Pioneer - 400 GB optical discs

Memory size is always been of our interest friends.I have posted many news on HDD or other data storage devices which provides huge memory sizes.This one must be included in that list.Pioneer has claimed that they will represent a optical disc with a storage capacity of 400GB!

Pioneer has developed a 16-layer read-only optical disc which can store 400GB of data.The per-layer capacity is 25GB, the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc, and the multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs.

Pioneer said,

"Multi-layered discs have been difficult to develop because 'crosstalk' from adjacent layers and transmission loss mean that getting a stable signal from the disc is often nearly impossible."

So it means if this thing got OK signal, then it will be used for data storage in corporates which needs such devices for daily data backup.Thus this will replace the slow tape drives which are in heavy usage now a days.Lets hope this happens,so we can have better and fast solution for data backup/storage.

Pioneer will present the details of this research at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 in Hawaii on 13 July.

source: vnunet

Sun wants Open Storage...

Sun Microsystems wants to nudge storage toward a more open framework while helping the industry to do more with flash disk drives than merely replace spinning hard drives. Sun, which traditionally has been the least successful of the IT industry's major system players to attach storage sales to its server sales, feels that storage vendors have followed a proprietary model for too long, said Graham Lovell, senior director of open storage and networking for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor.

"Storage is very closed today,We want to differentiate with a paradigm that is much more open going forward"

Lovell said. For Sun, that means taking advantage of its commitment to open source, including its OpenSolaris and its ZFS storage operating system, Lovell said. Sun made its OpenSolaris operating system available as a free download early last month.

CRN

Samsung 1 TB HD, Only $199!

Large HD is now a must have thing. Not even corporates and industries, but home users are also using large HDs. See mine,I have 250GB WD 16MB Buffer SATA2 in just 74$!. PC usage is increasing day by day. Now everyone wants big space, Jet speed and less price. And that's what we are getting here.

Samsung has announced a low-cost 1 Terabyte HD, that will be available to consumers in June, at an affordable price of $199. Specs with 5400RPM rotational speeds, and offering the highest capacity per disk for one terabyte hard drives, at 334GB per platter, will keep the size limited and boosted up performace. Also Samsung says the drive uses up to 50 per cent less power than other one TB drives and has technology to keep it quiet through operation.

Media hunger is increasing with HD movies, Gaming and pictures. Also if big thing in less money is available, people will be attracted to it. Let's hope this will give best performance as samsung said.

Western Digital launches world's fastest SATA disk

The 300GB VelociRaptor from Western Digital. Said to be 35% faster than previous WD Raptors, the 10,000 RPM drive features a 3Gbps SATA interface, 16MB cache, and impressive 1.4 million hour MTBF thanks in part to the IcePack Mounting Frame. The IcePack heat sink not only keeps the drive spinning extra cool, it also bumps the 2.5-inch HDD to a required 3.5-inch drive bay. Available exclusively on Alienware's ALX gaming desktop this month and then up for grabs for everybody with $300 to burn starting mid-May.

Western Digital Product Page

500,000 GB MP3 Player!

Can you even imagine an MP3 player with a 500,000 GB capacity? It’s pretty much beyond belief. The most generous player today can only hold around 40,000 songs – they’d hardly make a dent on this.

The thing is, it could easily happen. Scientists at the University of Glasgow have created a nanotechnology breakthrough that could increase storage capacity by 150,000 times. It could mean 500,000 GB on a single chip and inch square.

The Glasgow scientists worked to create the molecule-sized switch that’s at the heart of it all.

More @ digitalTrends

Fujitsu Shows 500GB Laptop Drive

Laptop computer storage is racing fast towards the 500G-byte level with Fujitsu becoming the third hard-disk drive maker to announce a drive at that capacity.

