Hasta La Gadget!

Lexar has annouched the availability of the XQD memory card series for the Nikon D4 and future XQD-based camera models. The storage device provides high-speed performance, which is ideal for 1080p full high-definition (HD) video and 3D video content. Based on the PCI Express specification, the Lexar XQD memory card series provides a 2.5Gb per second performance. The Lexar XQD memory card series will be released in the third quarter of 2012. [PhotographyBay]

Intel has been offering SSDs for a long time now in versions aimed at enterprise use and the general consumer. Intel has announced that it has added a new SSD model to its 330 series that has 240 GB of storage. The SSD uses 6 Gb/s technology and promises impressive performance. The 230 series has sustained read speeds of up to 500 MB/s and sustained writes up to 450 MB/s.

The series uses 25nm MLC Intel NAND flash memory and is validated for three years of useful life. The new 240 GB capacity 330 series SSD and the other SSDs in the series are available in a retail box package that includes the needed SATA cables and a 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch drive adapter allowing the SSD to be installed in a desktop computer.

Intel has also announced that it has reduced pricing on some of its SSDs, including the SSD 520 series, the 330 series, and the 320 series products. Sadly, Intel offers no details on the specific price cuts for the products. The new 240 GB SSD should be available now.

Intel adds 240 GB SSD 330 Series drive and slashes SSD prices is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Intel has just announced that it is introducing a new 240GB version of its Series 330 solid state drive (SDD). At the same time, the company is lowering the maximum suggested price (MRSP) on previous models in the 330 Series, but also the 520 Series and 320 Series.

The new Series 330 240GB will come at $194 MRSP, but we’ll have to see if online prices get lower than this. With this offering, Intel breaks the $1/GB barrier, just like the industry predicted last year, and we expect pretty much every SSD manufacturer to get there by year’s end.

The good news is that this is not over. Moore’s law dictates that prices will continue to plunge, while capacity rises. In the meantime, expect more and more computers to use SSD drives to accelerate file access and as it stands, this is still one of the best upgrade that a computer can get. Don’t miss our Intel SSD 320 Series review.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Intel SSD 330 Series Announced, Intel SSD 910 is PCI-based and impressive,

After last year’s acquisition of U.S. computer security software company Symantec, China’s Huawei Technologies is looking at offering a larger range of storage products to its customers. While best known for being a networking and telecommunications equipment supplier, rising growth rates in mobile and Internet data services has prompted the company to seriously look at entering those markets.

“Our business is changing, and our customers’ needs are changing. We need to enter these markets,” said Jeff Jiang, director of storage marketing at Huawei. Huawei and Symantec established a joint venture in 2008, but now Huawei will need to look at different ways to sell storage products without the Symantec brand, since an acquisition to buy out the rest of the joint venture was made earlier this year. The acquisition took place to better provide total solutions to Huawei customers so that networking, servers and storage systems could be bundled together.

Huawei added 1,000 staff to research and development of storage products this year and has plans to announce larger scale storage systems this September. The company’s primary market has been China with an 11 percent market share, but the real challenge will be competing globally against major rivals like HP and IBM. In any case, improving the Huawei brand outside of China must be on the company to-do list.

[via PC World]

Huawei looking to offer wider range of storage products is written by Elise Moreau & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Us humans have been quick to embrace digital technology for preserving our memories, but we’ve forgotten that most of our storage won’t last for more than a few decades; when a hard drive loses its magnetism or an optical disc rots, it’s useless. French nuclear waste manager ANDRA wants to make sure that at least some information can survive even if humanity itself is gone — a million or more years, to be exact. By using two fused disk platters made from sapphire with data written in a microscope-readable platinum, the agency hopes to have drives that will keep humming along short of a catastrophe. The current technology wouldn’t hold reams of data — about 80,000 minuscule pages’ worth on two platters — but it could be vital for ANDRA, which wants to warn successive generations (and species) of radioactivity that might last for eons. Even if the institution mostly has that pragmatic purpose in mind, though, it’s acutely aware of the archeological role these €25,000 ($30,598) drives could serve once leaders settle on the final languages and below-ground locations at an unspecified point in the considerably nearer future. We’re just crossing our fingers that our archived internet rants can survive when the inevitable bloody war wipes out humanity and the apes take over.

[Image credit: SKB]

Filed under: Storage, Science

France’s ANDRA developing a million-year hard drive, we hope our badly-written blogs live in perpetuity originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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