers prosumers and A/V,photography, and graphic production professionals professional grade SSDperformance with over 500MB/s sustained data rates and up to 479MB/sincompressible data rates. In addition to single drive use, it can beincorporated into a RAID 0, 1, 10 or SPAN configuration, and is available forordering in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB capacities.

"Our newest 60GB Mercury Electra 6G SSD is pricedaggressively to offer one of lowest price points on the market for one of thehighest performance SSD available," said Larry O‚Connor, Founder and CEO,Other World Computing. "Then factor in our best in class warranty coverageand support services reputation and it‚s safe to say this new model representsthe best value on the market for a 6G based SSD".

Maximizes Computer's 1.5G, 3G, Or 6Gb/s Data Bus
Whether a consumer has a Mac or PC with the SATA Revision 2.0 (3Gb/s) data busor the latest SATA Revision 3.0 (6Gb/s) interface, the OWC Mercury 6G SSD lineis able to deliver near bus saturating speed when installed in eitherinterface. OWC benchmark testing confirms OWC Mercury 6G SSDs deliverssustained data rates over 275MB/s in the '3G's' 300MB/s max speed bus. Takingadvantage of '6G's' interface‚s maximum bandwidth of 600MB/s, Mercury 6G SSDsprovide up to 559MB/s sustained reads and 527MB/s writes.

Doesn't Slow Down With Use Like Ordinary SSDs
Ordinary SSDs offer fast read/write performance during first initial uses, butcan then experience significant write speed degradation over repeated,long-term usage. Independent simulation tests by drive performance expertsconfirm OWC Mercury SSDs‚ efficient block management, wear levelingtechnologies, and real-time data redundancies enable high performance andextreme reliability, both of which are maintained over long-term intensive use.

Up To 100X Greater Data Protection
Thanks to SandForce DuraClass technology, OWC Mercury 6G SSDs are able toprovide up to 100X higher data protection than provided by ordinary SSDs aswell as enterprise class hard disk drives. By combining ECC and SandForce RAISE(Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) technology along with 7% overprovisioning reserve/overhead flash allocation, OWC Mercury 6G SSDs provideRAID like data protection and reliability in a single drive application.

Risk-Free 30-Day Satisfaction Guarantee
OWC is extending its 30-Day Money Back Guarantee to include the new MercuryElectra 6G 60GB model. If a consumer is not completely satisfied with any OWCMercury 6G SSD for any reason, they need to contact OWC's Customer Servicedepartment - which offers 24/7 Live Chat support - to request a full refund." - via storagenewsletter.com

Our friends over at OWC are bringing the price of SSDs down without sacrificing performance. With their own line of SSDs the OWC Mercury Electra 6G Solid State Drive will run you about $130 or $2.2/GB. The price per gigabyte is lower than many other SSDs on the market today. Let us know what you think about OWC's new SSD.

MB974SP-B review - posted by storagereview.com

2011-09-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

The Icy Dock 4-in-3 backplane gives users easy access to four hard drives in the space occupied by three 5.25" drive bays in a typical PC case. The unit is highlighted by tool-less/tray-less hard drive slots and dedicated SATA connections making it an ideal RAID backplane. Icy Dock has also thrown in a bunch of extras like.......read the full review

Icy News: Hitachi GST With 1TB Per 3.5-Inch Disk Platter

2011-09-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

"As the first to ship a multi-disk 1TB HDD in 2007, Hitachi Global StorageTechnologies has achieved yet another 1TB milestone by squeezing it ona single disk. The new one terabyte per platter, one-disk, Deskstar7K1000.D drive family is now shipping worldwide. Featured in bothDeskstar and CinemaStar brands, Hitachiis providing a range of capacities, 250GB - 1TB, on both low RPM CoolSpin and7,200 RPM platforms.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D

With the addition of the new Deskstar and CinemaStar drives, which are first ina family of 1TB/platter drives, Hitachicontinues to offer a product lines for desktop and mobile solutions. For theultra thin and light notebook market, Hitachidelivers the 7mm z-height Travelstar Z5K500 drives (636Gb/in²). And now, forhigh-performing desktop computers and the CE market, Hitachi presents the new 1TB/platter Deskstarand CinemaStar family drives (569 Gb/in²).