Fujitsu is accomplishing this capacity by combining three disk platters -- the magnetically-coated disks on which data is stored -- each with a 170G-byte capacity inside the drive. Hitachi, the first company to announce a 500G-byte drive, and Samsung Electronics are also using three platter designs. The third platter increases the thickness of the drive to 12.5 millimeters versus most other laptop drives, which have just two platters and are 9.5 millimeters thick.

PcWorld.com

Panasonic - Class 6 SDHC 32GB memory cards

Think you already have enough memory on your camera’s memory card? Think again! With memory cards getting larger in size and faster in speed, even if yours was bought not very long before, it will likely go out of date as this SDHC card giant gets released.

Panasonic’s latest Class 6 SDHC card will allow? a maximum transfer rate of 20MB/s. This 32GB monster has enough storage capacity to store up to four hours of 1920 x 1080i compressed AVCHD video!

With such great features, the price is quite hefty too: $699, which is about 356 pounds!

coolest-gadgets

Apple - iPhone is 16GB, iPod touch 32GB !

Apple today announced new iPhone and iPod models with larger memory capacities to solve the ever growing craze for more portable storage. This move doubles the amount of memory that was previously available on the top iPhone and iPod models.

Both new models (the 16GB iPhone and the 32GB iPod Touch) will sell for US$499.

Apple will continue to sell the 8GB iPhone and the 16GB iPod touch for US$399 each. Apple will also continue the junior 8GB iPod touch at US$299.

Some analysts are worried that a potential U.S. recession could affect sales of luxury items such as these portable devices. Apple stock is down more than 33 per cent this year.

Reuters.com

Thumb Drive - self-destruct in 10 seconds

Thumb drives are a convenient and cool way to carry around your data, and with drive sizes in the gigabytes, you can store a ton of photos, files, music, and video in a very tiny space. Unfortunately, due to their small sizes, they are targets for information thieves.

Think about it - all that personal data - your resume, email, password-files, and pictures of your girlfriend can be picked up and copied and returned before you even noticed it was missing. You want to have this data handy, but handy for you and not for that scumbag down the hall with the sticky fingers.

Like you, the US Military wanted portable but secure storage, and the guys at IronKey stepped up. They've developed the perfect solution that's one-part thumb-drive, and two parts Mission: Impossible. Their thumb drives hold up to 4 Gigabytes of data, but includes a hardware encryption chip that scrambles the data so as to be completely unreadable without a password.

Passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It's built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he'd more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they'd be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can't get inside.

Applications built right onto the IronKey help keep your personal data safe. For example, the password manager keeps your passwords safe. How? Your passwords are securely stored in a hidden hardware-encrypted area inside the device (and not in the drive's file system), being first locally encrypted with 256-bit AES, using randomly generated keys encrypted with a SHA-256 hash of your device password. All of this data is then doubly encrypted with 128-bit AES hardware encryption. Hack that.

A secure copy of Firefox included with your IronKey encrypts your browsing session through a VPN tunnel to IronKey's Secure Sessions Service. It works by tunneling your entire web browsing communications through the Tor-based Secure Sessions proxy on your IronKey. The Secure Sessions tunnel connects over an encrypted connection to their network routing servers, which in turn route your traffic between a number of servers, and then eventually out to your destination website. This approach protects your identity and your confidentiality, encrypting and anonymizing your Web surfing on almost any network or VPN (virtual private network).

These drives have already seen duty in Afghanistan, keeping US Military secrets safe from unsavory people. They're certainly good enough even for your most sensitive data.

All this goodness is demoed here. Go check it out!
* Fast 30MBPS Read, 20MBPS Write
* Drive contents encrypted with AES CBC-Mode Encryption
* Onboard IronKey Password-manager keeps all your internet passwords safe
* Secure version of Firefox included that encrypts all your web-surfing traffic
* Encased in a potted metal case, not plastic, making it one of the strongest USB keys around
* Exceeds MIL-STD-810F military waterproofing standards
* The encryption chip self-destructs if an invasive attack is detected
* If your Ironkey is lost, you can restore from a secure backup to a new Ironkey in minutes
* Dual channel SLC NAND Flash for high-quality and read/write speeds
* Windows XP and Windows Vista only, but Mac and Linux drivers are in development

DivX 6.7 Final

The DivX Codec takes the power of advanced digital video compression to the next level, encoding video at resolutions up to high-definition 1920 x 1080. That's right, you heard it straight: 1080i and 1080p, at a fraction of the file size. What more can we say? Wait, we almost forgot, there is more. Read on, dear friend, for a list of DivX Codec features.

