As demand for higher capacity storage continues to increase due to large video applications, including HD video, Western Digital has expanded its WD AV-GP line of hard drives to include a 2 TB capacity, the industry’s largest available drive to-date. According to WD, the AV-GP hard drives with WD GreenPower Technology provide cooler and quieter operation and lower power consumption, as much as 40 percent over standard drives in their respective classes.
"Our consumer electronics customers require hard drives that consume less power, generate less heat and operate quietly," said Sharad Srivastava, Director-Sales (India & South Asia), Western Digital. "Audio and video recording applications, such as DVRs, media servers, media centers and mainstream surveillance systems, often demand 24x7 operations from hard drives. Our drives meet the demanding requirements of these markets including higher reliability, universal compatibility, low power consumption and theability to simultaneously record multiple audio and/or high-definition video streams."

Following are several features of the WD AV-GP line of hard drives:

* The drives have been designed to last in high-temperatures for when they are required to be con for long periods.
* Noise levels have been minimized to less than one sone - virtually below the threshold of human hearing.
* The IntelliPark feature is designed to deliver lower power consumption by automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag. IntelliPark improves non-operating shock characteristics, providing enhanced robustness in environments where excessive transportation and handling occurs.
* They’ve been tested for compatibility with a broad range of AV products including set-top boxes, DVD recorders and mainstream surveillance systems.
* SilkStream is a feature designed to optimize smooth, continuous digital video playback of up to 12 simultaneous HD streams. It’s compatible with the ATA streaming command set so CE customers can use standard streaming management and error recovery options.
* The drive arm frequently sweeps across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface common to audio video streaming applications.

The WD AV-GP 2 TB hard drive (model WD20EVDS) is available with select distributors. Maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) is Rs. 15,500.

Seagate today introduced its Constellation™ family ofnew enterprise storage solutions for Tier 2 nearline storage applications. The two new drive models, the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drives, include a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security. Both drives also include PowerChoice™ from Seagate, which decreases power consumption by up to 54% for record power savings in enterprise environments.

The Constellation 2.5-inch hard drive is offered in capacities of 160GB and 500GB with both 3 Gbps SATA and new SAS 2.0 interface running at 6Gb/s speeds. As the first SAS 2.0 nearline drive, the Constellation hard drive enables larger external storage topologies, 100% faster data throughput and higher signal strength over greater distances – dramatically increasing storage scalability. The Constellation family will begin shipping this quarter.

“Dell recognizes that increased capacity and high-reliability are key toenabling further adoption of small form factor storage within the enterprise. With new capacities, small form factor drives afford customers performance and power gains within the same rack space,” said Praveen Asthana, director of Dell Storage.

“As an industry-leader in storage, Dell is pleased to partner with Seagate and be one of the first companies to offer the Constellation family of drives to our customers.”

Constellation ES
The 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drive will be available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and with an enterprise-class SAS interface as well as a SATA version, and provides best-in-class capacity and performance. As the world’s only 7200-rpm 3.5-inch hard drive providing up to 2TB of storage, the record-setting capacity of Constellation ES hard drives are ideal for 3.5-inch based external storage architectures. With Constellation ES hard drives, customers don’t have to sacrifice performance in order to gain the highest capacities. The Constellation ES hard drive will ship in calendar Q3.

“Xyratex continues to work closely with Seagate to advance storage system innovation to meet both the performance and capacity-based market requirements,” said Todd Gresham, executive vice president and general manager of the Networked Storage Solutions Division for Xyratex. The new Constellation family of products complements Xyratex’s philosophy of delivering cost-effective enterprise-class, energy efficient storage solutions that help provide our customers the long-term investment protection they demand.”

With Seagate’s innovative PowerChoice technology, both Constellation hard drive models deliver the highest power-reduction savings ever offered in an enterprise-class HDD, and provide flexible, user-manageable options to deliver power savings without sacrificing performance, data integrity, or reliability. In addition, the Constellation family of drives are backed with field-proven, enterprise-grade reliability and rated at a full 1.2 million hours MTBF.

Delivering on Seagate’s commitment to add security features throughout its product portfolio, the Constellation family of drives are offered with optional self-encrypting drive (SED) technology and provide government-grade data security through the drive’s life cycle. SED technology makes drive retirement and disposal easy by eliminating the need for the numerous manual processes involved which are often incomplete, complex, expensive, or prone to error. For critical information that must remain secure, and because all systems are eventually retired, whether being relocated, re-purposed, or disposed of, the information on a Constellation SED hard drive remains AES-safe.

Seagate Unified Storage™ architecture delivers long-term business sustainability
Historically, the variety of drive interfaces, form factors and now, security solutions, can add complexity and increase costs for both IT professionals and OEMs. Making the wrong choice today creates storage islands in the data center with no easy path for upgrades – further complicating an already complex environment. The Seagate Unified Storage architecture converges best-of-breed technologies (Serial Attached SCSI, Small Form Factor and Self-Encrypting Drives) into a foundation for powerful yet simple storage that boosts business and operational efficiency while reducing cost and complexity.