"The areal density race continues and while having the highest capacity isappealing, reaching 1TB per platter is equally important as it serves a fullrange of applications and opportunities across the industry's largest marketvolume," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing atHitachi GST. "As we ship our first 1TB per platter drives, we know we'redelivering capacity, reliability and value to a broad customer base. Not onlyare we shipping our 1TB per platter drives to our own Branded Business, but weare shipping to our channel partners as well, enabling them to designaffordable HDD-based solutions at attractive price points."

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D and Deskstar 5K1000.B
with Coolspin Technology
The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D hard drive family provides the combination ofperformance, capacity, reliability and value required for today'spower-friendly consumer and commercial desktop computers, as well as externalstorage solutions, PC gaming systems, and desktop RAID arrays. Built using Hitachi's 7,200 RPMplatform, the drive delivers speed with a 6Gb/second Serial ATA interface and a32MB cache buffer.

With eighth-generation power management technology and power-saving HiVERTinnovations, this new drive provides up to 15 percent idle power savings overthe previous model. Hitachiis also offering the new Deskstar5K1000.B drive family with low power and cool operation. With CoolSpintechnology, along with other Hitachipower management techniques, the Deskstar 5K1000.B delivers a 23 percent idlepower savings over the Deskstar 7K1000.D, enabling a new generation of cool andquiet personal computing devices. The low power profile of both the Deskstar7K1000.D and the Deskstar 5K1000.B drives helps reduce overall system powerrequirements for developing energy-efficient systems.

Hitachi CinemaStar 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B
HD, IPTV and Internet TV growth are driving the demand for cost-effectivestorage-based TVs and DVRs for consumers to record, playback, surf and streamtheir favorite movies and shows from their TVs. In the CE space today,approximately 90 percent of HDD demand is for single-disk capacities rangingfrom 250GB to 500GB, which can be served by Hitachi's new 1TB/platter CinemaStar family.The new CinemaStar 7K1000.Dand 5K1000.B productlines give customers a dedicated 3.5-inch family that delivers a balance ofperformance, power, acoustics and capacities that is optimized for this market.With more than 10 features and technologies optimized for A/V streaming, thenew CinemaStar 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B offer capacity and RPM choices for DVRs,set-top boxes and video surveillance systems. All 1TB/platter 7,200 RPM andCoolspin versions ship with a 32MB cache buffer and a 6Gb/s SATA interface.

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B CoolSpin versions are shipping todistributors and channel partners. CinemaStar drives are expected to ship inthe Fall." - via storagenewsletter.com

They did it again! Hitachi will begin releasing 4TB drives in the Fall. With Hitachi beginning the first what brand will be next? With the new release will there be 4TB compatibility issues as many found when using 3TB drives? Let us know what you think about the bigger and better drive.

Icy News: Samsung Intros Wireless Optical Drive and Portable Blu-ray Writer

2011-09-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

"Samsung has introduced two new optical drives: the USB-powered SE-506AB slim Blu-ray writer for Macs and PCs and the SE208BW DVD writer. What makes the SE208BW special though is that it is a dual-purpose optical drive and wireless access point.

Samsung has introduced a new slim portable Blu-ray writer for traveling PC and Mac users. The USB-powered SE-506AB is available now for $140.

The SE-506AB supports a variety of speeds across different media types. Specific speeds include: 6X BD-ROM, 24X CD-ROM, 24X CD-RW reading and 6X BD-R, 6X BD-R Dual layer, 4X BD-R Quad layer, 8X DVD±R, 5X DVD-RAM, 6X DVD+R Dual layer, 6X DVD-R Dual layer, 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW recording.

The SE-208BW is not only a CD/DVD writer but also a wireless access point. It features an Ethernet port and can serve as a repeater for those who already have a wireless router, amplifying signal strength. The SE-208BW can also act as a server; a USB storage drive can be connected and accessed wirelessly.

The drive is USB-powered and supports all major operating systems including Windows 7 and Mac OS. It will be available at the beginning of 2012 for an unspecified price." - via Storage Review

Is Blu-ray still alive? It seems that more and more, users tend to either rent movies or stream them online. The nice thing is that Samsung included a wireless access point which is a neat feature. Will it be enough to give people a reason to buy? Let us know!

