Everyone wants to be packing some of that sweet flash memory in their notebooks these days, but not everyone wants to shell out such high prices for such relatively measly capacities. Well along comes Santa Ana-based STEC Inc. with what it claims to be a breakthrough NAND technology that will allegedly slash the price of solid state drives down to just $2/GB within two years; specifically, the company says it has successfully leveraged so-called multi-level cell-based (MLC) NAND into SSDs with 90MB/s read / 60MB/s write speeds -- good enough to exceed platter-based hard drive performance at prices supposedly half of what they are today. STEC is currently shipping manufacturing samples between 32GB and an impressive 512GB (in a 2.5-inch form factor; the largest 1.8-inch drive is 128GB), although it remains to be seen how much of those savings will be passed along to the consumer when these eventually come to market.

LaCie, always known to drop a fresh drive on us during our extreme times of need, has once again stepped up to the plate with a new line of petite storage options aimed at "people on the go" and other likeminded busibodies. The company's new "Little Disk" line was designed by the "award winning" Sam Hecht, and comes in 1.8- or 2.5-inch varieties, ranging from 30GB to 250GB, all with retractable, USB 2.0 connectors. Mr. Hecht also oversaw the creation of LaCie's other small offering, a portable DVD+RW drive with LightScribe technology (allowing you to etch custom labels into discs), that comes in both USB 2.0 and Firewire varieties. The hard drives and optical drives are available now, ranging from $99.99 to $119.99 for the disks, and $99.99 to $149.99 for the DVD writers.

[Via PhotographyBLOG]

Read -- LaCie Announces the New Little Disk Family of Mobile Drives, Design by Sam Hecht
Read -- LaCie Ships Portable DVD±RW Drive with LightScribe, Design by Sam Hecht

Seagate's not holding out on us today, people. They've launched a whole slew of new drives, such as: the Momentus 5400 PSD (Power-Saving Drive), a 5,400RPM drive with 256MB non-volatile memory -- also known as a hybrid drive (which we've been hearing oh so much about); the Momentus 5400.2 FDE, their latest mobile drive, now with full disc AES encryption; the Momentus 5400.3, the largest yet laptop drive with 160GB of storage space on those tiny 2.5-inch platters; the Momentus 7200.2, a 160GB 7,200RPM 2.5-inch drive; the Savvio 10K.2 146GB 10k RPM 2.5-inch drive (small enough for a laptop, designed for a blade server); the ST18 1.8-inch 60GB perpendicular media-device drive; and, of course, a new 8GB Pocket Drive. Expect those to trickle out throughout the year, but we'll be paying especially close attention to our 160GB laptop drive (or, preferably, the 200GB Toshiba), oh yes we will.

[Via TG Daily]

It may not have the same "wow" factor as advances such as holographic storage or perpendicular recording (and probably doesn't have a funky flash video showing off its features), but Fujitsu has plans to increase hard drive capacity using advanced lubricants. The idea seems fairly simple: if you can reduce the space between the read/write head and the platter, you can squeeze more data into a smaller space. The problem is, there's only so close the head can get to the drive without causing damage. However, as Fujitsu sees it, new lubricants could eliminate such concerns, allowing the head to float a mere 2 nanometers above the drive, compared with 10 nm as is typical with current drives. While Fujitsu is being coy about specifics, the company boasts that the technology could allow hard drives with a capacity of 1 terabit per square inch by 2010. That would double the density offered by InPhase's holographic drives, which currently hold a record at a half-terabit per inch. So, as long as Fujitsu's lubrication solution doesn't involve, say, submerging your PC's innards in a tank of vegetable oil, we're ready for it.

If, like us, you were curious as to how Nintendo's expectedly hard drive-free Revolution was going to be able to compete with Sony's and Microsoft's drive-toting next-gen consoles, let your fears be allayed. In a recent CNN Money interview with Iwata-san, the N-man divulged that the Rev would come with an SD slot (which we'd heard) to complement its 512MB internal flash memory (for, you know, downloading games n' stuff), but that it'd also have USB ports for external storage solutions, like flash drives and hard drives. That's not going to be a huge boon if the Rev isn't going to have crazy media features like the 360 has and the PS3 is expected to, but it's still nice to know we're not gonna be left in the lurch on the storage thing.

[Via Joystiq and PSFK]