disk

SanDisk sees flash memory maxing out during the next decade and believes 3D technology is the answer.

Flash memory disk supplier SanDisk said this week that it is looking beyond flash memory because of anticipated limitations. SanDisk intends to tap into 3D read-write memory technology it acquired with the purchase of Matrix Semiconductor back in 2005.

3D memory chips can store more data vertically, allowing greater densities. While conventional integrated circuits put all active circuitry on the silicon substrate, SanDisk's 3D architecture deposits multiple layers of active memory elements so that circuitry extends vertically as well.

Speaking at this week's second-quarter earnings conference call, Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk president and chief operating officer, said his company is "developing the 3D read/write memory that we believe will replace NAND flash sometime in the next decade when it can no longer be economically scaled."

This follows a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure earlier in the quarter covering an agreement that SanDisk signed with Toshiba to collaborate on the development of rewriteable 3D memory. SanDisk and Toshiba "will jointly perform research and development" on 3D memory, the companies said in the disclosure.

SanDisk has made progress with the technology since it acquired Matrix, according to Chairman and CEO Eli Harari, speaking earlier this week duing the earnings conference call. "SanDisk has been making good, steady progress since our acquisition three years ago of Matrix Semiconductor...We currently have more than 200 issued patents that cover key elements of 3D rewritable memory technology," Harari said.

Based on these statements and its collaboration with Toshiba, SanDisk believes 3D memory, though challenging, is a viable successor to flash. Commercialization presents "significant challenges" but the "effort is worth the prize as 3D memory is a potential game changer," Harari said. The technology would "achieve the cost structure to disrupt hard disk drive in the coming decade," he said.… Read more

Despite industry leader Seagate's poor showing earlier this year, analysts say there's still plenty of demand for hard disk drives.

In the first quarter of 2008, HDD vendors shipped 137 million drives, which is 21 percent higher than the same quarter the year before, according to iSuppli, a market research company which keeps track of the industry. Those drives are primarily being snapped inside notebook PCs, other portable devices, desktops, and external drives.

Things weren't looking so good when Seagate reported its earnings in April, and revenue was below what analysts were expecting. But the demand for … Read more

Canon today unveiled two new AVCHD camcorder models that will be available in Japan in September for the Japanese equivalent of about $1,300. The iVis models--the overseas version of the Vixia brand--will include an addition to the HF line of flash-based camcorders and a replacement for the HG10 hard-disk based unit.

The HF11 is a higher-end line mate for the popular HF10; it adds a higher bit-rate 24Mbps recording mode and an increase to 32GB built-in flash memory, up from 16GB. The hard-disk-based HG21 has the same innards as the HF10/11 and gets a boost to the 12x … Read more

In the time of triplicates, shredders and burn cans were SOP for destroying records at embassies and military installations. Today, information stored on hard disk drives far forward on the battlefield demand other methods.

Fujitsu has come up with a way to dispose of your brigade's database of informers and cash payoffs in a hurry. The Fujitsu ME-P3M emergency degausser combines state of the art with a good ole' hand crank, allowing a drive to be wiped clean in 10 to 20 seconds--even absent electrical power, according to Jim Preasmyer, business development manager, Fujitsu Computer Products of America (click here for PDF).… Read more

Dell will sell you a 128GB solid state drive for an unprecedented $649. But wait. An IDC report claims the performance gap between solid state drives and lower-cost high-performance hard disk drives is not that significant at the system level.

Solid state drives are attracting more scrutiny as they increase in capacity and decrease in price. (Dell's $649 drive is a radical price drop since many drives with half the capacity still sell for more than $700.)

Solid state drives (SSDs) are considered to be generally more power efficient, faster, and in some respects more reliable than hard disk … Read more

Last week, Hitachi announced its 7K1000, a 3.5-inch terabyte drive for PCs that also offers full-disk encryption (FDE). This drive joins a growing number of encrypting drives from Hitachi as well as Fujitsu and Seagate. Certainly, Samsung and Western Digital can't be far behind.

In my view, Hitachi's announcement is across the industry for several reasons:

1. New corporate laptop purchases will likely contain encrypting drives. Now that laptop vendors like Acer, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard have multiple disk drive suppliers to choose from, they are far more likely to build and sell more laptops with encrypting drives. … Read more

The disk defragmenter in Windows Vista leaves much to be desired. A couple of months ago, I recommended Auslogics' Disk Defrag as a free alternative. What that program lacks is the ability to defrag just one or a select set of files and folders.

If you use Windows XP, the free Contig program from Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals fame (now owned by Microsoft) lets you ensure that an existing file is stored contiguously rather than fragmented onto different disk volumes. You can also use it to create a file that will remain contiguous.

Why would you want to defragment a … Read more

Updated 6/23/08 with information about the sensors.

In an interesting turn, JVC's newest hard-disk-based HD camcorders--the Everio GZ-HD40, GZ-HD30, and GZ-HD10--will support AVCHD in addition to its traditional MPEG-2 formats. This is a great idea, at least for the interim, since it theoretically provides you with more flexibility in your video-editing options--especially if its AVCHD files aren't supported right out of the gate--and allows it to deliver high bit rate video beyond the 24Mbps maximum for AVCHD. Plus, the camcorders include FireWire (i.Link) interfaces, which many of today's models have dropped, for dealing with … Read more

In an effort to improve upon the light sensitivity characteristics of its prosumer AVCHD camcorders, Panasonic has switched to a new three-chip MOS system dubbed "3MOS" for its newly announced HDC-SD100 and HDC-HS100 models. The company claims the new sensors provide about twice the photo-sensitive area as the CCDs used by its last-generation model, the HDC-SD9. However, Panasonic did not indicate the resolution of the chips; it's likely relatively low, as most three-chip solutions tend to be. As I guessed, the chips are fairly low resolution--520,000 pixels for 16:9 video--and they're tiny, 1/6-inch … Read more