Icy News: OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB Released

2011-09-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

"At Computex in July, OCZ announced the RevoDrive Hybrid PCI Express storage solution, along with their updated family of RevoDrive 3 SSDs. The RevoDrive Hybrid is now shipping, and offers a unique combination of 1TB 2.5" hard drive coupled with a 100GB OCZ SSD on a PCIe card. The drives combined with caching software can deliver 1TB of storage at 120,000 IOPS and read speeds up to 910 MB/s and writes of 810 MB/s.

OCZ is leveraging Dataplex caching software from NVELO on the RevoDrive Hybrid. Dataplex uses algorithms to determine which data is used more frequently, placing those files on the SSD to leverage the speed benefit, while lesser requested files remain on the hard drive. The caching is dynamic and adaptive based on specific user habits.

SSD caching solutions have been around for some time, as users struggle with the balance between SSD performance and hard drive capacity. The OCZ solution is unique in that it offers both the hard drive and SSD on a single PCIe card, taking up minimal space in a PC. On the hard drive side, OCZ is leveraging a 2.5" 5,400 RPM drive. The SSD contains 25nm MLC NAND and a pair of SandForce SF-2281 processors.

OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid Specs

Usable Capacities (IDEMA) - 100GB SSD+1TB HDD
25nm MLC NAND
PCI-Express Gen. 2 x4
PCIe FullHeight
SandForce 2281 x 2
Hard Drive Rotational Speed - 5,400 RPM
Dataplex Caching Software
167.64 x 98.42 x 22.15 mm (dimensions do not include bracket)
289g
Power Consumption - Idle: 8.1W Active: 10W
MTBF - 600,000 hours
Read unrecoverable bit error rate (UBER) 10e-16 (<1in 1016 bits read)
128-bit & 256-bit AES-compliant
3-Year Warranty

Pricing and Availability

The OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB comes with a three-year warranty and has an MSRP of $499.99." - via Storage Reivew

This is an interesting read, the technology used and the outputs are is amazing with reads up to 910MB/s and writes up to 810MB/s. We are also concerned about the seemingly steep price tag of $499.99, which is more for the high end audience of course. What do you think about this? If you had one, would it make a difference in your everyday use? Let us know!

MB981U3-1SA review - posted by storagereview.com

2011-08-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

Icy Dock released a new hard drive docking station this summer that offers great flexibility; the MB981U3-1SA has a long list of supported drive types including 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives, but if that's not good enough for you, they also include legacy IDE support. The dock connects to a computer via USB 3.0 interface, which can power the unit when used with 2.5" drives.......read the full review

MB882HX-1SB review - posted by umlan.com

2011-08-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

Majority of IT and Gaming enthusiasts out there now have a Solid State Drive. The market has expanded and flooded drastically in the storage market, just about anything that you want from wireless storage technology to direct wired storage devices. Right in the middle of it is Network Attached Storage Devices which are complex and the best data storage solution ever provided, until now. Free or cost effective storage for anyone and any business but let’s talk about your desktop......read the full review

ICY TIP: Backup your entire DVD collection digitally with the MB561US-4S-1

2011-08-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

Most know that being a movie fanatic also turns out to be a pretty big hobby as you will eventually have too many DVD's on a shelve. While some will choose to rip their collection to hard drives, finding a dedicated storage location can be difficult. This is because many users opt to use their general secondary storage which may or may not have enough room. In addition, it is not as convenient to have a mix of different files on one drive and some other movies on another separate drive. The MB561US-4S-1 makes it easy to store and share your collection on a single device that offers a total storage capacity of up to 12TB.

With the MB561US-4S-1, you will be able to expand your library storage collection like never before. Think of this as a file cabinet but for all your entertainment from movies to TV shows, not to mention only taking up about half a foot in height. Instead of the 5 shelf DVD collection, you have a device that's fits next to your PC or TV, effectively clearing out space for many other things. What makes it even better than a physical media library is that having a centralized digital movie library on your home network is that any device whether it be your desktop, laptop, HTPC or media box like a WD TV you can view and enjoy your favorite movies from the MB561US-4S-1. Keeping everything in one place makes it easy to locate files and with 4 available slots, each slot supporting up to a 3TB hard drive you can quickly organize your videos to your personal liking.