The Seagate Unified Storage architecture delivers a storage foundation for companies that are proactively ensuring the long-term sustainability of their business through best-in-class IT practices. Companies will avoid the risk of impacting their own product quality, competitiveness, or profitability when their storage system infrastructure and data center footprint is optimized across power, cooling and performance density. Because the role of small form factor drives are important to the long-term efficiency and sustainability of any data center enterprise, Seagate will be extending this component into all tiers of its Unified Storage architecture in the future.

“With tightening IT budgets, Seagate is committed to delivering enterprise-class nearline storage solutions that ensure business sustainability by optimizing resources, reducing environment, energy or social impact and satisfying customer requirements without compromising performance,” said Sherman Black, senior vice president, Seagate Core Marketing and Strategy. “These new Constellation HDDs provide business continuity in the data center by offering the highest capacities, the lowest power, and the latest in enterprise-class data integrity with SAS 2.0 and AES government-grade encryption.”

Late last week Western Digital briefed us on their forthcoming release of a new addition to their Caviar Green family of hard drives. No we're not talking some sort of exotic sushi or cracker-bound fish egg here either but rather a new, rather humongous and environmentally more friendly hard drive from WD, that can be considered an "industry first". Today marks the day that standard rotational media breaks the 2TB barrier. Let's spell that out a bit more clearly again here; T-W-O full Terabytes of SATA-based storage on a single, standard 3.5" hard drive. Those of you on the consumer side of the market, hording gigs of music, movies, pictures and other media just got a bunch more breathing room to play with. And those of you in the enterprise space now have a new option to consider with respect to bulk, low-cost, power-efficient storage. Perhaps that rack just got a little smaller or the need to cool it a little less?

Today Western Digital is announcing their WD20EADS drive, otherwise known as the WD Caviar Green 2.0TB. With 32MB ofonboard cache and special power management algorithms that balance spindle speed and transfer rates, the WD Caviar Green 2TB claims a top rung spot on the density-per-square-inch and power-efficiency ladders.

We've had an engineering sample here in house for a few days and have done some preliminary testing on it. We'll be offering a full performance evaluation with the final revision of this new drive in the coming weeks but we have a sneak peek for you here. Let's start with the specifications and then we'll take a closer look at the vital signs.
Specs:

* Capacity: 2TB (400Gb/sq.in. areal density)
* 32MB cache buffer
* Variable spindle speed
* 3.5-inch form-factor
* 500GB/platter, 4-platter design
* 3Gb/sec SATA with NCQ
* SATA power connector only
* PMR head technology
* RoHS compliant

Tom's Hardware reports that Western Digital will be first to market with a 2TB drive. The WD20EADS is a part of WD's GreenPower series, and uses four 500GB platters. Other specs include 32MB of cache and a seek time of 8.9ms.

Although Tom's Hardware reports that the drive will run at 5400RPM or 7200RPM, you should take the claim of 7200RPM with a grain of salt until we get our hands on actual hardware for testing. As this analysis from SilentPC on the first GreenPower drive indicates, GreenPower drives normally run at the slower speed.

How much will the first 2TB drive set youback? Around $210-240, rumors say, but we'll all know for sure when the drive hits retail shelves later this week. Will you be lining up for the first 2TB drive, or would you rather have a couple of 1TB drives? Hit Comment and sound off.

Seagate today announced two new members of its award-winning Cheetah enterprise-class hard drive family: the Cheetah 15K.7 hard drive and the Cheetah NS.2 hard drive. Current economic challenges have put even more focus on reducing spending to ensure long-term business sustainability. For businesses that have an existing investment based on a standard 3.5-inch enterprise infrastructure, the new Cheetah drives bolster sustainability through easy drive/system integration, and provide improved levels of system performance, capacity, reliability, and lower power consumption.
In support of sustaining the environment, where reduce, reuse and recycle are keys to this best practice, Cheetah drives reduce power consumption, drive replacement costs, and costs per GB. Built for 3.5-inch Tier 1 storage applications, the Cheetah 15K.7 drive and the Cheetah NS.2 drive are the largest capacity mission-critical drives offered at 600GB, and have the highest reliability in the industry. The Cheetah 15K.7 drive delivers the highest performance of any 3.5-inch drive, while the Cheetah NS.2 drive takes power-savings to the furthest extreme by featuring the lowest power requirement of any 3.5-inch Tier 1 drive.

Both drives feature 2 nd-generation PowerTrim technology, which dynamically optimizes drive power consumption at all levels of activity. Using PowerTrim technology, the Cheetah NS.2 drive provides power savings of over 20% when compared to its prior generation design.

"Seagate recognizes IT budgets are constrained, and these new 3.5-inch Cheetah drives are aimed directly at helping enable many businesses sensibly grow and scale as their information needs continue, whileat the same time providing the reliability required to avoid costly interruption or downtime," said Sherman Black, senior vice president, Seagate Core HDD Marketing and Strategy. "While many organizations are making the transition to 2.5-inch enterprise-class drives which include the Seagate Savvio ® drive family, 3.5-inch Cheetah drives are the leading standard for existing enterprise systems. Seagate remains committed to serving the market with a full lineup of storage solutions for a broad range of needs and budgets."