Features

* Compress digital video 5 to 10 times more than MPEG-2/DVD format and hundreds of times over raw digital video
* Encode high-definition (HD) video at resolutions up to 1080p
* Maximized performance for all HyperThreaded, dual core and dual CPU (SMP) systems
* Improved support for interlaced video
* Six carefully optimized encoding modes for balancing visual quality and performance
* Automated noise reduction reduces grain and low-light noise (common with DV cameras) without significantly degrading the video

DivX 6.7.0.6

PowerArchiver 2007 10.20 Final

PowerArchiver is an award-winning archive utility for the Windows family of products that provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools though an easy to use interface that seamlessly integrates with Windows Explorer. PowerArchiver natively supports ZIP, 7-ZIP, CAB, LHA (LZH), TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, BH, RAR, ARJ, ARC, ACE, ZOO, GZ, BZIP2, XXE, MIME, UUE and yENC file formats. An internal viewer displays TXT, RTF, and more than 18 image formats. PowerArchiver creates and works with unlimited size ZIP archives with enhanced ZIP format speed and compression; a Password Manager stores your frequently used passwords; encrypts your archives using 5 different methods including 256-bit AES; backs up your work with PowerArchiver's Auto-Backup tool and FTP support; creates powerful CAB and ZIP self extracting (SFX) archives using a Wizard; a Batch ZIP tool compresses hundreds of files all at once; and a Multi-Extract tool can extract hundreds of archives instantly.

PowerArchiver 2007 Feature List:

* Complete built-in support for 7-ZIP, ZIP, CAB, LHA (LZH), TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, BH, RAR, ARJ, ARC, ACE, ZOO, GZ, and BZIP2 file formats
* Support for reading and extracting disc image formats: ISO, BIN, IMG and NRG
* Built-in support for XXE, UUE, and yENC encoded files and full MIME (Base 64) support
* Creating ZIP, 7-Zip, CAB and PAE encrypted self-extracting archives using a Wizard interface
* Support for unlimited size ZIP archives, with improved performance when working with 100,000+ files
* Support for Deflate64, providing improved compression results (both size and speed)
* Complete support for PKZIP 4.0 and PKZIP 4.5 disk spanning
* Compression Profiles to store frequently used compression settings
*Fullsupport for ZIP AES encryption, 128-bit/192-bit/256-bit supports KZip5.1 (full), Secure Zip 8.0 and WinZip 9.0 AE-1 & AE-2)andproprietary PAE format using 5 different methods: Blowfish(128-bit),DES (64-bit), Triple DES (128-bit), AES 128-bit, and AES256-bit
* Support for AES encrypted 7-Zip archives and multivolume 7-Zip archives
* Support for transparently updating 7-Zip archives and more...

What's New:

Final release of PowerArchiver 2007 version 10.2 has been announced. This release incorporates numerous changes, most important ones being completely new Modern user interface that performs more like Office 2007 interface and extended TAR support, which now supports GNU Tar specifications. It also features the Tiny toolbar option, as well as the ability to hide the toolbar completely for those who want to maximize their screen space. Number of issues have been fixed as well and performance was increased in certain situations.

PowerArchiver Home Page

How to install 145 operating systems on one PC

So you think you're pretty hot because you figured out how to load Windows XP and Ubuntu on your PC, huh? Or maybe you've even gone so far as creating a triple boot machine with XP, Vista, and a Linux distribution. Well, one JustLinux forum member has you beat. And by beat, we mean he finished a marathon in the amount of time it took you to cross the street.