Additional benefits that compliment the MB561US-4S-1 include the hot swappable trays. The removable trays will work with other Icy Dock enclosures like our internal models MB876, MB453, MB454 & MB455 series. This is especially useful for anyone using a HTPC or laptop PC that does not have a DVD drive. You can rip your DVDs from your primary computer to your MB876, MB453, MB454 or MB455 enclosure. When complete you can remove the hot swappable trays and return them to your MB561US-4S-1 to view the movies you just ripped on your HTPC or laptop PC. In addition, with USB 2.0 you can have a wide support of different devices which can make things much more convenient. On the other hand, eSATA port multiplier is also available for up to 3 Gbps transfer speed for those large DVD files. To ensure that everything runs smoothly, the enclosure is built with an aluminum casing with an 80 x 80 x 25 mm adjustable fan to help cool the drives.

Viewing your movie collection on the MB561US-4S-1 can be done a couple of different ways depending on what type the movie file format you prefer to use. If you would like to keep your DVD collection unmodified with no compression, the best option is rip the DVD into an ISO image format. Using software like ImgBurn and DVDFab to rip the DVD to an ISO image, you can save the ISO images to the MB561US-4S-1 and mount and play the ISO images with HTPC or laptop PC on your TV (via HDMI or DVI cable). If you prefer to compress the DVD into a smaller movie file, there are many DVD ripping software options that allow you to directly convert your DVD to Mpeg format. Save the mpeg files to your MB561US-4S-1 and you can play your mpeg files with your media adapter box, HTPC or laptop PC on your TV.

The MB561US-4S-1 is a great and easy way for backing up all of your movies collection allowing a massive media library in a small amount of physical space. You will never have to go back to DVDs unless you feel like going retro. Having hot swappable trays allows you to update and or interchange your movies or TV shows in the same amount of time it takes to put in a DVD. By simplifying your DVD collection is just the beginning as music CD's can also be done, creating a full multimedia experience!

Here are some related articles on how to setup the MB561US-4S-1 with specific devices, check out:

Expand your WD TV Storage Capacity with The ICY DOCK Enclosure

Expand your Apple Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, Router & Wireless NAS Storage

Expand Your HP Media Smart and Acer Aspire EasyStore Windows Home Server with the Icy Dock MB561US-4S-1

MB561US-4S-1 Quad Bay eSATA & USB 2.0 External Enclosure

http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=33

MB561US-4SB-1 Quad Bay eSATA & USB 2.0 External Enclosure

http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=123

Icy News: VMware pushing Windows apps to any device

2011-08-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

"LAS VEGAS--Pressing its case that the desktop is moving away from the center of computing, VMware Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod gave attendees at the annual VMworld conference here today a glimpse at a technology the company is developing that will let workers access Windows applications regardless of the type of device they're using or the operating system it runs.

Herrod built on the post-PC era theme VMware's Chief Executive Paul Maritz laid out in his keynote address at the conference yesterday. Herrod showed off technology from VMware's labs, some of which is being released today, that lets corporate tech managers simply provision applications--such as Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet software--to employees to use on iPads, Android phones, as well as their Windows desktops.

"The world has changed," Herrod said of the era when IT managers doled out applications to PCs, which were then handed to employees. VMware is introducing technology that lets those manager "apply policy based on humans rather than devices," Herrod said.

VMware updated its Horizon Application Manager, which had only let users run cloud-based applications, to support Windows applications regardless of the type of device or the underlying operating system. Herrod also demonstrated ThinApp Factory, which lets employees pick among the applications that their tech departments make available to them. Companies can stitch those together with VMware's Horizon Mobile to make those applications easy to use on portable devices. And VMware announced that devices running Horizon Mobile will be coming from LG and Samsung, among others, in the coming months.

Herrod also previewed VMware's Project AppBlast a service that promises to deliver any application, including ones created for Windows, to any device supporting HTML5. And he demonstrated Project Octopus, a service that synchronizes data to enable collaboration over any device. He didn't disclose when either project would be available.

The idea is to free IT departments from the hassle of granting employees access to specific applications for every device they use. At the same time, it should make it easy for those workers to run a corporate application on whatever device they have in front of them.