"External storage system OEMs continue to consume the majority of 3.5-inch performance-optimized HDDs shipped each quarter, whereas server manufacturers consumed nearly all of the 2.5-inch SFF performance-optimized HDDs that shipped in 2008," according to John Rydning, IDC's research director for hard disk drives. "Seagate's new 3.5-inch Cheetah disk drives with up to 600GBs of capacity will fill a critical need for both its customers and end users looking to extend the life of existing external storage system platforms."

"It's a core tenet of Dell's philosophy to offer our customers the best technology and services solutions to meet their needs," said Praveen Asthana, director of Dell Storage. "By offering a selection of these new drives from Seagate, we are able to provide our customers Tier 1 reliability at 600GB while empowering them to place their own priority on performance and power consumption."

The Cheetah 15K.7 and the Cheetah NS.2 drives are the second generation of Cheetah drives available as Self-Encrypting Drives for designated OEMs, providing government-grade data security, and instant secure erase for drives repurposed, reused, recycled, or returned for expired lease, repair or warranty.

"Many organizations are considering drive-level security for its simplicity in helping secure sensitive data through the hardware lifecycle from initial setup, to upgrade transitions and disposal," said Eric Ouellet, Gartner research vice president.

Cheetah 15K.7 Drive Specifications
Capacity 600, 450, 300GB
Interface 6Gb/s SAS-2.0, 4Gb/s FC
Spindle Speed 15,000 RPM
Seek Time 3.4 ms
Reliability 0.55% AFR / 1.6M hours MTBF
Cache 16MB
Form factor 3.5-inch

Cheetah NS.2 Drive Specifications
Capacity 600, 450, 300GB
Interface 6Gb/s SAS-2.0 (600 and 450 GB drives), 4Gb/s FC
Spindle Speed 10,000 RPM
Seek Time 3.8 ms
Reliability 0.55% AFR / 1.6M hours MTBF
Cache 16MB
Form factor 3.5-inch

The Cheetah NS.2 drive is available and shipping today.

The Cheetah 15K.7 drive is currently available for OEM qualifications and will start shipping next quarter to the channel.

Buffalo Technology, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of wired and wireless networking, storage and memory solutions today unveiled a chic new design for the MiniStation Cobalt. Offering a feature-rich storage solution in a stylish, lightweight package, the MiniStation Cobalt is designed for mobility. With a simple, easy-to-use user interface, storing, protecting and transporting digital images, music and other files becomes a snap! Offered in three distinct colors, Blue Onyx, Pearl White and Ruby Red, the MiniStation Cobalt safeguards your digital assets and provides the peace of mind that only Buffalo's years of engineering excellence can provide.

Designed for the active professional, Buffalo's new portable storage solutions for PC and Macs includes easy-to-use backup and sync software, a robust shock resistant design as well as Buffalo's SecureLockMobile software to prevent unauthorized access in the event the drive is lost or stolen.

"Buffalo continues to offer robust yet design-conscious products that give you the freedom to take your digital life to wherever you live," said Ken Higgins, vice president of sales at Buffalo Technology. "With the new MiniStation Cobalt, we are continuing a tradition of innovative, easy-to-use storage solutions that are engineered to meet the needs of our customers."

The MiniStation Cobalt is Mac and PC compatible and is the perfect grab-and-go storage solution, whether it's for doing a presentationoverseas or a casual lunch meeting down the street. Buffalo's unique TurboUSB technology enhances data transfer rates of up to 20% faster than other standard drives and ships with Memeo's AutoBackup and Auto Sync software allowing consumers to securely and automatically manage and backup their digital assets in real-time.

Pricing and Availability

The MiniStation Cobalt is backed by a limited one-year warranty that includes toll-free 24/7 technical support and will be available late January at estimated street prices of $169.99 for the 500GB (HD-PE500U2), $119.99 for the 320GB (HD-PE320U2), $89.99 for the 250GB (HD-PE250U2) and $79.99 for the 160GB (HD-PE160U2).

About Buffalo Technology

Buffalo Technology (USA), Inc., based in Austin, Texas, is a leading global provider of award-winning networking, storage, multimedia and memory solutions for the home and small business environments as well as for system builders and integrators. With almost three decades of networking and computer peripheral experience, Buffalo has proven its commitment to delivering innovative, best-of-breed solutions that have put the company at the forefront of infrastructure technology. For more information about Buffalo Technology and its products, please visit www.buffalotech.com.

Buffalo, Inc. trademark statements. Buffalo is a trademark of Buffalo, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

The Deskstar brand is infamous among enthusiasts, and not just because it's a thinly-veiled attempt to tickle the Star Wars obsession that lives in the hearts of most geeks. First, there was the 75GXP failure fiasco, which fueled not only a class action lawsuit, but also our longest running comment thread. IBM eventually sold its hard drive business to Hitachi, which kept the Deskstar name intact despite the (probably undeserved) stigma associated with the name.