JustLinux member saikee has posted details of his system that boots 145 operating systems. That includes 3 versions of DOS, 5 versions of Windows, and 137 flavors of Linux. He created 152 partitions on 4 hard drives to get his system up and running. And he probably has the longest GRUB menu you've ever seen. We're guessing the slowest part of the boot process on this system is the amount of time it takes to find the operating system you want to use.

There are obviously very few practical reasons anyone would want to load 145 operating systems onto a PC, but we have to say, we're pretty impressed anyway. It's kind of like climbing Mount Everest because it's there. If you had licenses for 8 MS operating systems, the ability to download as many Linux distributions as you'd like and way too much free time on your hands, wouldn't you do the same thing? No?

Via:JustLinux

Toshiba Leads Industry in Bringing Discrete Track Recording Technology to Prototype of 120GB Hard Disk Drive

Toshiba Corporation today announced a prototype hard disk drive (HDD) that uses Discrete Track Recording (DTR) technology to boost capacity to a record-breaking 120 gigabytes (GB) on a single 1.8-inch platter. The drive is the first in the world to apply DTR, a breakthrough technology that boost the areal density of a perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) by a full 50 percent. Toshiba plans to start mass production of HDDs integrating DTR technology in 2009.

The new prototype HDD is a 1.8-inch PMR HDD. Toshiba's latest 1.8-inch HDD in the market offers a single platter capacity of 80GB; application of DTR technology boosts platter capacity to 120GB, and takes the recording density to 516 megabits per square millimeter (333gigabits per square inch). A servo pattern for tracking control is also formed on the disk.

DTR technology increases recording density by forming a "groove" between the tracks on the PMR medium. The groove reduces signal interference between adjacent data tracks, allowing the pitch of the tracks to be shortened. The improved signal quality also contributes to raising the recording density by 50 percent.

The DTR "groove" forming process is most easily applied to small form factor HDDs, such as 1.8 inch and 2.5 inch drives. It will take these drives to a new level of enhanced capacity.

Full Story @ NewsWire

Western Digital RaptorX WD1500AHFD 150GB Clear Top SATA Hard Drive Review

The Western Digital Raptor hard drive achieves its remarkable performance thanks to the high rotation speed of its platters. At 10,000 RPM the WD Raptor is definitely one of the fastest spinning Serial ATA desktop HDD on the market, on par with enterprise level SCSI counterparts. While 7200 RPM drives are improving in performance by increasing platter density and putting larger caches on the HDD, Western Digital uses a "brute force" type method in increasing performance.

The only drawback to Western Digital's Raptor family is the premium price it commands, and a relatively small storage capacity. Conventional 7200 RPM desktop HDDs come in capacities up to 1TB (1000GB), and 500GB models can be had for around $100US. Western Digital's 74GB Raptor goes for around $130 USD, so you see what we mean.

Western Digital alleviate the storage bottleneck with the 150GB WD1500AFHD RaptorX, a serial ATA hard drive with a clear window into its inner workings. Western Digital offers two variants of its high performance 150GB HDD, the Raptor WD1500ADFD and the RaptorX WD1500AHFD. The difference between the two is that Raptor 'ADFD' has a solid steel top while the RaptorX 'AHFD' has a crystal clear plastic see through top - so you can see the hard drive platters spinning and the read arm moving rapidly back and forth. The Western Digital RaptorX is the only hard drive on the planet that lets you look into the heart of the drive.

The 150GB Western Digital RaptorX WD1500AHFD SATA hard drive retails for about $206 CDN ($196 USD, £96 GBP), and comes with HDD management software and WD Secure Connect SATA DATA cable.

PcStats

Apple to announce HDD-less iPods...

