solid-state

LaCie, the hardware vendor that has been known to turn storage devices trendy, has just done it again. The company announced today that it has collaborated with Porsche Design Group to introduce two exclusive Porsche-inspired external storage devices: the Porsche Design Mobile (P'9220) and Porsche Design Desktop (P'9230) hard drives.

The company says these two new drives support the fast USB 3.0 standard. While USB 3.0 is definitely fast, it would have been more appropriate if the drives supported Thunderbolt, which has a ceiling speed of 10Gbps, twice that of USB.

To make up for this, … Read more

Because of the high prices of solid-state drives, most tablets have limited storage. To keep the cost reasonable, manufacturers have to opt for offering low-capacity units.

And the main reason why tablets don't use hard-disk drives (HDDs) is the physical size: HDDs are generally not compact enough for the portability of a tablet computer. That is, unless, that HDD is Seagate Technology's Momentus Thin.

The company announced today that this hard drive, which is the world's first 2.5-inch hard drive with a 7mm profile, is now also the internal storage unit for the first HDD-based handheld tablets in the world, the 8- and 10-inch Archos G9 tablets. The new tablets, unveiled today, are among the first low-cost high-capacity tablets on the market.… Read more

It seems the iPad's limited internal storage and lack of peripheral ports provide ample opportunities for storage vendors.

About a month ago, Seagate Technology introduced the GoFlex Satellite as the first mobile hard drive that can stream content to the iPad. Today, G-Technology, a subsidiary of Hitachi Storage that focuses on external storage solutions, announced a similar product of its own: the G-Connect wireless storage product.

The G-Connect is similar to the GoFlex Satellite in multiple ways. It's another compact 500GB portable hard drive that has a built-in Wireless-N access point that can stream stored digital content to up to five wireless devices (the Satellite can only stream to three devices).

The G-Connect has one major advantage over the Satellite: it also comes with an Ethernet port for connecting to an existing network, and hence is capable of also offering an Internet connection to the connected clients. Clients can surf the Web and check e-mails while streaming content, such as music, at the same time. This makes the device almost an alternative for the iCloud service recently announced by Apple.… Read more

Editor's note: This post was updated on February 20, 2013 to reflect the current state of SSDs on the market.

If your computer still runs on a hard drive, it's time to move to a solid-state drive (SSD). (Check out this How To, if you need help). It will be the single biggest upgrade that will hugely improve the system's performance, even better than getting a new computer that also runs on a hard drive.

But is there any place that SSDs' performance falls short in comparison with hard drives? Now that SSDs' prices have been getting … Read more

Now that I have convinced you that solid-state drives (SSDs) are the way to go for a computer's main storage, the question is which one you should get.

While SSDs are all very expensive, depending on the features, capacities, and interfaces, their prices vary considerably. If your computer only supports the SATA 2 (3Gbps) standard, which is currently the most popular on any type of computer, an SSD of this standard like the Samsung 470 would be a good investment.

On the other hand, if your computer supports SATA 3 (6Gbps) or you want to get a "futureproof&… Read more

When it comes to 2.5-inch SATA solid-state drives (SSDs), prices are so high that so far it only makes sense to buy those with lower capacities, 256GB or less. However, with OWC's new series of Mercury Extreme Pro 6G drives, it seems you only get a good deal when you buy the top capacity.

The drive's 480GB version gives you the most storage for your money, at just $1,280. If you think that's still high (and you're right!), look at the prices of some competing products; the 480GB OCZ Vertex 3, for example, costs … Read more

While traditional hard drives are made by just a few companies, such as Western Digital and Seagate, solid-state drives (SSDs)--which are based on a completely different technology similar to that of system memory--are made by a much larger crowd of vendors. And today Other World Computing introduced its own SATA 3 (6Gbps)-based SSD, the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G.

Like other SSDs on the market, such as the OCZ Vertex 3, or the Plextor PX-256M2S, the OWC drive is the same shape as a traditional 2.5-inch SATA laptop drive. This means it will work virtually anywhere a traditional … Read more

Intel has added two years to the warranty on its 320 series of solid-state drives because it is confident in their reliability.

The boost in warranty from three to five years was announced Friday. It covers consumer-level use of the drives, which is up to 20 gigabytes of writes per day. Caveats apply to enterprise-level usage, typically in high input/output environments such as data centers.

"Expanding [the warranty] from three to five years on its latest product, the 320, is important," said Joseph Unsworth, a research director at Gartner. "This is a testimonial to the fact … Read more

Flash memory maker SanDisk is acquiring SSD developer Pliant Technology for $327 million in cash and certain stock-based incentives.

Announced by SanDisk today, the deal has already been approved by the boards of both companies and is expected to close by the end of SanDisk's second fiscal quarter in June, pending the usual regulatory reviews.

Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., Pliant Technology sells flash-based SSDs (solid-states drives) specifically for the enterprise market. As such, the drives are designed to deliver high performance and reliability for use in data centers and similar environments.

"Flash memory is making significant inroads into … Read more