Under Hitachi's tutelage, the Deskstar again made headlines, this time as the first hard drive to hit the terabyte mark. This was quite an achievement at the time—Hitachi had to squeeze a whopping five platters into the drive to hit 1TB, and it took a while for the competition to catch up. But that was nearly two years ago, and time hasn't been kind to the first 3.5" terabyte. Areal densities have risen dramatically, allowing other drive makers to build terabyte drives with as few as three platters. Drives with fewer platters tend to be quieter and require less power, and with higher areal densities, they're quicker as well.

Not content to be left out, Hitachi has updated its Deskstar line with a new terabyte model primed for enterprise. With three 334GB platters, this fresh E7K1000 shouldeasily outclass the original. The real question, however, is how it fares against the latest terabyte drives from Western Digital, Seagate, and Samsung. Join us as we put the E7K1000 through its paces against the best the competition has to offer to find out.According to Hitachi, the Deskstar E7K1000 is designed for enterprise applications like nearline storage and RAID arrays. It's common for drive makers to spin out enterprise versions of their desktop products; Western Digital's RE3 is simply an enterprise version of the Caviar Black, for example, and Seagate's Barracuda ES.2 is to workstations and servers what the Barracuda 7200.11 is to desktops. The E7K1000 looks to be an enterprise version of Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000.B desktop drive, with a few notable differences.

The first and perhaps most important of these differences—at least as far as the drive's target market is concerned—is the addition of Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) tech that helps to maintain drive performance in high-vibration environments. Enterprise-class drives are often tightly packed in RAID arrays or rackmount enclosures where the close proximity of other drives creates a fair amount of vibration. These surrounding vibrations can easily knock a drive head off track, slowing performance. To combat this performance loss, RVS polls vibration sensors located at several points on the drive and adjusts the head position accordingly, resulting in more consistent performance in vibration-rich locales.

Sales of netbooks, laptops and desktop replacements has been rising these last several years, in 2008 we even saw the scale tip over in favor of these portable computers. Most of these devices share the same processor, video card and chipset technology as their desktop counterparts, delivering performance almost on par. The overall speed of a PC is determined by its slowest component, inside laptops this has been the hard drive, due to space constraints manufacturers have to use 2.5” (and even 1.8”) sized drives, which reduces the storage space as well as speed compared the desktop 3.5” disks. With the introduction of the Solid State Drives in 2008, we should be able to overcome this bottleneck in our portable PCs, unfortunately pricing is still quite high and disk size is limited to a fraction of what the good old hard drives are capable of.

In this business world every penny saved is a penny won, so you won’t see any SSD in entry and mainstream laptops just yet, instead you do get larger drives which can store up 500Gb inside a 2.5” HDD housing, impressive to say the least.

We tested a business grade Dell Latitude D630 laptop with three different 2.5” hard drives to see how much it would benefit from a HDD upgrade. On the Dell site the default configuration costs $1243, it comes with an 80Gb 5400rpm 2.5” HDD. Dell gives you theoption to upgrade to a 7200rpm model for $40 which is definitely worth it. You can also go for an SSD, but the cheapest will set you back $450 and it’s only 34Gb… not really a good deal. They also have a “128Gb Mobility Solid State Drive“ listed for $460, which can be any MLC based SSD.

The 7200rpm 80Gb 2.5” disk we found inside our D630 was a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 80gb. Dell does change brand and model over the course of a year, so it’s a not 100% certain you’ll find this disk in every D630 ordered with a 80gb 7200rpm HDD. Specifications
The Seagate Momentus 7200.2 SATA/300 80 GB laptop hard drive enables the best combination of high performance, capacity and mobility in a 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF). The Seagate Momentus 7200-RPM-class hard drive is ideal for performance-class laptops, SFF PCs and many other small or mobile performance environments.
# 8-MB cache
# SATA 3.0Gb/s interface
# Highest available laptop hard drive performance for maximum productivity
# Superb reliability
# Rugged mobility
# Whisper-quiet operation
# Low power consumption



We wanted a lot more storage on this laptop than was offered by the 80Gb Seagate, Dell only offers upgrades up to 160Gb so we had to look elsewhere. In a local shop we picked up two 2.5” drives from Western Digital, one Scorpio 250Gb and one Scorpio Black 320Gb.
Specifications Scorpio Black
With 7200 RPM spin speed, 16 MB cache, and capacities up to 320 GB, these drives enable you to have the best of both worlds: the capacity and performance of a desktop PC with the convenience and portability of a notebook.

Specifications Scorpio
With 5400 RPM spin speed and 12 ms access time and up to 3 Gb/s SATA interface speed, even the most demanding customer will appreciate the performance achieved by WD Scorpio Blue drives.



The Scorpio Black is top of the line performance drive, 7200rpm and 16Mb cache, it matches and surpasses the specifications of many desktop hard drives. The Scorpio (none-black) spins at 5400rpm which is considerably slower so it’ll be interesting to see how it stacks up to the competition.

Hard drive storage has been a bottleneck point in computers for as long as most of us can remember. Solid State Drives have hit the market, but currently are so expensive for the amount of storage that you get that they just aren't feasible. When you're looking at $200 for 128 GB of storage (for a generic SSD) you're likely to keep your old slow hard drive and just drool over the SSD line of products, wishing they offered a better price performance ratio.