Apple will tomorrow unveil revamped iPods - the first without a hard drive - and iPod Nanos at an event to be held tomorrow, if the leaks and rumours of the last few weeks prove accurate. Observers are expecting Apple to take the wraps off a new iPod with a design derived not from past versions of the player but from the iPhone. It appears to be the long-awaited widescreen video-centric iPod, with a big display, touchscreen control, Wi-Fi connectivity and Flash storage in place of a hard drive - as predicted in February this year.

Quite what that will do the player's storage capacity remains unclear at this stage. Certainly, even 32GB of Flash will cost rather more than a 30GB hard drive, for all Apple's billion-dollar deals with Flash suppliers.

RegHardware

Kingston 266X 4GB Compact Flash Card

Kingston are one of the worlds largest manufacturers of memory and flash memory with a huge annual turnover of $2.2 billion. it's the turn of the trusty Compact Flash Card (CF). Those of you with DSLR's will know having a fast CF card in your camera is an essential if you want to take a lot of photo's fast. Let's see how it gets on pitted against one of the best on the market - the Sandisk Extreme II CF Card.

Kingston have opted to go with a blister-style package on the 266X CF Card. This is good as it protects the card and also shows off what you are getting.Limited information is available on the back of the packaging but the basics are there. Kingston have chosen to keep it a little low-key but it looks nice and certainly the card itself is coloured to stand out.

There isn't a whole lot to the package in with the Kingston 266X CF card. You get:

* Kingston 266X Compact Flash Card
* Short Instruction Manual
* Plastic CF Card holder

And that's it. In all fairness you don't get a whole lot in other card packages although Sandisk do give you a bag with their Extreme II card.

Features/benefits

* Capacities1 — 2GB, 4GB, 8GB
* Dimensions — 1.43" x 1.68" x 0.13" (36.4 mm x 42.8 mm x 3.3 mm) – CF Type I
* Speed Rating 2 — 45MB/sec read, 40MB/sec write
* Recovery Utility — data recovery software download from MediaRECOVER. Windows/Mac compatible
* Operating Temperature — 32° F to 140° F (0° C to 60° C)
* Storage Temperature — -4° F to 185° F (-20° C to 85° C)
* Standardized — complies with CompactFlash Association specification standards
* Easy — plug-and-play
* Economical — autosleep mode preserves system battery life
* Guaranteed — lifetime warranty †

HomePage

Toshiba Unveils First 32GB High-Density Flash Card

Toshiba revealed Aug. 22 that it will soon add three new high-density flash memory cards to its product lineup—including one it touts as the world's first 32GB flash card. The Tokyo-based company, which partners with SanDisk to produce SanDisk High Capacity cards, also announced a 16GB SDHC card and an 8GB microSDHC card.

All the new cards meet the Class 4 specification in the SD Speed Class (a minimum of 4GB per second of throughput), which enable them to deliver enough power to run new-generation mobile phones and other handheld products. "The speed class is important to maximize performance for demanding applications and help the consumer choose the right card for their camera or camcorder," said Brian Kumagai, business development manager for NAND Flash with Irvine, Calif.-based Toshiba America Electronic Components.

eWeek

Toshiba: 320GB Notebook Drive

Toshiba Corporation has announced two new lineups (MK-GSX and MK-GSY) of hard disk drives for mobile or portable applications that offer either increased capacities or leading performance. Both families of HDDs support an optional Free Fall Sensor function, which detects falling HDD and parks the head before it crashes. Toshiba did not reveal when the new drives are planned to be commercially available.

The flagship Toshiba MK3252GSX model has two 160GB platters, for a total capacity of 320GB. The new hard drive features Serial ATA-300 interface, 5400rpm motor, 8MB buffer and 12ms average seek time. Other members of Toshiba MK-GSX family sport similar technical characteristics, but feature capacities of 250GB, 160GB, 120GB or 80GB. The Toshiba MK2049GSY uses two 100GB platters for a capacity of 200GB. The two main advantages of the HDD are 7200rpm motor and a 16MB buffer. Toshiba declares that the new drive increases the maximum transfer rate by approximately 46% and the average random access time by approximately 8% when compared to the current MK1637GSX model. Other new members of the family feature capacities of 160GB, 120GB or 80GB.

