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Samsung's PCIe 4.0 SSDs come in a range of new form factors
Intel’s “ruler” form factor for NVMe server SSDs once looked radical, but it’s now become mainstream. As evidence, Samsung just introduced a new line of ultra-fast PCIe Gen 4 drives derived from Intel’s original design.
Box makes a deal to add more global servers
I find it a little hard to believe that until now, Box (formerly Box.net) didn't have any servers running outside the US. But apparently that was the case, as the company has just made a deal with Equinix to host six data centers around the world, including places such as Amsterdam, Sydney and Tokyo. Putting new servers up in those countries should help Box users. Equinix says it will boost performance up to 60 percent in some places. Given how big Box has become, the company just expanded free storage for its users again, I'm surprised there wasn't a plan in place. But the deal's been made, so if you're an international Box user, go ahead and benefit from it.
Victorinox offers refunds for secure USB drives in light of discontinued software updates
Software support and security certificates are coming to an end for Victorinox's line of secure USB drives, but the firm announced on Facebook that it's offering customers full refunds until December 31 if they'd like to return their products in light of the developments. In order to avoid losing data, owners of the flash drives should perform a backup before the encryption application meets its untimely end on September 15th. However, files stored on non-encrypted areas of the device will remain accessible without further action. The Slim, Secure and Presentation Master storage sticks can still be used as run-of-the-mill thumb drives after the cut-off date, but the Swiss Army Knife maker's application will no longer be able to scramble or unscramble their contents.
Crucial outs v4 SSD for solid-state storage on a budget
Solid-state drives cost just a fraction of what they did a few years ago, but with prices that can still exceed $1,000, you could hardly label them as cheap. Crucial still aims to put solid-state storage within reach of those on a budget, however, releasing its 2.5-inch v4 drive with pricing that starts at $50. That entry-level model will net you just 32 gigs of storage -- hardly a lust-worthy sum -- but the series is also available in configurations of 64GB ($70), 128GB ($100) and 256GB ($190), offering read speeds of up to 230 MB/s and write speeds of up to 190 MB/s with SATA 2-capable desktops and laptops. The v4 joins Crucial's higher-end m4, which offers much speedier performance and Ultrabook-friendly configurations to boot. You'll find full details in the PR after the break.
Salt enables six times the storage capacity for snail-unfriendly hard drives
Salt: sure, you might use it to cure meats for your latest solar-powered circumnavigation. But hold onto your kippers, Magellan, because Singaporean scientists have found that sodium chloride -- ordinary table salt! -- can also dramatically increase storage capacity. You see, typical hard drives have randomly-arranged magnetic grains, which allow data density of about 0.5 terabit per square inch. But a high-resolution e-beam lithography process, aided by our good friend NaCl, arranges the grains in a tighter, more orderly fashion, upping the density to 3.3 terabits per square inch. Called nanopatterning, this technique enables a 1TB drive to hold 6TB without additional platters; it also works with current manufacturing technology, meaning no expensive upgrades. If that's got you dreaming of a higher-capacity future, hit the source link for more glorious technical details. We'll warn you, though: the pictures of luscious, bee-stung lips stop here.
Pogoplug Mobile shares media with iOS
Pogoplug, maker of a popular line of remote storage solutions, has introduced Pogoplug Mobile, a remote storage device that lets you access your media using your iOS and Android device. The device connects to a USB hard drive or an SD card and uses your home network to serve up the content of that drive. The mobile device can access these files through a web interface (my.pogoplug.com) or a native application available in the App Store or Android market. You can stream videos, listen to your music collection or view your photos while on the go. Pogoplug Mobile is available for pre-order on Pogoplug's website. It's expected to arrive on October 1 for $80. [Via Electronista]
Pogoplug Mobile hands-on
The cloud is huge (well, infinite, really), and everybody wants their piece. Pogoplug has been a player since the beginning, albeit with a somewhat convoluted setup process, so it's no surprise that the drive-to-web plug appliance company is ready to push out a smartphone-friendly version. Pogoplug Mobile, as it's to be known, brings much of its big brother's functionality (you won't be able to "mount" remote drives) to smartphones, tablets, and dedicated desktop apps. Want to load some photos from your 4 terabyte hard drive in San Fran while you're on the subway in Tokyo? Simply launch an app, sign in with the username and password you registered during the seconds-long setup process, and you're on your way. You can even email photos (links to images on your remote drive -- you won't be using data), post them to social networking sites, or transfer new ones that you shot with the phone. The concept is certainly familiar, but we got to take a look at Pogoplug's interpretation at IFA in Berlin. Jump past the break to see what we thought.%Gallery-132122%
Intel to owners of failed SSD 320s: we're 'aware of the customer sightings'
We can imagine few things more horrible than booting up your new 600GB SSD and seeing a reported capacity of 8MB. That's exactly the situation reported by users of Intel's SSD 320 series for over a month on the company's support forums, as well as on Amazon reviews. One disappointed (to say the least) user describes that very scenario, and he's not alone. According to several forum members, the problem seems firmware related and shouldn't require a recall, while Intel says it's "aware of the customer sightings." Short on meaningful details, the statement promises an update is coming with more information -- bite-sized consolation for the owners of byte-sized drives.