We feel your storage needs pain and went in search of higher speed, better price performance products that still offer good speeds, but a better price performance ratio than SSD's. The Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB hard drive offers faster transfer rates than traditional platter drives, larger storage capacities than their more expensive cousins, the SSD, and speeds that rival SSD's when used in RAID 0.

To show how the different drives perform we went to the ends of theEarth and collected seven hard drives and ran them in nine different configurations, but none will ever have the coolness factor of the Western Digital VelociRaptor. With one exception, the Western Digital VelociRaptor in RAID 0!

Seagate in collaboration with McAfee have announced the shipment of self-encrypted hard drives for the notebook PC. The novel 500GB and 320GB hard drives with integrated encryption will have Dell as their first OEM customers.

With software from McAfee for the enterprise wide management of laptops having Seagate security, the new drives will help users fight the loss or theft of mobile information. Released in both 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm models, the novel Momentus full disk encryption (FDE) laptop drives by Seagate have a storage capacity of up to 512GB.

The Seagate McAfee drives comprising of complete hardware encryption will also have the 128-bit AES encryption and a fast Serial ATA interface. With no requirements of replacing the encryption software in case the security software is modified, the encryption feature will ensure users of no performance overhead. Also the drives have been National Security Association (NSA) certified and can easily be swapped into existing notebooks.Joni Clark, product marketing manager for the storage vendor’s Personal Computer Business Unit, mentioned, “The management of Seagate’s encrypted hard drives comes from McAfee’s $350 million acquisition in October of 2007 of SafeBoot, a privately held vendor of data encryption technology. SafeBoot was added to McAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) security management software.”

She additionally remarked, “So for small businesses, if they know that encrypted hard drives are faster than software encryption and they offer security, there’s no need to go out and purchase a new laptop. They can just replace the hard drive.”

While Dell is the first OEM to confirm the use of the 7,200-rpm Momentus drives to its new E-family of Latitude notebooks, Seagate has also announced the availability of the drives via PC OEMs, custom system builders and distributors for those who looking for new notebooks.

There are no details on the price yet. However the Momentus 5400 FDE.3 hard drive 320GB and 160GB along with 8MBs of cache and the Momentus 7200 FDE self-encrypting notebook drive in 320GB and 160GB along with 16MBcache have already started shipping. Early next year we should see Seagate’s Momentus 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM self-encrypting hard drives 500GB storage capacity.

Western Digital has long been a performance leader in the hard drive world. That made it especially odd when the company debuted its first terabyte in the "GreenPower" Caviar GP. Despite what enthusiasts might have hoped, GreenPower didn't mean "Hulk smash." Instead, it referred to the drive's eco-friendly motor, whose slower spindle speed dramatically reduced power consumption. WD had driven to the terabyte party not in a performance-oriented sports car, but behind the wheel of a tree-hugging econobox.

To be fair, the Caviar GP's performance was surprisingly good for a drive whose platters spun at close to 5,400RPM. In some tests, it was even faster than terabyte drives spinning at a full 7,200RPM. The GP also lived up to its energy-efficient billing, sucking half the power of some of its terabyte rivals, all while barely making a whisper.

Since its release, a reshuffling of Western Digital's hard drive branding scheme has transformed the Caviar GP into the Caviar Green. Now it's time for the drive itself to change. The original Caviar GP reached the terabyte mark with four 250GB platters, but the latest model we'll be looking at today has been upgraded to 333GB platters, of which it needs only three.The higher areal density of the Caviar Green's new platters promise improved performance, and since the drive is spinning only three of them, power consumption should drop as well. On all fronts, then, this latest Caviar Green looks better than the original. Let's see if it is.The idea behind the Caviar Green is a simple one. For some applications, be they home theater PCs, secondary desktop storage, or a home file server stuffed into a closet, you don't need the fastest hard drive on the block—just one that's fast enough. Those markets are likely to prefer drives with lower noise levels and power consumption, which the Caviar Green is more than eager to provide, ideally while maintaining an acceptable level of performance.

It might be counter-intuitive for an enthusiast to give up any performance, but the trade-off makes sense here. At least in consumer markets, most folks buy hard drives looking to expand storage capacity for their multimedia libraries. You don't need a fast hard drive to store or smoothly stream even the highest definition video content, and your multi-gig MP3 collection certainly doesn't need to be on a 10K-RPM VelociRaptor.

When it first launched the GreenPower Caviar, WD refused to disclose the drive's actual spindle speed, saying only that it was somewhere between 5,400 and 7,200RPM. The company later admitted that the drive ran at closer to the former than the latter, but we haven't been able to coax out an exact spindle speed.Numerous sites have speculated that the Caviar Green essentially runs at 5,400RPM, and now even Western Digital has changed its tune. Sort of. The drive's latest spec sheet lists the Green's rotational speed as "IntelliPower," which WD defines as "A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance." So much for clarification.