Xbit Laboratories

StarBurn 9 'Evolution' (0x20070820)

StarBurn is a powerful tool for grabbing, burning and mastering CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. StarBurn supports all types of optical storage media (including CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM) as well as a wide variety of burning hardware. With StarBurn you can perform grabbing, copying and burning operations as well as advanced DVD authoring and mastering. These advanced features enable you to create DVD-Video content from custom video files, or compilations from other DVDs. Additionally with the DVD Splitting Wizard you can split DVD-Video discs into smaller parts and burn them to DVD writable discs or share them with the StarPort DVD-ROM emulator and watch DVD video directly on your PC. This enables you to create copies of 8.5 GB dual layer DVDs with just a few mouse clicks. StarBurn is easy to learn and to use. In addition to advanced DVD authoring and mastering features StarBurn offers a number of step-by-step wizards for novice users. StarBurn has a Quick Start Wizard that provides to simplify frequently used operations such as disc copying, grabbing and splitting DVDs.

Key Features:

- All MMC (Multi-Media Command Set) compatible CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burning hardware is supported. StarBurn deals with devices in a "generic" mode meaning you don't need to get an updated version of our software to support a brand new burner.
- CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM media supported. Including modern high-capacity double layer DVD+R and dual layer DVD-R.
- UDF (Universal Disc Format) file system mastering (UDF 1.02, 1.50 and 2.01). Files larger then 2 GB and with names up to 2048 characters long can now be stored on optical media. You don't need to use third-party tools to split your huge database backups or rename long file names before burning them.
- ISO9660 file system mastering (including Joliet Unicode extensions). The most compatible file system virtually any machine can read.
- Bridge file system (ISO9660/UDF for DVD-Video creation) mastering. StarBurn creates bridge file system which is DVD-Video compatible. This media can be read with both stand-alone DVD players and ancient Windows 95 and DOS machines.
- Session import (appending already created CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD media). In this mode you can use the same media for sequential recording daily. New data will perfectly co-exist with previously recorded data. The only limitation is the physical media capacity.
- DVD-Video main sequence (movie) extraction. StarBurn can re-master the DVD and extract only the movie. This allows you to include just the movie content and without the trailers and advertising from the original DVD. Unwanted video won't be copied, the main movie sequence will be extracted and stored on your hard disk or directly recorded to optical media on-the-fly [view full list of features]

Supported Platforms:
StarBurn is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Vista.

Home Page

Cirago 10GB External HDD

There are a variety of ways to carry data with you. You could buy a notebook computer and schlep it with you everywhere. That can be helpful if you need processing power or internet access on the move. Not everyone, however, has the extra cash for another computer, or the shoulder muscle to tote around a heavy laptop. On the other end of the spectrum are USB keys. Small enough to fit on your key chain, these little gadgets can be the perfect addition to your mobile office. Flash drives cater to almost every need, from storage capacity of up to 16GB to bullet-proof encasement (I wish I were kidding). Nevertheless, 16GB runs you on the expensive side and isn't really all that big considering the price, not to mention their limited lifetimes.

If notebooks and flash drives aren't your style, never fear, there's an alternative: the classic external hard-drive. External HDDs come in a variety of forms, but today we're looking at the 2.5” laptop form-factor drives that are slim and mobile. You can find laptop drives of up to 250GB now, which is far larger than any flash drive, while still keeping the lightweight, small-sized mobility of a solitary hard-drive. Cirago has sent us the 10GB version of their mobile storage line for today's review, which offers drives of up to 120GB in size.

Specifications and features, from the Cirago website, are below:

External Interface: USB 2.0/1.1
Hard Drive Interface: IDE/ATA
Form Factor: 2.5”
Dimension: 10” x 3” x 0.8”
Power: USB bus power
Warranty: 1 year

Full Review...