Official Xbox 360 USB drives priced by GameStop
GameStop has leaked information about those official Xbox 360 USB hard drives we've heard about (first rumored and then officially), and they ain't cheap. According to the confusingly similar GameSpot (who saw the prices temporarily listed on GameStop's website), there will be both 8GB and 16GB drives available, the smaller for $39.99 and the larger for $69.99. According to Major Nelson, we'll see them in stores in May. Of course, the system update will also allow you to use any USB drive (not just the official Xbox-branded ones), but before you get visions of 1TB of storage plugged into your Xbox, remember that there's a 16GB limit on each of two possible devices, so you can have only 32GB total. Fortunately, an unofficial 16GB flash drive is about half of Microsoft's price over on Newegg. You may have to tweak things a little bit, as the official drives are meant to be "plug and play," but it can't be that complicated. The GameStop listing is down for now, but we'll see these drives officially in just over a month or so anyway. [via Engadget]
Pogoplug: Your data, wherever you are
When word about the Pogoplug hit TUAW central, we debated to see who would luck out and and cover the device. Apart from a few cuts and bruises, nearly all of which will mend in a matter of weeks if the doctors are to be believed, I won. The past few days, I've had the pleasure of road testing a unit. And it's awesome. The Pogoplug offers a USB NAS adapter, i.e. a network-attached storage system, that gives you network access to your data from home and on the road. With NAS you can use common protocols like AFP and SMB to connect to a remote disk. And you can do so easily. That's a big win, because choosing and setting up these remote devices has been a deal killer for many otherwise interested people. As Brad Dietrich, Pogoplug's CTO, told TUAW, "[Until now], the state of home networking has been too complicated and geeky for most people." Pogoplug provides a simple solution. What Pogoplug brings to the party is a remarkable ease of use that crosses past any issues of firewalls and port setup and delivers remote storage to normal (i.e. read "non-geek") humans. It transforms remote file access into a consumer device. And best of all, it provides this for just $99.
Pogoplug review
When we first caught wind of the Pogoplug -- a small box that essentially lets you turn any USB hard drive (and drives only) into a network device -- we were pretty darn excited. Having a house full of disparate storage boxes and no easy way to connect to them made the prospect of the 'plug seem very enticing. Not only does the Pogoplug make your drive accessible via your PC (with accompanying software), but it -- we think more importantly -- makes the drive accessible via a web front-end and an iPhone app. We finally had a chance to break one of these out and see how it performs, and our findings are below.
STEC announces "cheap" 32GB to 512GB MLC NAND-based SSDs
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 launches Little Disk line and portable DVD+RW drive
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 HechtRead -- LaCie Ships Portable DVD±RW Drive with LightScribe, Design by Sam Hecht
Terminal Tip: Showing and Hiding Disks using Developer tools
In a couple of recent posts, I showed you how to how to hide drives using Finder preferences and selectively show some of them using aliases. I received a number of emails looking for more elegant solutions i.e. avoiding the look of aliases and their won't-sort-properly-like-a-real-drive behavior. A few readers also asked how to hide their iDisks, which didn't respond to the preferences the same way that hard drives did. First let me note that iDisks aren't seen by Finder as normal hard drive volumes or, as you might expect, as connected servers. Instead, iDisks are controlled by the CDs, DVDs, and iPods preference--the same preference that shows and hides attached thumb drives and memory card readers. As for the more elegant volume-by-volume solution, that lies in the realm of Terminal and the command-line developer tool SetFile. You can join the Apple Developer Connection and gain access to the developer tools with a Free ADC Online Membership. After installing the dev tools, you'll find SetFile in the /Developer/Tools folder. To hide a volume, use the -a V flag with SetFile and then restart Finder. This will hide the iDisk, even in Sync mode % /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/iDisk/% killall "Finder"% To bring the volume back, use -a v instead. (Notice the lower case "v".) % /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a v /Volumes/iDisk/% killall "Finder"%
Bring 'My Computer' to Mac OS X's desktop
Erica just touched on Mac OS X's ability to selectively hide drives form the desktop via the Finder's preferences, but what if you still want access to those drives? Maybe you're a neat freak when it comes to your desktop, or maybe you're a recent Windows switcher who misses the comforts of My Computer. Either way, an app simply called My Computer might very well do the trick for you, as it really lives up to its name. Included with the app are some brief instructions that basically parallel Erica's post, teaching you how to use the Finder's preferences to remove your drives from the desktop. After that you can simply move My Computer.app into place (which really doesn't do much more than using cmd-shift-c to get to the same display of drives) and enjoy your home away from home, or simply what some might consider a cleaner desktop. While the choice for the app icon is a bit outdated, that can be rectified with a simple Get Info command (cmd-i) on the icon and choosing something new, perhaps from the endless archives at The Iconfactory.
Seagate announces bevy of new drives
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]
Widget Watch: iStat pro and nano updated
Two of my favorite system monitor widgets have been updated: iStat pro 2.3 and iStat nano 1.5. The main new additions are drive filtering, as in: CDs, DVDs and .DMGs will no longer appear in the drive list, and support has been included for MacBook Pro batteries. Unfortunately, it looks like the temp and fan monitors don't support the MacBook Pros just yet.Both of these widgets are available from iSlayer.net, apparently for free, as I can't even find a donation link. Also: their download links do point to these new versions, so don't pay any attention to the versions listed on their site, as it seems they haven't updated it to reflect these new additions just yet.
Fujitsu plans to boost drive capacity with advanced lubricants
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.
Nintendo Revolution to have SD slot and USB for external drives
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]
