Fujitsu’s New 2.5″ 500GB SATA Drive
February 25, 2008
Yes, you read that right.
Fujitsu is coming out with a 500GB 2.5″ Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive.
Specifications of the MHZ2 BT drive
- 1.8W
- 4200rpm
- 3.0GB/s
- 8MB Cache
No word on when these will roll out.
Source: Akihabara News
Updated: More details - Fujitsu Press Release
Fujitsu Limited today announced the release of its new series of MHZ2 BT 2.5″ hard disk drives with world-class capacity of up to 500 GB(1). Sales of the new series will begin at the end of May 2008.
The new series responds to the growing need for hard drives in the 2.5″ form factor that can handle high-volume storage for such products as digital video recorders and external hard drives.
The MHZ2 BT series requires only 1.8 W of power for read and write operations, ranking it among the most power-efficient drives in its class. The series is one of many new products announced as part of Fujitsu’s Green Policy Innovation program, unveiled in December 2007 to promote energy-efficient products and services as a way to help customers lower their ecological footprint.
HP Announces 64GB SSD Options for 2510p and 2710p
September 6, 2007
HP has announced that they will make 64GB Solid-State Drives/Disks (SSD - flash-memory based storage) avaialble as options for the HP Compaq 2510p and the HP Compaq 2710p ultraportable laptops (or in the case of the 2710p, a Tablet PC/Laptop).
As we’ve mentioned in the past with other manufacturers, SSDs will help small laptops, especially ultraportable laptops, across the line. In addition to stability/durability (no moving parts to crash if the laptop is dropped or jostled around), the lack of moving parts also helps increase battery life (no moving parts to, well, move). It also helps because it lowers the cooling requirements - laptop hard drives can be a tremendous source of heat, both within the laptop case itself, as well as on the surface, which can make it uncomfortable to use if your palm rest is right over the hard drive (which is true of many laptops).
It can be a lot faster as well, than traditional mechanical rotating drives.
64GB is a good size for HP to be offering - many were offering 32GB, and 32GB is really pushing it these days, as far as usability with some Operating Systems *cough* Vista *cough*. We’ve seen 64GB options with other manufacturers hit $600 in the past, and so NotebookReview.com’s estimate of $500 extra is probably just about right - the price should have dropped with flash memory since other manufacturers started offering SSDs.
Press Release: HP.com
Source: NotebookReview.com
Seagate Getting Into Flash-Based/Solid State Drives
August 23, 2007
In a sign of good things to come, Seagate is getting into the flash memory-based Solid state Drives (SSDs) market:
Bill Watkins, Seagate’s chief executive, disclosed in an interview that the company will enter the market next year for devices that store data on flash chips, while still mainly relying on products based on spinning magnetic disks.
This should help to increase capacities while driving costs down.
SSDs can extend battery life, improve durability, speed certain things up (booting, etc.) while helping lower weight. Many ultraportable laptop makers are starting to offer the option of adding SSDs in pace of mechanical drives, albeit at a very expensive price (for now).
Full article at The Wall Street Journal Online
Announced: Samsung’s 1.8″ 160GB Hard Drive - Spinpoint N2 Series
August 21, 2007
Today, Samsung announced a new hard disk drive series, the Spinpoint N2 series, that is going to shake some things up in the ultraportable market.
It’s a 1.8-inch Hard Disk Drive (HDD) that runs at 4200 RPM, and has a capacity of up to 160GB.
This will be welcome news for the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) market, as well as ultraportable and small laptops.
Samsung expects that “the 1.8inch HDD market will grow at a tremendous pace with annual sales expected to increase up to 65% by 2010 as consumers demand smaller, more compact technology devices”.
Besides being used in UMPCs and ultraportable laptops, the 1.8″ drives will also find their way into HDD-based camcorders and potentially iPods and other Portable Media Players (PMP).
Right now, the only drive in the series announced so far is one with a 160GB of capacity - able to store, in Samsung’s words, more than 40,000 MP3 files or 100 HD quality movies. Just for perspective, the current 30GB and 80GB iPods use 1.8″ hard drives.
Press Release at BusinessWire.com
1.2TB Hard Drives for Laptops?
August 9, 2007
Even as laptop manufacturers are shipping laptops with flash-based Solid State Drives, PC World is reporting that Fujitsu is working on 2.5-inch 1.2TB hard drives for laptops.
Yes, you read that right - 2.5″ 1.2TB hard drives. Not only that, but they are talking about shipping them within two and a half years, by 2010. It’s fairly safe to say that Solid State Drives (SSDs) won’t be hitting 1.2TB by then.
Fujitsu is set to make the announcement today or tomorrow. It’s based on Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology.
Solid State Drives and Laptops
July 25, 2007
PC Magazine is reporting that Alienware is adding Solid State Drives (SSD) to their notebook lineup. As PC Magazine points out, Dell added the option for SSDs to their Dell Latitude D420 lineup, as well as Fujitsu (LifeBook B6220 among others). While Alienware doesn’t have any ultraportable laptops currently in production, it’s still interesting (for those curious they are offering 32GB drives with 64GB Solid State Drive RAID arrays using two 32GB SSDs. Hopefully if more notebook makers add SSDs as an option, the prices will come down (and eventually capacities will go up).
Quote:
By not utilizing any moving parts and not needing to spin up to search for data, solid state drives run quieter, consume less power and find data more quickly than traditional spinning hard drives, making them perfect for the on-the-go lifestyle of Alienware notebook users, the company said. Solid-state disks use NAND flash memory, the same components found within flash-based portable music players like the Apple iPod nano.
Meanwhile, Custom PC has done a very comprehensive review of several SSDs in various sizes and from various manufacturers. They include 2.5″ drives from Samsung, Transcend, PQI, STEC, and Apacer, ranging in size from 8GB to 32GB, and utilizing both IDE and Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. They ran several benchmarks against each, giving you a good idea of performance.
They point out the biggest problem (cost):
In an ideal world, every PC would use a solid-state disk (SSD) to store data, rather than a hulking big mechanical hard disk. Using either DRAM or flash memory, SSDs are not only physically smaller than hard drives, but they’re also silent, much more reliable (due to the lack of moving parts), more power-efficient, produce less waste heat and are faster too. However, until recently, SSDs have been so expensive that they’ve only been adopted by the defence and finance industries, where high performance and robustness are far more important than a low price.