In the demonstration, VMware showed an insurance adjuster selecting the apps he needed to do his job from his desktop computer, then finding those same apps running on his mobile phone using Google's Android operating system and later settling a claim from his iPad. And the adjuster was able to view and modify an Excel spreadsheet from his iPad.

"This is really a killer app in the labs," Herrod said. "I think it's going to be quite disruptive."

What's more, the technology keeps the corporate workspace separate from a user's personal apps. On the Android device, for example, the adjusters Facebook and Angry Birds apps remained on his home screen. The phone only changed to his digital workspace when he tapped on the corporate icon on his phone. That separation should also make it easy for IT departments to remove their programs when the employee leaves the company.

Icy News: Microsoft details Explorer layout for Windows 8

2011-08-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

"Windows 8 will usher in yet another revision to the file management system used by millions of people.

A blog post today by Microsoft Director of Program Management Alex Simons details at great length the future of the new Explorer interface, and lessons learned from previous versions.

Some of the top commands used in Windows Explorer. Click to enlarge.

One fascinating aspect brought up from Microsoft collecting hundreds of millions of anonymous usage reports (from Windows users) is that despite having over 200 commands in Explorer, "the top 10 commands represent 81.8% of total usage" (such as paste, properties, copy, and delete). Many commands go unused.

Microsoft found that the context menu from right-clicking an object is usually the main method of entering commands at 54.5 percent, with keyboard shortcuts coming in second at 32.2 percent.

It was found that the command bar--the most visible feature of Vista and 7's Explorer menu--contains two of the top 10 commands used overall in Explorer, and was only used a measly 10.9 percent during file management sessions. Therein lies the opportunity for change, Simons said.

The new share menu in Windows 8

The ribbon interface, first introduced with Microsoft Office, aims to change several inefficiencies present in the current version of Explorer. With Windows 8, Microsoft hopes the ribbon will transform file management by making the most-used commands more prominent in the user interface, while displaying more helpful commands with sensible grouping (such as File, Home, Share, View, and Manage menus). The new Explorer interface also has live previews for files, expanded tool tips, and keyboard shortcuts for every command in the ribbon to satisfy power users.

The Up button is back.

Some of you may groan at the addition of the ribbon user interface to Explorer, perhaps fearing less real estate for the actual files themselves. Well, Microsoft has studied the most popular resolutions used in Windows and is keeping all users in mind, especially those with widescreens. The details panel in Windows 8 uses less space than Windows 7, which enables several more files to be visible. The popular "Up" button of yesteryear is also back for quicker directory navigation.

Thankfully, if the ribbon is too large for your liking, the new quick access toolbar allows you to customize buttons and has an option for smaller icons." via - news.cnet.com

More and more information is being released on the new Windows 8. The new and improved explorer is being release that shows some old features being brought back as well as some brand new ones. Let us know what old features you would like to see in the new Windows 8 that they left out of Vista and 7.

Icy News: DriveSavers Data Recovery Services for MacBook Air

2011-08-25T18:07:00.000-07:00

"In case of SSD failure

DriveSavers Data Recovery announced the company's data recovery services are available for the newest version of the Apple MacBook Air.

DriveSavers Data Recovery Advisors are available 24/7 to help users recover files from a MacBook Air, should data loss occur.

DriveSavers was the first company to perform iPhone data recovery. Like the iPhone and iPad, the newest version of the MacBook Air uses Flash-based memory technology, which improves speed, uses less power, is more resistant to shock and decreases the weight of the device. However, Flash-based technology can be compromised by user error, mismanagement and software or hardware failure - making a user's precious data such as documents, videos, digital photos and music vulnerable if the MacBook Air hasn't been backed up.

DriveSavers has completed more recoveries on Flash memory-based solid-state devices than any other data recovery company. With over 25 years of experience recovering data for Apple products, DriveSavers data recovery engineers are able to recover data from MacBook Air, iPads, iPhone and iPods that have suffered common and catastrophic data loss.

"The MacBook Air is yet another popular Flash-based device from Apple that has changed how consumers create and store their precious data," said Mike Cobb, director of engineering at DriveSavers Data Recovery. "As the MacBook Air continues to gain popularity and become more entrenched in consumers' everyday lives, the vulnerability of these laptops also increases - accidents happen. With over 25 years of experience successfully recovering data from Flash memory-based products, including the MacBook Air, DriveSavers is an expert in data recovery for Apple products."

