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(Credit: SanDisk)

Flash-memory manufacturer SanDisk announced Tuesday an SDHC card aimed at new Netbook owners disappointed with the skimpy internal storage the micro laptops may come with. On the surface--in the middle and on the bottom, too--it seems SanDisk took a bunch of old, slow Class 2 8GB and 16GB SDHC cards, rebranded them as Netbook SDHC Cards, and doubled the price of the cards to $44.99 and $88.99, respectively; the street prices are a little lower.

On the product page, SanDisk points out that this is a fast way to add more lightweight storage for videos, music, and photos that is also "hidden out-of-sight" since it'll be jammed into your Netbook's card slot. I guess this is good if you don't want to use a thumb drive or external hard drive, but it's also something that can be done with any SDHC card. (I wouldn't want personal photos and videos hanging out unprotected on removable storage regardless of type, but maybe that's just me.)

The site also says you're able to install and run software directly from the cards. This I'm not sure you can do with any SDHC card, but I'm guessing you can since if it were special, SanDisk wouldn't have buried the feature on the list of obvious things you can do with removable memory. (If anyone knows for sure, please leave a comment.)

A quick search turns up plenty of less expensive, faster SDHC cards from quality manufacturers, so there is no reason to buy these cards. I keep thinking I'm missing something here. (Someone please tell me I'm missing something here?!?)

(Credit: SanDisk)

The Computex trade show, which opens Tuesday in Taipei, Taiwan, could also be known as Netbook-pallooza. It seems as if every tech company has something related to the rapidly growing category of mini-notebooks to announce there.

SanDisk is one of them, and though the company doesn't make a Netbook, it is eager to hitch its wagon to this PC trend. On Monday afternoon, the company is preparing to launch two new Netbook-centric products at the show: an SD card sold specifically for Netbooks, and its second-generation pico SSD, or PSSD.

The SD card will be available in storage capacities of 8GB and 16GB. SanDisk went with the SD specification because "95 percent of Netbooks have an SD card slot," and this way portable storage wouldn't take up one of the few USB ports the devices usually have, senior product manager Susan Park said.

It's also another way to make Netbooks even less expensive that they already are, according to Don Barnetson, SanDisk's senior director of marketing, by making additional storage portable instead of increasing the size of a hard drive or solid-state drive inside the machine itself.

And when you do that, more and more mobile carriers will start offering Netbooks for sale subsidized by wireless contracts, bringing the cost to consumers down.

"Netbooks with ARM processors, coupled with Linux, and SSDs, could get to a $199 price point, which could be free with a subscription," he said. Barnetson thinks this will start to happen more frequently in the U.S. next year.

Once carriers are subsidizing Netbooks for free or almost free, then it would be in those carriers' interest to upsell Netbook buyers on things like SD cards for expandable storage, and other add-ons.

SanDisk also officially announced the availability of its PSSD, first announced at CES in January, to its original equipment manufacturing partners. SanDisk declined to name who would be offering its PSSD drive in new notebooks at this time.

While it's now easy to get a desktop with a terabyte or more of storage, it's still pretty hard to find a laptop with even 300GB. That's why I am very impressed with the Portege R600-ST4203 laptop that Toshiba announced Thursday.

The Portege R600-ST4203 is one of world's first laptops with 512GB of storage and it's definitely the first with that much storage in the form of a solid-state drive (SSD). Until now, most SSDs for laptops have remained in the 32GB to 128GB capacity range.

A Protege R600 laptop from Toshiba.

(Credit: CNET)

The Portege R600-ST4203 is the newest model in Toshiba's Portege R600 ultraportable series. It weighs just 2.4 pounds and is only 0.77 inch thin, which is about as thin as the Macbook Air. It has a durable, shock-absorbing chassis, and a 12.1-inch wide-screen LED display. The laptop includes Windows Vista Business and is powered by Intel's Ultra Low Voltage Core 2 Duo SU94005 processor.