Western Digital obviously doesn't want customers making assumptions about the Caviar Green's performance based on rotational speed alone, but the decision to obfuscate it behind blatant marketingspeak is entirely unnecessary and evasive. After all, the market isn't short on examples of drives with slower spindle speeds outperforming faster ones. One need look no further than our most recent mobile storage round-up to see Western Digital's own 5,400-RPM Scorpio Blue beating Seagate's 7,200-RPM Momentus in some tests. Consumers deserve a little more credit.
Enough with the soapbox, though. We have a drive to test. The latest addition to the Caviar Green lineup can be identified by its WD10EADS model number. You'll want to write that down, because the old drive's model number is WD10EACS. The drives themselves are quite similar, with the biggest difference coming on the platter front. Western Digital has replaced the original's quartet of 250GB platters with a trio of platters that weigh in at 333GB each. This 33% increase in areal density enables the Green to offer a terabyte with fewer platters, allowing the motor to spin less weight, which further reduces the drive's already low power consumption. The higher areal density of these new platters should also improve the Green's sustained transfer rates by spinning more bits past the drive head in a given span of time.

Acer and Seagate have joined hands to offer the latest Seagate Momentus 5400.6 hard drives for the Acer Aspire and TravelMate professional laptops.

Based on an areal density of 395 GB per square inch, the 500GB Momentus 5400.6 is said to be the highest capacity drive for a notebook. It also boasts to deliver a data transfer rate of 87 Mbps. It comes in a wide range of storage capacities such as 500GB, 320GB, 250GB, 160GB and 120GB with 8MB of cache.The 2.5-inch 5400-rpm drive supports capacity-boosting Perpendicular Magnetic Recording technology and comes with a powerful Serial ATA 3GB/second interface.

“Acer mobile PC customers want notebooks that deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to meet their needs for capacity, performance and durability. Seagate’s new 500GB Momentus hard drive enables Acer to deliver the richest multimedia experience and on-the-go robustness available for notebook computers,” commented Campbell Kan, vice president of the Mobile Computing Business Unit at Acer.

According to BanSeng Teh, vice president and managing director, Seagate Asia Pacific, “We are pleased that Acer is delivering cutting-edge mobile computers with 500GB notebook hard drives from Seagate, with more personal computer makers to follow. Seagate continues to advance hard drive capacity, speed and durability, and our latest 500GB 2.5-inch drives and 1.5 Terabyte 3.5-inch drives provide the highest capacities on the planet to meet the growing need to create, store, share and protect digital content.

In addition to high-speed and massive memory, the Momentus 5400.6 drives also concentrates on the security and protection of vital data. These robust hard drives are capable of enduring up to 1,000 Gs of non-operating shock and 350 Gs of operating shock.

Besides, these models come equipped with G-Force Protection - a free-fall sensor technology to guard drive from damage and data loss during drops.

Toshiba has announced that it is all set to begin mass production of a new 256GB SSD with MLC controller. The company will also be introducing a few small-sized Flash Modules for UMPCs and other mobile devices.

The high density NAND-flash-based SSD boasts a maximum read speed of 120MB/sec and maximum write speed of 70MB/sec. On the other hand, the small-sized Flash Modules, which support 8GB, 16 GB and 32 GB densities,are claimed to be capable of a maximum read speed of 80MB/sec and maximum write speed of 50MB/sec. Both drives utilize the SATA-2 interface.
Let us see if Toshiba can pleasantly surprise everyone with cheaper than expected prices.

As the very name of its producer (SimpleTech) says it, things are quite simple and fair with this new line of storage solutions, going by the name of DuoPro Drive. It's time to welcome three dual-hard-drive models that not only boast a whole lot of space but at the same time they come with a very extensive array of connectivity options sworn to integrate in pretty much any setting.
The SimpleTech DuoPro Drive units come in three flavors for now: 1TB, 1.5TB and the biggest one summing up 2TB.
Nevertheless, in case you still think that 2 TB is not enough for your current needs, you'll just have to wait one or two months more, because SimpleTech has already announced the 3TB version of the DuoPro Drive and it is expected to hit the shelves at the beginning of the winter season.Unlike many other large-capacity storage systems, the SimpleTech DuoPro Drive is not a network-attached-storage (NAS): we're talking about a completely local resource, easy to be installed with any system and, of course, most convenient to be carried from one office to another.
One of the coolest things about the new SimpleTech DuoPro Drive line is that it sports a rich palette of connectors, including the obvious USB 2.0,eSATA, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800, with a top transfer speed of around 3GB per second which is definitely no toy-feature. These storage systems can be arrayed in RAID 0 or RAID 1 and, in doing so, serve you as you consider best.
Thanks to their sturdy aluminium case, these drives can be safely stacked and thus make your workplace look cooler. The security lock slot and quiet fan operation complete the array of features for the SimpleTech DuoPro Drive. And if we add the very attractive pricing, things look even better: the 1TB retails for $280, the 1.5TB version costs $420 while the 2TB model will set you back $550. source : softpedia.com

Thanks to Toshiba, geeks will soon have reason to try and get on Santa's 'Good' list this holiday shopping season. The company's Storage Device Division (SDD) today announced what it claims is the world's first dual-platter 240GB 1.8-inch hard drive for use in portable media players, camcorders, and other gadgets. Toshiba also introduced a single-platter 120GB model.The two new PATA hard drives take areal density up to an impressive 344 gigabits-per-square-inch. Toshiba said the feat was made possible using its fourth-generation perpendicular magnetic recording technology, which bodes well for future devices utilizing the 1.8-inch form factor.

