Hasta La Gadget!

Just as we surmised, Seagate is taking the wraps off its new hybrid drive, with OEM shipments of the Momentus XT starting today. Hailed as the fastest 2.5-inch laptop drive on the planet, this here device marries a 7200RPM hard drive (250/320/500GB) with 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory and 32MB of cache, and the company’s Adaptive Memory technology allows it to store frequently used information on the latter for ultra-speedy access. It can boot up to 100 percent faster than a conventional 5400RPM hard drive, and thankfully for us all, it utilizes a standard 9.5mm-high form factor that the vast majority of laptops use. Seagate also affirms that the drive “operates independently of the operating system and the motherboard chipset,” but we’re going to hold tight until we see the first real benchmarks (it’ll soon be an option in ASUS’ ROG G73Jh gaming laptop) before getting all hyped up. In related news, the outfit also announced the world’s highest capacity 7200RPM drive at 750GB, with the Momentus 750GB boasting SATA 3Gbps support, an NCQ interface, 16MB of cache and “silent acoustics.” No price is mentioned, but you can bet a hefty premium will placed on something this capacious. The full presser, another image and a specs sheet awaits you beyond the break.

Update: The reviews are already pouring in, and at just $155 for the 500 gigger, it’s receiving a fair amount of praise.

Continue reading Seagate pairs 7200RPM HDD with 4GB of NAND in 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid drive

Seagate pairs 7200RPM HDD with 4GB of NAND in 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid drive originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 May 2010 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Seagate  | Email this | Comments

It’s comical, really — we can’t get a decently powerful Atom to save our lives, but the absolutely thrilling world of magnetic tape storage is bounding ahead at a record pace. Priorities, people. For the archivists and A-type pack rats in the crowd, you’ll probably be atypically elated to know that Hitachi Maxell and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have teamed up in order to develop the world’s most capacious tape cartridges. Back in January, IBM and Fujifilm celebrated a momentary victory by announcing a 35TB version of this same product, but this record shattering attempt takes areal density to spaces never before ventured into in order to hit the magical 50TB mark. ‘Course, you’ll probably never see one outside of your state’s largest library, but at least that 3TB HDD you’re drooling over for your next PC seems so much more bodacious now. Oh, wait.

Japanese gurus unveil 50TB magnetic tape cartridges, are officially ‘taking it way back’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 11:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Physorg  |  Maxell  | Email this | Comments

Seagate has been pushing the areal density envelope for years now, but by and large, these “developments” we hear about typically fade into the cold, harsh winter night without ever amounting to anything tangible. Not so this go ’round, with the company confirming to Thinq (and reaffirmed on our end) that it will be “announcing a 3TB drive later this year.” If you’ll recall, 2TB drives have held the crown for the world’s largest since early 2009, and if all goes to plan, we’ll be able to buy drives 50 percent larger than even those before the dawn of 2011. The company didn’t talk details — we’re still left to envision a price, release date and spindle speed — but it didn’t hesitate to mention a few issues that users with older operating systems may encounter. Essentially, you’ll need to have a rig that’s fully capable of handling the Long LBA (logical block addressing) standard, which means that you’ll need updated drivers, an updated BIOS and either a 64-bit copy of Vista, Windows 7 or “modified version of Linux.” As you’d expect, Windows XP users needn’t pay this platter any mind, and while Seagate is hopeful that industry players will all rally in short order to support the new HDD, there’s still a chance that these growing pains will lead to delays. What we’re most jazzed about here, crazily enough, isn’t the predictable jump in capacity — it’s the fantasies of über-cheap 2TB drives once they fall from the top.

[Thanks, JC]

Seagate confirms 3TB hard drive for 2010, possible 32-bit OS issues originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 17:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hot Hardware  |  Thinq  | Email this | Comments

Mmm, now we’re talking. For years now, 2.5-inch SSDs have largely been too tiny (in terms of storage space) and too pricey to take seriously — at least, for everyone except those willing to pay substantially more to ride the cutting edge. But Other World Computing just threw a monkey wrench into the norm, dishing out an incredibly roomy 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro solid state drive meant to supplant your aging laptop HDD. It’s one of four in the range (60GB, 120GB and 240GB models are also available), all of which are pegged to deliver up to 285MB/sec sustained data rates with “no speed degradation.” All four sizes are up for pre-order now for both PC and Mac platforms, with prices set at $219.99 (60GB), $379.99 (120GB), $699.99 (240GB) and $1,579.99 (480GB). What, you expected 480 gigabytes of sweet, succulent flash memory to come cheap? Puh-lease.

Continue reading OWC debuts uber-capacious 480GB 2.5-inch Mercury Extreme Pro SSD

OWC debuts uber-capacious 480GB 2.5-inch Mercury Extreme Pro SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 May 2010 13:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hot Hardware  |  OWC  | Email this | Comments

From the man that brought you the OS Xbox Pro and the Cinematograph HD comes… a cockpit canopy filled with hard drives? Not quite. Meet the Black Dwarf, a custom network-attached-storage device from the mind of video editor Will Urbina, packing 16TB of RAID 5 magnetic media and a 1.66GHz Atom N270 CPU into a completely hand-built Lexan, aluminum and steel enclosure. Urbina says the Dwarf writes at 88MB per second and reads at a fantastic 266MB per second, making the shuttlecraft-shaped 12.7TB array nearly as speedy as an SSD but with massive capacity and some redundancy to boot. As usual, the DIY guru shot a professional time-lapse video of his entire build process, and this one’s not to be missed — it showcases some pretty spiffy camerawork as well as the man’s welding skills. See sparks fly after the break.

Continue reading Homemade 16TB NAS dwarfs the competition with insane build quality (video)

Homemade 16TB NAS dwarfs the competition with insane build quality (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 May 2010 04:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack A Day  |  Will U. Design  | Email this | Comments