DriveSavers posts proof of annual, company-wide SAS 70 Type II Audit Reports, the Corporate Industry's standard for an overall control structure. Every iPhone data recovery process adheres to data security protocols and is conducted in the safest data recovery environment available. High Security Service is also available for customers who require extra precautions.

DriveSavers Data Recovery Advisors are available 24/7 to help users recover files from the new MacBook Air, should data loss occur. DriveSavers MacBook Air data recovery services are available to consumers worldwide." - Via Storage Newsletter

With the MacBook Air using SSD's as the main storage, there are still bound to be errors. With this type of backup, would you be likely to use their services? Let us know!

Icy News:Acronis True Image Home 2012

2011-08-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

"Acronis Inc. is launching Acronis True Image Home 2012, the latest version of its consumer software.

Acronis combines online backup, local backup and file synchronization in one product, not only protecting home PCs but also giving home users access to their digital lives, wherever they are, whenever they want.

Acronis True Image Home 2012 brings together Acronis' disk imaging backup and recovery technology with file synchronization. The software allows home users to sync their files no matter where they are stored - PC, USBs, NAS, as well as in the cloud via Acronis True Image Online. If a change is made in one location, it is automatically updated in others, meaning home users can access their most up-to-date data anywhere, any time. Consumers can also share data securely with their family and friends.

Until now, file synchronization technology has been found in dedicated file sync products but not in disk imaging backup products, which is used to capture an entire PC, including the operating system, applications and files for fast and reliable recovery. Acronis True Image Home 2012 offers all these technologies in one easy-to-use solution.

The file sync is as simple as setting up a folder (akin to My Documents) and placing data in that folder. The information is automatically transferred and available between the different locations that the user wants to access. Home users can also choose to sync their data securely with family and friends with Acronis True Image Home 2012 installed on their PCs and laptops. Synchronization is easy via a home network or over the internet.

"Since 2002, we've been trusted by home users worldwide to protect their most valuable information. We've built a strong user base that provides us with excellent feedback to further enhance our products," explains Jason Donahue, CEO of Acronis. "With the new version, we've thought beyond traditional backup features, to really give people an easier computing experience. People have spent years saving their files to flash drives or emailing themselves the latest version of their documents and it's messy and ineffective. Our latest developments will enable home users to take that extra leap, from hoping you have the latest version, to knowing that you do."

"The product is very simple to install, very fast, responsive and is really easy to use," said beta tester Phil Coats. "I found that the 'Get Started Tutorials' were easy to understand. Logging also gets a big thumbs up."

Other new or improved features
in the product include:

New: Extended support large disks (2TB+)

Improved: Acronis Nonstop Backup now compatible with NAS, plus better optimized network load

Improved: Enhanced NAS support

Improved: Enhanced GUI

Pricing and availability
Acronis True Image Home 2012 is available through select retailers and online. Recommended retail price is €49.95. The Acronis True Image Home 2012 Plus Pack add-on is availableonline and through retailers for €29.95. It enables users to restore the backed up image to dissimilar hardware, regardless of make, model or installed components.

Licensing
Licensing is one perpetual license per machine. Each computer to be synchronized requires a license. Acronis True Image Online license covers up to 5 PCs."" -via storagenewsletter.com

Acronis back up software is a great tool to keep your computer safe and secure. Using this software you can backup your entire computer to your Icy Dock hard drive enclosure. The new software adds some new features and improves on an awesome product. Let us know what software you use to back up your computer to your Icy Dock hard drive enclosure

Icy News: Microsoft Throws Support Behind USB 3.0 With Windows 8

2011-08-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

"Microsoft is incorporating a software stack in its upcoming Windows 8 OS to natively support devices based on the USB 3.0 interconnect, which is in a battle for adoption with Intel's Thunderbolt.

USB 3.0 is the successor to USB 2.0 standard and can transfer data 10 times faster between computers and external peripherals such as cameras and storage devices. Most laptops and desktops today come with USB 2.0 ports and many PC makers are offering USB 3.0 ports as an option. The current Windows 7 OS does not include native support for USB 3.0, but device makers offer drivers to ensure products are compatible with the OS.