The SSD used in the Portege R600-ST4203 is Toshiba's newest second-generation SSD, which features SATA standard and multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash memory technology. The MLC NAND technology helps increase the density of the SSD, thus allowing more storage space. However, this means it is not the fastest SSD you can find. High-speed SSDs normally use single-level cell NANDs, like the Intel X-25E Extreme does. Nonetheless, Toshiba's 512GB SSD will likely be faster than traditional 5400rpm hard drives found in most notebooks.

Toshiba expects the new machine to provide customers with an enhanced level of protection, portability, reliability, and fast data access. The company claims that the adoption of this 512GB solid-state technology enables the user to enjoy shorter boot times, faster application loading, and access times that are 300 percent faster than 128GB or smaller SSDs.

While those claims still need to be verified, one thing is for sure: the new laptop isn't cheap. It's going to be available for purchase early next month exclusively on Toshiba's Web site for an estimated $3,500.

Set it and forget it.

(Credit: Clickfree)

Clickfree just announced its new Traveler external hard drive that uses the same file-based transfer software we reviewed in the Clickfree Portable Backup Drive back in January. The difference is that this device uses solid-state technology for faster transfers and increased durability.

Clickfree stresses that its file-based software is different from other backup solutions that only create an image of the host computer onto their drives. During this "total backup," the drive will restore operating systems and applications, but also winds up restoring viruses, malware, and corrupt files.

Clickfree's automatic backup software only restores your "irreplaceable data," including personal photos, music, video, documents, e-mails, etc...the restore wizard bundled with the drive puts these files back into their original location after a crash, and you can even backup NAS, DVDs, and other external drives.

Smaller is indeed better.

(Credit: Clickfree)

Best of all, the drive uses solid-state technology, so it's much smaller than a normal hard drive, about the size of a hotel keycard. Unfortunately, solid-state prices aren't nearly as cheap as disk-based drives, so you're paying a premium for the speed and size benefits.

The Clickfree Traveler Drive is available now in 16GB ($80), 32GB ($150), and 64GB ($250) capacities. We currently have a 32GB model in the labs, so look for an in-depth review coming next week.

(Credit: RipNAS)

RipNAS announced their latest network attached storage devices this week--the Statement series--in solid-state drive and hard-disk drive formats. The RipNAS Statement is purported as the first CD ripping NAS device to come equipped with the former.

Based on the Windows Home Server OS and housed in a silver aluminum casing (designed to eliminate noise pollution), the Statement is capable of CD ripping, media streaming, and networked storage on either the 500GB SSD configuration (2 x 250GB SSDs) or the 3TB HDD configuration (2 x 1.5TB HDDs). The entire case measures 10 x 43 x 38 cm and is powered by a dual-core Atom CPU, has 2GBs of memory, and 4 USB ports.

It looks like the UK will get first dibs on the RipNAS Statement SSD and HDD for now, but no pricing information has been announced, nor the date it will be available in the U.S.

You've heard that solid-state drives, such as the Intel X-25M, are significantly faster than traditional hard drives. However, they are still nowhere near as fast as the DDRdrive X1 introduced on Monday.

The DDRdrive X1

(Credit: DDRdrive)

This is the first storage device I've seen that comes in the form of an expansion card. At a glance, it looks very much like a video card or a modem and it is compatible with any PCIe expansion slot.

Unlike other SSDs that use a flash memory called NAND, the X1 uses two types of memory: NAND and DRAM. The latter is commonly used as system memory. DRAM (or RAM in generally) is very fast; however, information stored in RAM is volatile and is destroyed when the computer is powered off. This is where the NAND part of the X1 comes into play by retaining the information when the computer is not in operation.

The drive has the same amount of DRAM as it has of NAND, which is only 4GB. This combination is designed for optimum input/output operations per second and, according to DDRdrive, the X1 indeed offers superfast performance and can be backed up or restored in its entirety in less than a minute.

The fact that you can get thumbdrives with 8GB or more might seem to lessen the appeal of the 4GB X1. The drive, however, is made for special applications such as databases or those that require performance above all else.

