Hasta La Gadget!

Hyuh Jin Lee’s concept hard-drive emergency kit looks fantastic, although it suffers from a bad case of over-intellectualizitus, something common in student concept designs. The idea is that the IV-drip contains a hard-drive full of anti-virus software which auto-runs when hooked up to the computer.

This would actually be quite useful as a product, but the ridiculous design is quite superfluous. Also, is a Mac the best computer to pick when showing an anti-virus solution?

It’s not all bad, though. I actually dig this design, if only for the drip-feeding aesthetic. It would make a very neat-looking setup on my desk, too. My Mac could suck the bits down from it’s own bag-on-a-stick while I continue to receive IV gin from the tube I jam into my arm every morning after breakfast.

Dr. Hard drive bag (healing your PC) [Coroflot via CNET]

Yearning for more info on the HP MediaSmart LX195? Here’s some new concrete details for you to go along with the leaked images from earlier this month. As previously suggested, it’s got a a single 640GB internal SATA drive with 7200RPM, with the only option for expansion being via the four USB 2.0 ports in the back. We’re also looking at a 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor, 1GB RAM, Windows Home Server software and support for Apple’s Time Machine. Mum’s the word on price, but if you’re looking to start saving early, suggested retail price is just under four Benjamins.

Filed under: Media PCs, Storage

HP MediaSmart LX195 boasts 640GB HDD, 1.6GHz Atom, $400 MSRP originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Technically, OCZ outed this here PCI-Express SSD way back at CeBIT in March, but it’s just now making things super official. Now available with a fresh face and hard specifications, the Z-Drive is aiming to take on wares by firms like Fusion-io and provide blistering transfer rates to anyone who buys in. Essentially, this device removes the SATA bottleneck by employing the PCIe architecture and four Vertex controllers configured in four-way RAID 0 array. Curious about performance? Read speeds can hit upwards of 510MB/sec, while write speeds top out at 480MB/sec — plenty respectable in our eyes. OCZ’s planning to push these out in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities, and while final pricing is still being kept under wraps, we’re told that it’ll be kept “competitive.”

Filed under: Storage

OCZ gets official with Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It seems that Dell jumped the gun a wee bit by shedding some light on Samsung’s forthcoming self-encrypting SSDs, but now Sammy is providing us with all the missing details… er, most of them, anyway. In conjunction with Wave Systems, Samsung is launching what it calls an industry first with its new line of solid state drives. Said devices are able to automatically encrypt information as it’s saved to the drive, and they each come bundled with Wave’s EMBASSY management software. At least initially, these super secure SSDs will ship in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB flavors, and while we’re told that the whole lot is available now “through at least one major OEM,” there’s no specific mention of price. Shocker, we know. The full release is after the break.

Continue reading Samsung comes clean with self-encrypting SSDs

Filed under: Storage

Samsung comes clean with self-encrypting SSDs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With SSD prices still well above the point of affordability, we’re thrilled to see more entrants joining the burgeoning market. Big players like Western Digital and Corsair are being greeted by small timers such as PhotoFast, Fusion-io and SandForce, the latter of which has just escaped “stealth mode” in order to launch its first solid state drive processor family. The chips utilize DuraClass technology and promise to address “key NAND flash issues allowing MLC flash technologies to be reliably used in broad based, mission critical storage environments.” More germane to our discussion is the nice boost in transfer rates and lower cost of production; we’re told that the SF-1000 crew sports a standard 3 gigabit-per-second SATA host interface connecting up to 512 gigabytes of commodity NAND flash memory, and that it delivers 30,000 IOPS and 250MB/s performance (sequential 128KB read or write transfers) with 100 micro-second latency. If all goes well, select OEMs will be launching SSDs based on this processor later this year, so we’ll definitely be keeping our eyes peeled.

[Via GadgetMix, thanks Kamal]

Filed under: Storage

SandForce breaks into SSD market with speedy SF-1000 processors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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