The growing support for USB 3.0 and wide usage of USB 2.0 was a compelling reason to improve the USB software stack, said Dennis Flanagan, Microsoft's director of program management for the devices and networking group, in an entry on the company's Building Windows 8 blog.

"By 2015, all new PCs are expected to offer USB 3.0 ports, and over 2 billion new 'SuperSpeed' USB devices will be sold in that year alone," Flanagan wrote.

Microsoft is writing a new software stack and controller for Windows 8 based on the "design principles" of USB 3.0, which will bring plug-and-play support for new devices such as external storage, webcams and keyboards, Flanagan wrote. The company is retaining the existing software stack to support older USB devices.

But there are few USB 3.0 devices available today, so to create the new software stack the company had to simulate and build virtual USB 3.0 hardware, including ports, hubs and devices.

The hardware support for USB 3.0 is also growing. Intel has already said it will integrate USB 3.0 support in chipsets for processors code-named Ivy Bridge, which will reach PCs early next year. AMD has already integrated support for USB 3.0 in its Fusion chipsets, which are already shipping for PCs.

USB 3.0 transfers data at speeds of up to 5 gigabits per second, which is slower than the transfer speed of rival interconnect technology Thunderbolt. Developed by Intel, Thunderbolt can transfer data between host computers and external devices such as displays and storage at up to 10 gigabits per second. Thunderbolt has been viewed as an alternative to USB 3.0, but Intel has the said the technologies are complementary. Apple uses Thunderbolt in its products.

Thunderbolt currently supports the PCI Express and DisplayPort protocols, and the interconnect does not require any OS support beyond existing software stacks for those protocols, an Intel spokesman said in an e-mail.

But Microsoft's backing will aid the fast growth of USB 3.0 and provide higher transfer speeds for consumer devices, said Jim McGregor, research director at In-Stat.

"Thunderbolt will be one of many peripheral options available, just like IEEE1394 and Firewire, but I think USB will be the predominant interface because it is so heavily tied to the largest growth segment of the market, mobile devices, for both interconnectivity and power," McGregor said.

Thunderbolt is based on copper wires, but ultimately will be based on optical technology. That will boost the interconnect's transfer speed and distance, Intel has said.

"[USB 3.0] will still not be as fast as the Thunderbolt optic link, but copper never will be as fast as optics," McGregor said.

Wireless charging could trump both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, provided it takes off, McGregor said. The transfer speeds may not be as fast, but device makers are showing interest in the technology, he said.

"It may eventually eliminate the need for peripheral connectors on mobile devices and then everyone will look to wireless interfaces," McGregor said.

Other than enthusiast users, drivers aren't something average PC users need to worry about, but native support for USB 3.0 in Windows 8 can't hurt, said Nathan Brookwood [CQ], principal analyst at Insight 64.

"When they are talking about the history of Windows 8, they are going to be talking about the user interface and ... touch," Brookwood said." - via pcworld.com

With Windows 8 supporting USB 3.0, will this boost sales on USB 3.0 devices? Will this native support push Intel's Thunderbolt interface to the side? Let us know what you think Windows 8 support for USB 3.0 will do in the device world.

Icy News: Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile HDD Supports Android

2011-08-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

"Seagate Technology LLC unveiled a new app for Android operated mobile devices that will provide a wireless connection to 500GB of storage to stream up to 300 HD videos.

Introduced in May of this year, GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage is a battery-powered external hard drive to wirelessly extend the storage capacity of any Wi-Fi enabled mobile device.

Although previously compatible with Android tablets and phones by using the device's browser, the experience with GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage will now be enhanced through the connectivity and added features of the GoFlex Media App for Android.

Devices are wirelessly connected directly to the GoFlex Satellite drive by use of the free GoFlex Media App-available now on Android Market and iTunes for iOS devices-or a web browser. GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage is currently available worldwide for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of$199.99 USD..." - via Storage Newsletter

Seagate releasing an app for Android to use with their GoFlex Satellite to access their files is a pretty neat idea. However, is this too late? With the internet being as big as it is, is there is a need for this on android where YouTube and Netflix are available. Let us know what you think!

