Several days ago, IHS iSuppli released a report on storage market and technologies called “HDD Industry Enjoys Best Performance despite Volume Fluctuation”.
Ah yes, mechanical drives spinning at 10,000rpm, once the dream of every computer nerd, but since the introduction of the SSD, we're not so sure there's much of a demand for Western Digital's VelociRaptor drives. Either which way, WD seems to think that there's enough demand and has revived the VelociRaptor range of drives and in its third iteration we're looking at larger capacities, more SKUs and better performance.
If you thought Western Digital's 7mm slim, 500GB Scorpio Blue was an achievement, then we can tell you it's only the start of what's to come. At IDF Beijing Intel was pushing for an even slimmer hard drive standard which will stand a mere 5mm tall, or as Intel put it, 28 percent smaller in terms of volume.
A new 2.5-inch HDD that is of particular appeal to the Ultrabook segment has been outed by WD today under its Scorpio family of mechanical drives. The company has released a new Scorpio Blue model that comes in capacities of up to 500GB while being just 7mm thick.
SSD drives undoubtedly are extremely fast, with their speeds being only limited by the bandwidth of the SATA bus interface. However they also remain disproportionately expensive per GB when compared to mechanical drives, forbidding mainstream customers from purchasing large capacity drives. For those who require a fairly large primary drive and want to reap the benefits of SSD technology, several companies developed caching solutions, such as the Synapse which we reviewed several weeks ago. OCZ however offers another interesting product, the RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB. The RevoDrive Hybrid is a ready-to-go storage solution which couples a 1TB mechanical drive with a 128GB SSD cache in the form of a PCI-E device. In this review we will find out not only how well it compares against SSD drives but when compared to other caching solutions as well.
SSDs might still be the hot topic in storage, but considering the high costs per GB, hard disk drives aren't going anywhere any time soon. Seagate has announced that it has managed to reach storage densities of 1 Terabit per square inch, something the company claims will allow for twice the hard drive capacity of today within the next few years.
Thunderbolt devices are finally starting to trickle out into the market, albeit most of them so far have been storage devices and Western Digital's new My Book Thunderbolt Duo is no different in this regard. However, where WD has managed to excel compared to its competitors in terms of pricing.
Toshiba and Western Digital have signed an agreement to exchange certain assets relating to their hard disk drive (HDD) businesses in efforts to increase capacity and expand market portfolios.
FORUMS
PRICEWATCH
VIDEOS
You might have noticed that SSDs have been getting a slimmer profile with several companies recently announcing 7mm drives. Well, the hard drive makers don't want to be left behind in the race to provide components for Ultrabooks and now Hitachi has announced a new series of 7mm 2.5-inch hard drives.
Western Digital has announced My Book Live Duo with dual drives that offer high capacity and double-safe file protection, and provide anytime, anywhere access to stored media and files whether you are on your computer, tablet or smartphone.
The SSD market is continuously growing, yet high capacity devices will most likely not be affordable by the bulk of consumers for several years to come. Even after the Thailand catastrophe which increased mechanical drive prices by as much as 300%, high capacity SSDs were far too expensive to be competitive. Many manufacturers are working on solutions to improve hard disk drive performance without having to use a large capacity SSD; Intel introduced the SRT (Smart Response Technology) n their Z68 chipset, Seagate designed hybrid mechanical drives with a small SSD cache installed and OCZ introduced various solutions, the most popular being a hybrid PCI-E 1TB drive. OCZ however also introduced another very interesting product, an SSD baptized “Synapse”, which has been designed to be used as a plug & play caching solution. OCZ promises SSD speeds while using virtually any mechanical HDD of up to 2TB capacity as a primary system disk. Sounds too good to be true? We will find out in this review.
SSD sales are expected to reach a record high this year, following on from a phenomenal year of growth in 2011, according to a study by the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Solid state drives (SSDs) are dropping in price much faster than hard disk drives (HDD), according to figures released by website uptime monitoring firm Pingdom.
Seagate and Western Digital are cutting their warranties for hard disk drives as demand and prices soar following extensive flooding for months in Thailand.
Thailand floods did triple hard disk prices, but did it help Solid State Drives (SSD) sell better instead?
PREV