In addition to offering a higher capacity, Toshiba said its 240GB drive comes optimized for power performance and offers a 33 percent overall improvement in energy consumption efficiency when compared to the company's previous generation two-platter 160GB drive.

No word yet on pricing or specific availability, though Toshiba did say its "new 1.8-inch HDDs will be incorporated into CE and mobile PC products shipping this holiday season."

Confused by terms like SATA II, SATA Gen 2, and SATA 3Gb/s? You're not alone. With today's release (link in PDF format) of the PHY (physical layer) portion of the forthcoming SATA revision 3.0 specification (details here), SATA-IO, the trade association responsible for defining Serial ATA specifications, is trying hard to stomp out the many misidentifications of SATA specifications and features over the years.SATA revision 3.0 doubles the speed of the current 3Gb/s version, reaching transfer speeds of 6Gb/s. So, what should you call the newest member of the SATA specifications family? According to the SATA Naming Guidelines, here's what to do:

* The first reference in a document should read: "Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA Revision 3.0." Additional references can be to either "SATA Revision 3.0" or "SATA 6Gb/s."

SATA-IO is also serious about cleaning up the confusion surrounding current technologies and products as well:

* Don't use "SATA I" or "Gen 1": instead, use "SATA Revision 1.x" or "SATA first generation" or "SATA 1.5Gb/s."
* Likewise, "SATA II" or "SATA Gen 2" are also on the "don't talk that way" list, replaced by "SATA Revision 2.x" or "SATA second generation" or "SATA 3.0Gb/s."

The SATA Naming Guidelines page includes a useful table for helping computer users, marketers, technical writers (like yours truly) and others properly describe the three generations of SATA drives and devices. With SATA Revision 3.0 expecting to be ratified by the end of the year, here's hoping this initiative will help undo the years of confusion over SATA.

Look for the SATA Label...

SATA-IO is also working to make sure that SATA devices work properly, with today's launch of its certified logo program (link in PDF format). To learn more about SATA-IO, see the SATA-IO website.

Mystery Solved!

So, where did the term SATA II come from? SATA II was the original name of the current SATA International Organization (SATA-IO).

Buffalo’s 500GB DriveStation Combo 4 external drive is the fastest USB drive we’ve ever tested, and it even holds its own on an eSATA connection. That’s thanks to a propriety technology called TurboUSB that squeaks additional speeds out of the device. On Windows XP, a DriveStation connected with TurboUSB improved its synthetic read and write speeds by 20 percent (even though its burst speeds confused our benchmark) over a typical USB connection. The device’s real-world speeds weren’t as dramatic—a mere four percent increase—but it was an improvement nonetheless.We didn’t see any real-world performance improvement between the two modes in Windows Vista because TurboUSB is built into the operating system itself. We’d definitely use this device on XP, but it’s a wash with Vista.

The DriveStation comes with Memeo AutoBackup software and a full-disk security utility that conceals your drive under 128- or 256-bit AES encryption. The latter program’s lock and unlock shortcuts for the encryption mechanism are mislabeled, but we were more bothered that it accepted our password via USB but rejected it over eSATA.

Minus these quirks, the DriveStation is a fine external storage product. It’s not blazing a speed trail on its eSATA connection, but it stuffs the USB pipe.

You’ve probably read a bunch of posts on how to create hidden folders, secure folders, locked folders, etc, etc in Windows on many occasions! But have you ever tried to hide the entire partition of your hard disk. Then try this...
Policies\Explorer

Right-click on Explorer and choose New and then DWORD Value.
Name the new value NoDrives and then double click on it to open the properties dialog box. Click on Decimal for the Base unit.Type in one of the following values depending on that drive letter you want to hide.
A: 1
B: 2
C: 4
D: 8
E: 16
F: 32
G: 64
H: 128
I: 256
J: 512
K: 1024
L: 2048
M: 4096
N: 8192
O: 16384
P: 32768
Q: 65536
R: 131072
S: 262144
T: 524288
U: 1048576
V: 2097152
W: 4194304
X: 8388608
Y: 16777216
Z: 33554432
All: 67108863
If you want to hide drive E, just type in the value 16. The really cool thing about this trick is the fact that you can hide multiple drives by adding the numbers of the particular drives together. For example, if you want to hide drive E and drive G, you would type in the number 80, which is 64 + 16.

Restart your computer and your drive will now be hidden! Trying to hide your system drive (C) will not work as Windows has to use this drive to run correctly, so don’t store your secret files there!

When you want to get your drives back, change the value of NoDrives to 0 or simply delete the value altogether. Of course, having to do this everyday can be a pain, so if you’re up for it, you can try and write a registry file that will allow you to insert and delete the value by just double-clicking a file.