Icy News: Corsair Adds 60GB and 90GB SSDs to Force 3 and Force GT Lines

2011-08-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

"Corsair has added 60GB and 90GB capacities to their family of Force GT and Force 3 SSDs. The 90GB drives are the first SandForce SF-2200 SATA 6Gb/s SSDs to ship thus far. While they may be small in capacity, these SSDs still offer tremendous speeds, with the 60GB Force GT cranking out 555 MB/s reads.

In terms of specs the 60GB and 90GB Force 3 SSDs look nearly identical to the rest of the Force 3 drives, leveraging SandForce SF-2281 processors and 25nm asynchronous NAND to deliver 550 MB/s read speeds. The 90GB capacity offers and 500 MB/s writes and 85,000 IOPS, where the 60GB turns 490 MB/s writes and 60,000 IOPS.

On the Force GT (Force GT Review) side of the coin, the 60GB and 90GB also leverage SandForce SF-2281 processors, but this time with 25nm synchronous NAND. Both of the new capacities offer 555 MB/s reads; the 90GB drive posts 505MB/s write speeds and 85,000 IOPS, while the 60GB drive 495 MB/s writes and 80,000 IOPS.

The new SSD capacities help open new consumer markets that have been holding back on a SATA 6Gb/s SSD purchase due to budget constraints. The 60GB and 90GB drives are ideal in dual-drive scenarios where the speedy SSD houses the operating system and frequently used programs. All four of the new drives are available now with an MSRP of $159 for the Force Series 3 90GB and $199 for the Force Series GT 90GB." - via Storage Review

Now with the Corsair Force GT released, this is a great addition to the many other SATA III drives that are out there. The read and write speeds are also no slouch leaving almost no room for the SATA III maximum bandwidth. However, is the starting cost of $159 worth the speed? Will you purchase? If so, why? Let us know!

Icy News: Intel SSD 320 Firmware Update Published

2011-08-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

"UPDATE 8/17/2011: Intel posted the firmware update two weeks early

In late July, we reported on an issue that affected all Intel SSD 320 models which under certain power conditions could render the drives inoperable. Called the "Bad Context 13x Error", this problem caused drives to show as 8MB in capacity and users would lose their ability to read or write from the SSD. Intel has now said that a firmware bug has been identified and updated software to fix this problem will be released in two weeks.

Users who aren't suffering from the problem are still strongly urged to update their SSDs. While regular backups are reccomended, Intel has come out and said that this firmware update will not cause a secure erase of the drive. Given the severity of the problem (not being able to read or write to the drive if affected) if you are a currentl Intel SSD 320 owner, keeping an eye on the firmware release should be a top priority.

SSDs showing symptoms of this problem report a capacity of 8MB and have the serial number field showing the message "BAD_CTX 0000013x"." - via Storage Review

If you are using Intel's 320 model, they have released an update for it to resolve the issue with the power that rendered drives inoperable. A good quick response by Intel as most likely their initial sales may have taken a hit from this. Now that this critical issue is fixed, will you have the confidence to purchase? Let us know!

Icy News: Samsung's 6Gbps SSD gets a consumer label, October release date

2011-08-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

“Many SSDs could easily blow away that legacy spinning drive in your notebook, but there's always room for a performance boost when it comes to tech. Announced last week, Samsung's 830-series SSD packs up to 512GB of storage, and full support for SATA's 6Gbps max throughput -- a 100 percent boost over Samsung's previous gen drive. There's only one problem with last week's version: it's only available to OEMs, leaving a DIY upgrade out of the question. Well, today Samsung announced consumer availability for the same drive, letting any Joe Bag O' PC Upgrades pick one up at retail come October. Drives will be available in 64, 128, 256, and 512GB capacities, with pricing details coming at the official launch this fall. Jump past the break for the full PR, should you care to read all about the drive's "precision engineered" brushed metal enclosure, with "deep black" highlights and a "stylish and chic exterior" -- exactly the features you should be looking for in an SSD.”

-via engadget.com

SSDs are being improved on it seems like everyday. Samsung is no exception in the ever improving SSD world. With the improvement on SSDs it seems like they are always trying to make them look better. Samsung's new SSD has a dark brushed metal look. Let us know if it matters to you what your SSD looks like.