Hasta La Gadget!

We had a pretty firm idea that this was happening, but now Major Nelson has gone and made it official: mass storage is coming the Xbox 360 at long last. There will be a system update on April 6th, which will allow up to two simultaneous USB flash drives plugged into the system, which will be capable of storing profiles, game saves, demos, “and more.” The maximum size supported is 16GB, and even though regular USB hard drives will be supported, they’ll be up against the same size cap, and performance will suffer as well. You’ll have to manually format a USB device for use in this way when plugging it into the 360, but Microsoft will be partnering with SanDisk for a branded drive in May that will come preconfigured. Also tweaked is the new memory management screen (what convenient timing!) which should make shuffling around these files less of a chore. Check out some screenshots below.

[Thanks, Jeff]

USB mass storage support coming to Xbox 360 on April 6th originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time for us to welcome the world’s most capacious 9.5mm-tall hard drive, the 750GB MK7559GSXP. Yeah, it’s quite a mouthful, but then it’s not every day that you come across a storage disk that packs data quite so tightly, so maybe this is a name worth remembering. Not only is Toshiba’s new two-platter 5,400RPM beastie the first ever to rise above 640GB without expanding to the chunkier 12.5mm height profile, it’s also claimed to be 14 percent more energy efficient than the Japanese company’s previous biggest model. If you don’t mind moving up to the 12.5mm class, Toshiba’s also bringing out a new MKxx59GSM series, which can stretch all the way up to 1TB, thanks to fitting three platters into the 2.5-inch diagonal space. Samples of both will be distributed to system manufacturers by the end of April, with mass production following soon thereafter.

Toshiba announces 750GB and 1TB laptop HDDs, gives them awkward model names like MK7559GSXP originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 06:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony’s illustrious VAIO Z may have a so-called “Dynamic Hybrid Graphics System,” but NVIDIA’s Optimus it is not. Or is it. Notebook Review‘s own igorstef started digging deeper within the laptop’s switchable GPU setup, and lo and behold, it sure looks as if Optimus is underneath. He went through the painstaking process of installing a slew of new drivers and tweaking some code within select .inf files, and in the end he seemingly found a way to get Optimus drivers working on the new rig. Of course, the debate has been raging on for five pages now, and it still seems inconclusive as to what’s really going on behind the scenes. In related news, ZoinksS2k seems to have discovered a way to get Windows 7’s TRIM feature working on his SSD-equipped VAIO Z, and if you’re interested in doing some tinkering of your own in either case, you know where to dive in.

[Thanks, Bill]

NVIDIA’s Optimus uncovered in Sony VAIO Z, along with TRIM support? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two — no, three — things in life are sure: Death, taxes, and the fact that storage manufacturers will continue to cram ever-more ridiculous quantities of memory into tinier packages.

SanDisk announced a new 32-GB microSDHC card on Monday, effectively doubling the maximum storage capacity of the tiny, less-than-dime-sized memory chips found in many modern smartphones. This is the maximum capacity that the HC-format microSD cards can hold, so any further advances will have to wait until manufacturers start installing microSD-XC slots in their phones.

The advance means it is now possible to swallow an entire 7,000-song iTunes library, or 10 hours of uncompressed HD video, without gagging.

SanDisk says its new card will be available for purchase on its website starting Tuesday, and through retail channels shortly thereafter.

(Samsung announced a 32-GB microSD card earlier this year, but the card does not appear to be available to consumers yet.)

With a retail price of $200 and a weight of just 0.5 grams, you’ll want to be extra-careful with this minuscule memory chip, as it’s worth about 11 times its weight in gold.

To achieve the increased capacity, SanDisk did two things: Switch to a 32-nanometer production process, and stack eight memory chips vertically inside the microSD card.

The first change refers to the size of a typical memory component, which is now around 32nm, or about the same size as the circuits used in Intel’s latest Core i3 and Core i5 chips. Using smaller circuitry enables the company to cram more bits onto a wafer of silicon.

32nm X3 chip under an electron microscope that shows eight-die stack. This is an actual photo of a 32nm X3 card that was torn apart to show the layers of memory chips inside.

The second change is pure micromechanical engineering. Although a microSD card is only 1mm thick, including the plastic housing, SanDisk’s engineers have managed to squeeze a vertical stack of eight memory chips inside it. Each chip holds 4 GB of data, so altogether the stack holds 32 GB.

“You’re basically talking about an entire jukebox on a flash memory chip the size of your pinkie fingernail,” said SanDisk vice president Eric Bone.

SanDisk microSDHC Cards (product site)

SanDisk First to Ship 32 Gigabyte microSDHC Card (press release)

Photos courtesy SanDisk

It’s been a long and painful four months since Pogoplug introduced its second generation NAS-ifier, but those who’ve been holding out for additional functionality can finally buy in. In an effort to cater to these so-called “gamers,” the company has enabled its device to stream multimedia content directly to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game consoles; users will be able to access, share and stream media directly to their console from any local or remotely located Pogoplug, and if all goes well, your console should actually see the drives connected to the Pogoplug and the contents of other shared Pogoplugs automatically. In related news, the unit is also now capable of pushing out offsite backups through a new version of Active Copy (shown above), so all that’s left to do is hop online and suck down that tasty firmware update that should be waiting. Enjoy!

Continue reading Pogoplug now streaming to Xbox 360 and PS3, handling offsite backups

Pogoplug now streaming to Xbox 360 and PS3, handling offsite backups originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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