Somebody must really need the performance to be willing to buy the X1. With a price of almost $1,500, it has by far the highest dollar-per-gigabyte figure I've seen: more than $370. In the case of the Intel X-25M or most other SSDs currently on the market, you'll pay only about $4 per gigabyte of storage.

To DDRdrive's credit, the X1 does come with a five-year warranty and is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions.

Last December, I got to travel to Dell's facilities in Texas for the first time, where I joined a group of other tech journalists for a preview of Dell's CES lineup. Among the tech writers was Anand Lal Shimpi, founder of the tech-enthusiast site Anandtech.com. We were at Dell for only a day, and that night at dinner Anand and I got to talking about solid-state hard drives, particularly why we saw such a difference between Intel's X-25M and a competing drive from Patriot.

Anandtech looks deep into the heart of SSDs.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

With the aid of a handful of multicolored sugar packets, Anand put on a clinic describing the process by which solid-state hard drives manage data reads and writes. He had the attention of every journalist at the table.

At the end of the lesson, Anand mentioned an investigation he had brewing into the long-term degradation of solid-state drive performance. With all the excitement about solid-state drives, particularly in the Macbook Air, and Dell's new Adamo, that's a disheartening question to have to ask. Intel's solid-state drives, in particular, have been well-received, but at $349 for an 80GB model, they're also amazingly expensive compared with standard-platter hard drives, even after a recent price drop.

I admit I haven't had a chance to read the whole article yet, but Anand posted the results of his investigation Wednesday.

If you're familiar with Anandtech, you know it's not uncommon for a graphics card review to hit 12 pages or more. Anand's SSD article clocks in at a cool 31. Now that our Mac Pro review is done (posting soon, copy edit-willing) I intend to tuck into the story in full, but no less than Linus Torvalds has already come out in praise of Anand's work. If you have any interest in SSD technology, I suggest you get comfortable and check out what Anand has to say.

(Credit: Transcend)

Transcend, the company that introduced a solid-state-drive-based external drive the other day, on Thursday unveiled its 192GB Solid State Drive.

Despite the mundane name, the new drive is equipped with NAND flash memory and offers up to 192GB of storage, a fast sustained read performance of up to 150MBps, and up to a 90MBps write performance, according to Transcend. Its latency is rated at 0.2 milliseconds, which is practically instant.

It's a 2.5-inch SATAII drive--currently the most popular interface--and is compatible with most notebook computers or any other devices that use this storage standard.

Transcend's new SSD also has integrated Error Correction Code technology, mostly found in memory for servers, that helps ensure accurate data transfer and built-in wear leveling technology designed to give the drive long storage lifespan and reliability.

The drive will be available later next week with capacities ranging from 8GB to 192GB. It also comes in an IDE version. All drives come with a two-year warranty. The 192GB SATAII version is estimated to cost $454.

(Credit: Transcend)

If you like your thumb drive for the durability, you'll like what Transcend introduced on Monday. It's a new breed of compact external storage device that's based on 1.8-inch solid state drives (SSDs), the SSD18M.

Unlike traditional external storage devices that are based on hard-disk drives, the SSD18M is made of reliable NAND flash memory that contains no moving parts. This eliminates the possibility of mechanical failure due to shock or vibration and also provides substantial weight savings and reduced power consumption.

The new drive features both both eSATA and USB2.0 interface options. This means when portability is not required, people can use the eSATA interface, which requires a separate power adapter, to take advantage of the high throughput speeds of up to 90Mbps in reading and 50Mbps writing.

The SSD18M sports a stylish gloss diamond pattern fascia and measures only 3.1 inches by 1.2 inches by .5 inch and weighs merely 1.8 ounces. It comes in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities.

Transcend backs the new drive with a two-year warranty and a comprehensive global service network. The SSD18M is available for purchase later this week and costs $285 for the 128GB version. The 64GB and 32GB versions cost $169 and $99, respectively.