This trick also works for mapped drives, so if you want to hide mapped drives, you can do it this way (though it might just be easier to disconnect a mapped drive).

Lenovo has announced the launch of the IdeaPad Y710 notebook PC in India.
The laptop has a 17-inch screen with a 1440 x 900 resolution. It features the ATI Radeon Mobility HD 2600, 512MB of RAM, WLAN connectivity, a Dolby Home Theatre system, an optional Blu-ray DVD reader and a performance control switch with Turbo mode for maximum power, which includes CPU overclocking and Quiet mode for saving energy.

What's unique about the Y710 is a hard drive of up to 320 GB with a speed of 5400rpm that also houses a second, hot swap hard drive. Lenovo for the first time has introduced RAID function in the IdeaPad Y710. RAID function simultaneously uses both the hard disk drives to achieve greater levels of input/output performance and data reliability. It also maintains mirror copies of the data on different drives to ensure complete data security."There is significant excitement globally for this product given its top notch specs. The IdeaPad Y710 will revolutionalise the market with its hot-swappable twin 160 GB hard drive that gives the user 320 GB of storage space. With the option of a dedicated Game Zone keyboard for gamers, the IdeaPad Y710 is definitely a multimedia powerhouse!" said Amar Babu, Managing Director, Lenovo, India

Selected models of the Lenovo IdeaPad Y710 come with Game Zone functionality. Game Zone includes enlarged directional buttons for enhanced game play, four user-customizable buttons and a secondary display showing system information such as CPU speed.

The IdeaPad Y710 also features an integrated 1.3 megapixel camera and VeriFace face recognition software that recognizes a user's face for log-in and help eliminate the need to remember passwords.

The Y710 has a smooth, blue, metallic finish, embellished with halo lighting, accenting the top cover and backlit Lenovo logo.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y710 is available in all Lenovo authorized storefronts for Rs. 78,000.

Seagate will introduce its first SSD (solid-state drive) storage and 2TB hard drive next year, company CEO Bill Watkins said.The company's first SSD product will be targeted at enterprises that need speedy storage and can afford to pay a premium for the expensive drives. Seagate has no plans to release SSD drives for consumers as the high prices could deter them for the next few years, Watkins said in an interview.

The release date and price information for the 2TB hard drive were not available. Seagate released 1TB hard drives, the Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2, in the middle of 2007.

While there is no competition now between hard drives and SSDs, Seagate is thinking of going to SSDs in the long term to replace hard drives.

"SSDs are not price-competitive yet," Watkins said. The storage market is driven by cost per gigabyte, and though SSDs provide benefits such as power savings, they won't be in laptops in the next few years, Watkins said. Low-power consumption capabilities and high speeds make SSDs useful for laptopsbut the cost per gigabyte won't come down at least for the next few years, Watkins said.

"If the cost per gigabyte comes down to 10 cents, maybe," Seagate will focus on SSD storage for consumers, Watkins said.

A 128GB SSD costs $460, or $3.58 per gigabyte, compared to $60 for a 160GB hard drive, said Krishna Chander, senior analyst at iSuppli.

"It will take three to four years for SSDs to come to parity with hard drives," on price and reliability, Chander said.

Besides price, other issues will keep SSDs from the consumer space, Watkins said.

Users seek fat storage to carry data and hard drives can store terabytes of data, something SSDs can't do, Watkins said. SSDs also have write issues, with cells in the drives deteriorating quickly and reducing storage capacity, a general problem that plagues flash drives.

Even enterprise adoption of SSDs could be slow, Watkins said. "People are still trying to get tape out of the enterprise," Watkins said.

Seagate's SSD would be mainly for datacenters that rely on processing data quickly, like indexing servers or search servers, that can temporarily store data until it is ultimately moved to permanent storage on hard drives or tape. Solid-state drives can move data up to 10 times quicker than hard drives, but data has to ultimately be moved to larger and more reliable storage, Watkins said.

The SSD drive could also be useful for datacenters looking to save on energy consumption and costs.

Seagate is taking a wait-and-see approach to SSDs, similar to the company's approach to optical storage. Seagate acquired optical-storage company Quinta in 1997 when everyone thought optical storage would replace hard drives, Watkins said. Seagate wasn't sure how far rotating media technology would stretch, but the cost per gigabyte fell, and hard drives overtook optical drive technology.

Selling hard drives will remain Seagate's focus for now, but it will make sure the SSD component is available to customers, Watkins said. The company is internally researching and developing SSD storage.

The company already offers hybrid drives such as the Momentus that combine NAND flash storage with hard drives to reduce power consumption and improve boot times.

Seagate has been making noise in the SSD market for a year now, but it has been mostly vaporware, iSuppli analyst Chander said. Seagate needs to get a leg up over its competition by getting into the game early and packaging SSDs in volume.

"They haven't stretched out. They are losing an opportunity. The reality is no matter what, in the next three to five years SSDs are going to come out," Chander said.

Entering the SSD market early could give Seagate an advantage over its major competitor, Western Digital, which is too deeply lost in the hard drive market to make its presence felt in the SSD market, Chander said.