solid-state

Micron Technology said today that demand is increasing for solid-state drives in the wake of the flooding in Thailand.

Since late summer, the prices of traditional spinning hard disk drives have been steadily rising because of shortages due to flooding in Thailand. That country accounts for about 70 percent of global hard drive-related production. And recently Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman said that large customers are calling HP because they can't get drives.

Micron Technology, one of the largest flash memory chip manufacturers in the world, told CNET today that the solid-state drive industry has seen orders spike.

"Clearly … Read more

If you've been contemplating getting an SSD for your laptop but can't justify the cost, the new 750GB Momentus XT hybrid drive is the answer.

Released just a few days ago, the second-generation hybrid drive from Seagate offers more storage space than the previous model, and its performance is even closer to that of an SSD. … Read more

Seagate today announced that it's now shipping the second generation of its popular hybrid drive, the Momentus XT.

The new drive is the upgrade to the original Momentus XT, the first and only mass-produced hybrid drive on the market, which was released more than a year ago and has been widely adopted by OEM system builders.

Similar to the first generation, the new Momentus XT combines both traditional platter-based hard drive and solid-state storage. The new drive, however, now offers up to 750GB of storage space (as opposed to 500GB of the previous version), which includes twice the amount … Read more

For virtually anything to happen as expected in our daily life, computer storage is needed. If you think that's a grand statement, you, like most of us, have been taking storage for granted.

Despite the massive recent flood in Thailand that affected many storage vendors, hard drives, the most common form of computer storage, are still generally affordable (and abundant in terms of capacities). However, not all other forms of storage applications share the similar pricing as hard drives. And they can get progressively pricier the faster and the cooler they get.

Here's a list of storage devices … Read more

Virident, a Milpitas, Calif.-based company creating flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs), has raised $20 million in its third round of funding and landed Cisco and Intel as new investors. Virident has raised $50 million to date.

The five-year-old company says today's funding will fuel the creation of a new memory solution called FlashMax that it claims will run databases ten times faster than older drives.

Virident hopes to create partnerships with large data centers, businesses such as systems integrators and consulting firms, and potential investors. Besides Cisco and Intel, the company also has an unnamed investor who is a &… Read more

OCZ yesterday announced a new lineup of solid-state drives called Octane that offer up to 1TB of storage space. The company says the top-capacity Octane model will cost just around $1,300, which is much cheaper than some 512GB SSDs on the market. Other Octane capacities, including 512GB, 256GB, and 128GB, are priced lower accordingly.

According to OCZ, the new SSDs are based on a next-generation controller called Indilinx Everest that offers better balance between capacity, physical size, and performance compared with previous controllers. The 2.5-inch-design SSDs support both SATA 3.0 (6Gbps) and SATA 2.0 (3Gbps) standards. … Read more

To make the next generation of lithium ion batteries, start-up Satki3 is making batteries on equipment normally used to make potato chip bags.

Company founder and CEO Ann Marie Sastry provided a few details on the work Sakti3 is doing to make a battery that will double the energy density compared with existing lithium ion batteries during a talk at the EmTech conference at MIT today. Satki3's ambitions offer a view into how emerging solid-state battery technology could accelerate electric vehicle sales and make batteries for electronics cheaper and longer lasting.

Many battery startups are using different methods to … Read more

Are future mainstream Ultrabooks going to usher in the hybrid hard-disk drive?

Acer may have kicked off this trend with the hybrid-drive-packing Ultrabook Aspire S3, which sports a 20GB solid-state drive matched with a standard 320GB spinning hard disk. So, will others follow? Yes, says a report in Digitimes.

Though a hybrid system can't match the performance of a 128GB SSD-only laptop, an ancillary 20GB drive is a relatively large chunk of flash compared with, for example, the 4GB SSD (or flash drive, if that's what you choose to call it) in the Seagate Momentus hybrid drive.

How … Read more

Asus is due to release its Ultrabook lineup on Tuesday, as vendor momentum in this new Windows laptop category gains steam.

The Asus Zenbook line is expected to start at under $1,000 and be populated with 11- and 13-inch models ranging up to $1,499.

The UX21 model, for example, will come with an 11.6-inch display, a Core i5 Intel Sandy Bridge processor, and a 128GB solid-state drive. The high-end 13.3-inch UX31 will have a Core i7 chip and 256GB SSD.

Models are also slated to come with beefed-up sound and USB 3.0 ports. The latter … Read more