November 1, 2005

Anandtech has published a review of the new Sony DRU-810A DVD recorder. Based on an entirely new chipset from Philips, this DVD burner features 16x DVD+R recording, 8x DVD+RW recording, 8x DVD+R DL recording, 16x DVD-R recording, 6x DVD-RW recording, 8x DVD-R DL recording, 48x CD-R recording, 32x CD-RW recording, 16x DVD-ROM reading, and 48x CD-ROM reading. See how it performs in various benchmarks against other top of the line DVD burners.

August 17, 2005

Sony has introduced new DVD burners capable of 8X burn speeds on dual layer DVD+R DL media. The internal DRU-810A and external DRX-810UL will be available in stores in two months. The drives also feature 4X DVD-R DL, 16X DVD+/-R, 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 48X CD-R and 32X CD-RW recording.

August 6, 2005

Anandtech has published a review of the new Plextor PX-740A DVD burner. Among the features of this product are: 16 DVD+R writing, 8x DVD+RW writing, 8x DVD+R DL writing, 16x DVD-R writing, 6x DVD-RW writing, 4x DVD-R DL writing, 48x CD-R writing, 32x CD-RW writing, 16x DVD-ROM reading, 48x CD-ROM reading, 2MB buffer, and more.

June 9, 2005

Seagate Technologies has announced ten new hard drives, part of their new Momentus line, including the first drive to use perpendicular recording storage technology. The drives include a 8 GB one-inch drive for portable media players and a 500 GB drive for servers and home entertainment systems. Another new Seagate drive, the Momentus 5400 FDE (Full Disc Encryption), features transparent hardware-based encryption for protecting data in case of notebook theft. Perhaps the most intruiging of these new drives is the Momentus 5400.3, a 2.5" notebook drive that stores 160 GB of data using perpendicular recording.

June 4, 2005

According to several analysts, Sun's purchase of StorageTek is like "two garbage trucks colliding" and a "marriage of losers". The claim is that Sun is overpaying for a business with zero revenue growth. Others are complaining that the deal has a huge gap, namely the lack of a tape encryption solution, a critical issue in today's corporate world.

May 5, 2005

Tom's Hardware takes a look at bare metal backup and recovery for small business networks running Windows, and reviews three software packages that get the job done. These solutions allow you to boot from a CD and recover your entire system from disk or tape in a single step, without having to re-install the operating system or applications, thus saving a lot of time and headaches. The article reviews three software solutions: EMC Dantz Retrospect Windows Small Business Server 7, Paragon Drive Backup Professional 6.0, and Symantec LiveState Recovery Advanced Server.

May 4, 2005

Sony has started shipping the industry's first dual format dual layer DVD burners. The internal DRU-800A and external DRX-800L support dual layer recording on both DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media. Here are the specifications: Read Speeds - 16X DVD-ROM, 8X DVD-ROM DL, 48X CD-ROM / Write Speeds - 4X DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL, 16X DVD+R and DVD-R, 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 48X CD-R, 24X CD-RW.

April 25, 2005

ArsTechnica has published a review and comparison of 10 high-speed USB 2.0 flash drives (also known as pen drives, jump drives, thumb drives, and keychain drives). This new generation of flash drives store more data, contain faster flash memory, and transfer data faster thanks to USB 2.0. The article reviews the Apacer Handy Steno HT203, the Transcend JetFlash DSC, the Kingston DataTraveler Elite, the Lexar JumpDrive Lighting, the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium, the Corsair Flash Voyager, the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Pro, the SimpleTech Bonzai SD/MMC, the Transcend JetFlash 110, and the PQI I-Stick Pro 85.

April 21, 2005

Tom's Hardware has published a review of Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 hard drives. These 7,200 RPM hard drives are available in capacities of 80, 120, 160, 200, 250, and 300 GB. Features include 8 MB or 16 MB of cache memory, Ultra ATA/133 and SATA-150 interfaces, 9ms seek time, and NCQ support. Look at the benchmarks to see how the DiamondMax 10 drives compare to the Western Digital WD3200JB, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8, the Western Digital Raptor WD740, and other popular hard drives in terms of speed, capacity, and price.

April 10, 2005

LG has announced the RCS-7700, a new DVD recorder capable of reading from and writing to all current DVD formats, including DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM. In addition, the drive supports writing to DVD+R DL (double layer) disks, thus allowing up to 11 hours of video to be stored on a single DVD+R DL disc. The RCS-7700 has a IEEE-1394 Firewire input for creating DVDs directly from DV camcorders, and contains slots for eight memory card formats, including SMC, CF, MD, MMC, SD, MS, MS Pro, and XD.

April 10, 2005

X-bit Labs has published a review of the Western Digital Passport portable USB hard disk drive. Features include a USB 2.0 interface, 5400rpm rotation speed, 2MB buffer, and a storage capacity of 40, 60, or 80 GB. The drive is fast, rugged, and small enough to fit on your pocket.

April 4, 2005

Hitachi has announced that it will begin shipping hard drives using 230 gigabits per square inch storage density by 2007. The new technology, called perpendicular recording, will allow the creation of a 20, 30, or even 60 GB iPod mini, as well as 5 terabyte desktop PC drives.

March 30, 2005

PC World takes a look at the Hitachi Deskstar 7K500, the first PC hard drive to store half a terabyte of data. The drive can store up to 56 hours of HDTV video, and is scheduled to ship in the next month or two. In addition, the article looks at new storage technologies and new 1.8" hard drives coming to the market over the next six months.

March 22, 2005

Tom's Hardware has reviewed the Pocket Rocket, the world's fastest USB flash thumbdrive, featuring incredible 18 MB/s read and 15 MB/s write speeds. The device is available in 512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB capacities.

March 20, 2005

Tom's Hardware, AMD Gamer and AnandTech have posted reviews of the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 hard drives. The 300 GB Seagate ST3300831A and the 400 GB Seagate ST3400832A offer features like 8 MB cache, Native Command Queuing (NCQ), a 70 MB/s transfer rate, and more.

March 12, 2005

Nero has released the free NeroLINUX application for CD and DVD burning under Linux. The program supports all CD and DVD recorders supported by Nero 6 under Windows. Also supported are FreeDB, creation of bootable CDs and DVDs, ISO and NRG image files, multi-session writing, double layer DVD+R and DVD-R burning, digital audio extraction, and more. NeroLINUX is available at no charge for Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, and Debian.

March 10, 2005

Apple has joined the board of directors of the Blue-Ray Disc Association. It looks like the company is taking sides with Sony and HP against Microsoft and other supporters of the competing HD-DVD format.

March 8, 2005

Tweakers.net has posted a massive 32 page comparison of nine Serial ATA RAID 5 controllers. Feature comparisons and benchmarks for the following products are included: 3ware Escalade 8506-8, 3ware Escalade 9500S-8, Areca ARC-1120, HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A, LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4/6, Promise FastTrak S150 SX4, and RAIDCore BC4852.

March 6, 2005

AnandTech has posted an excellent review of the new Sony DRU-720A. This dual-layer DVD burner has a 2MB buffer and supports 4x DVD+DL burning, 16x DVD-R and DVD+R burning, 8x DVD+RW burning, 6x DVD-RW burning, 48x CD-R burning, and 24x CD-RW burning.

March 5, 2005

According to various sources, Microsoft is porting their WinFS database file system to Windows XP. The WinFS file system lets users search and manage files based on content and metadata, and lets developers enhance the usefulness of their applications through the WinFS managed API.