storage

Here's the thing about solid state drives. Sure they're expensive, but they're also small enough to fit snugly in your significant other's Christmas stocking. Intel is hoping you'll take that route this holiday shopping season, and to help nudge you in the right direction, the chip maker has gone and lowered prices on its SSD lineup.

The X25-M 80GB now runs $199, while the 160GB derivative sells for $415. If neither of those floats your boat, Intel also released a new capacity X25-M, a 120GB version for $249.

SanDisk today announced its smallest USB flash drive ever, the Cruzer Blade. Sure, it's not THE smallest on the market, but it's as tiny as SanDisk currently goes, which is "about the size of a paper clip and weighs approximately the same as a penny." At that size, you shouldn't have any trouble swallowing the drive should a team of Ninjas be lurking around the corner in hopes of stealing your secret data (Protip: swallowing USB flash drives is a really bad idea, and possibly fatal).

The new Cruzer Blade comes in capacities ranging from 2GB ($15) to 16GB ($78) and is available now in both the U.S. and Canada. SanDisk backs its drives with a 2-year warranty. source

"After a few weeks of rumours, Seagate’s senior product manager Barbara Craig has confirmed to Thinq that 'we are announcing a 3TB drive later this year,' but the move to 3TB of storage space apparently involves a lot more work than simply upping the areal density." source

"Documentation obtained by Joystiq – and subsequently confirmed with two separate sources – reveals that "USB Mass Storage Device Support on Xbox 360" will soon be a reality. The document, authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, states that due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow consumers to save and load game data from USB devices. The update is purportedly coming in Spring 2010.

Once the update occurs, Xbox 360 owners will be able to download Xbox Live Arcade games, Xbox Live Indie games, Games on Demand, DLC and Title Updates to the storage device. " source

"If you're looking for unhindered speed, Crucial's RealSSD™ C300 is here! The new 2.5-inch Crucial RealSSD C300 drive offers mobile and desktop users scorching-fast read speeds of up to 355MB/s. And because it has no moving parts, you will also enjoy a quieter, cooler, and more durable storage solution — and a better alternative to a traditional notebook hard drive. Designed with high-speed synchronous MLC NAND, advanced controller technology, optimized NAND management, and the new SATA 6Gb/s interface, these drives dramatically improve data transfers for bandwidth-demanding applications like audio and video." source

" SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced that it has begun shipping the 64 gigabyte (GB)1 SanDisk Ultra® SDXC™ card, the company's highest capacity SD™ card ever. With its 64GB capacity, up to 15MB/sec read speed2 and Class 4 speed rating, the new card is ideal for capturing and storing massive 1080p High-Definition video files and then transferring them quickly to a computer.

SDXC cards are based on the new SD 3.0 specification, which makes it possible to manufacture cards with storage capacity up to 2 terabytes (TB)3. The SDXC card's exFAT file structure helps consumers record long-duration HD videos. The 64GB SanDisk Ultra SDXC card can store more than eight hours of such video with recording speed of 9 Mbps (HD standard)." source

"Intel has generally been mainly known for its central processing units, as its storage products have not exactly been a significant part of the company's marketing plans over the years. Even so, however, the Santa Clara chip maker seems rather aggressive in its development of solid state drives, with one of the more recent advancements in this area being the 25nm NAND developed jointly with Micron. A more recent report suggests that the company will be putting special emphasis on further improving SSDs, with plans even supposedly including 400GB and 600GB models by the end of the year.

Intel is supposedly planning on updating its enterprise-class SSD line with what is dubbed the Lyndonville family. These will either complement or replace the existing 32GB and 64GB X25-E SSDs with 100GB, 200GB and 400GB models. This lineup is scheduled for the fourth quarter of the ongoing year and" source

"Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the release of DataTraveler® 310, the first 256GB USB Flash drive in the United States. The DataTraveler 310 replaces the 256GB DataTraveler 300, released in July 2009 to the Asia/Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa regions.

'We saw an opportunity to push the capacity envelope for USB Flash drives in the marketplace. Customer feedback and our research determined that this is a great solution for designers, engineers and architects who have a need to easily store and transport large data files,' said Andrew Ewing, USB business manager, Kingston®. 'For the enthusiast who wants easy access to their full media library, the DataTraveler 310 can store up to 365 CDs, 54 DVDs or 51,000 images*. This device makes an entire collection of data easily portable.'

The DataTraveler 310 features Password Traveler software, which allows the user to create and access a password-protected privacy zone. The secure area of the drive can account for up to 90 percent of the drive’s capacity and does not require administrator rights. " source

"Corsair has announced two new series in its SSD lineup, the Nova and Reactor. The Nova will be available in 64 and 128GB capacities, while the Reactor series will be available in 60 and 120GB capacities.

The 2.5-inch Nova series is most likely based on the quite popular Indilinx Barefoot controller, uses MLC NAND chips and has 64MB of cache. The Nova series can reach read speeds of up to 215MB/s on both the V128 and V64, while writing speeds are 130MB/s for the V64 drive and 195MB/s for the bigger V128.

The Reactor series is a bit more serious as these drives have a 128MB cache and read/write speeds of up to 250/110 MB/s for the 60GB model and 250/170 MB/s for the 120GB model. In addition to the regular SATA 3.0Gbps interface, the Reactor series also features a mini USB as well. Unfortunately, the controller for the Reactor series remains a mystery but we are sure that it will tip up sooner or later. " source