MJM Data Recovery

SATA group creates new high-speed storage spec

2011-08-23T05:33:00.000+01:00

The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) announced a new PCI Express (PCIe)-based interconnect specification that aims to boost interface throughput of solid state drive (SSD) technology from 6GB/sec to 8Gb/sec and 16Gb/sec.

The group said the new SATA Express specification, which it expects to release by the end of the year, protects investments in current SATA and PCIe products because it's a hybrid of both and still looks like SATA to the host system.

The current SATA 3.0 spec offers up to 6Gbit/sec throughput on a single channel, which is sufficient for most hardware interconnects, such as hard disk drives and mini-flash drive products.

Consumer and data center SSDs and hybrid drives that consist of flash memory and traditional spinning hard drives, however, can possess multiple internal channels to the flash memory chips. Multiple channels can quickly saturate a 6Gbit/sec I/O interconnect, said Mladen Luksic, president of SATA-IO.

"We had two choices. Either increase the SATA speed or find another [hybrid] solution that can be available today and be cost and technology compatible with legacy SATA environments," he said.

Because consumer and corporate SSDs are still a relatively small portion of the overall SATA device market, SATA-IO couldn't justify development of new SATA interconnect speeds, Luksic said, because it would "burden all other applications that are perfectly happy with 6Gbit/sec SATA."

The SATA Express specification combines the physical interface of PCI Express and moves the SATA controller from the host and into the SSD. "So to the OS and the application on the host side, the SATA Express device still looks like a SATA device. But in between it's PCIe physical connectivity," he said.

The specification will define new device and motherboard connectors that will support both new SATA Express and current SATA devices.

SATA Express will offer either one or two PCIe lanes, meaning devices will be able to support either 8Gbit/sec or 16Gbit/sec throughput, depending on how many lanes are used.

"It's scalable because PCIe is scalable in terms of adding more lanes," Luksid said. "So if there is a need to satisfy higher performance requirements of SSDs, we can do that simply by putting more lanes in rather than increasing the raw speed of the physical interconnectivity."

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Erasure coding ensures storage durability in environments where RAID falls down

2011-08-22T07:12:00.000+01:00

By Paul Speciale, vice president of products, AmplidataNetwork World - This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter's approach.

Erasure codes are a form of forward error correction (FEC) technology that has been used in a variety of ways for decades and is now emerging on a new class of high-capacity storage systems to address the limitations of RAID.

RAID was never designed to protect data on multi-terabyte drives because it was invented before 1GB drives were even available. The basic idea was to spread data across these smaller drives so a single failure didn't necessarily result in data loss.

Data protection is more complex with today's high-density disk drives. Over the last two decades, drive densities have increased more than 20,000 times. We have commercial storage systems shipping with 2TB and 3TB individual drives. Moreover, the cost of this storage capacity has become incredibly affordable: a 2TB SATA drive cost about $100.

ANALYSIS: Larger disks poised to change the RAID playing field

The cost/capacity offered by these new high-density drives provides an opportunity to store huge amounts of data on spinning media at a much more appealing price than before. So what's the problem with maintaining really large scale -- say petabytes and beyond -- on large-density drives?

With current 1TB and 2TB disk drives, RAID has significant vulnerability to data loss since RAID's rebuild process is a lengthy one, requiring a day or more in some implementations. Rebuilds can be even more lengthy if the task is set as a low-priority to preserve normal I/O performance.

It's not unreasonable to expect these rebuild times to extend to weeks as disk drive densities grow. As we increase the number of these drives under management, some users will experience a state of continual RAID rebuilds, based on standard annual failure rates (AFR) for disk drives in the 3% range.

The idea of adding a second level of protection to RAID-5 in the form of what is commonly known as RAID-6 came about to protect data against two simultaneous disk drive failures rather than one disk drive failure. This was in response to drive densities growing into hundreds of gigabytes.

A second drive failure (in a RAID-5 group), or a third drive failure (in a RAID-6 group), grows more likely when dealing with many disk drives, especially with long rebuilds. In addition, if the system encounters an unrecoverable read error (URE) while rebuilding the RAID group, data loss can result. Losing six or more disk drives, each with a terabyte or more of data, could be catastrophic for some businesses.

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Addonics 5-Port Multiplier Connects via eSATA, USB 3.0

2011-08-21T14:14:00.000+01:00

Addonics Technologies has introduced its HPM-XU hardware port multiplier which can connect up to five SATA devices including hard drives to eSATA or USB 3.0. The device features hardware RAID support including RAID 5. The RAID configuration can be set using dip switches or the included software utility.

The device works in such a way that when five hard drives are connected, they appear as five separate drives.

Operating system support includes all current versions of Windows and Mac OS X 10.4.x plus Linux kernel 2.4. The HPM-XU is available standalone for $99 or as part of the company's RAID Tower Mini for $245. The RAID Tower Mini features a compact design, two fans, a 180W power supply, and supports up to four hard drives.

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Samsung aims to boost tablet storage with new SSDs

2011-08-21T01:42:00.000+01:00

IDG News Service - Tablet users may need more storage capacity in the future, and Samsung Semiconductor on Thursday announced it is now making its fastest solid-state drives for tablets and laptops with capacity of up to 512GB.

The PM830 SSD offers throughput to transfer movies at faster speeds and also to shorten boot times of PCs to 10 seconds, the company said in a statement. The SSD offers throughput of 6 gigabits per second, which doubles the speed of older Samsung SSDs .

The PM830 will also be available in capacities of 128GB and 256GB, though the company declined to reveal price and availability information. The SSDs are targeted at use for "premium notebooks" and tablets, the company said.

Apple's iPad 2 tablet offers up to 64GB capacity, so the new drives would double storage capacity. SSDs are still considered expensive, but prices are falling and the drives could become a primary storage option for mainstream users next year, Gartner said earlier this year. By the second half of 2012, prices of mainstream PC SSDs could reach $1 per gigabyte, according to Gartner.

Many laptops use SSDs -- but with much less storage capacity -- to quicken boot times. For example, Lenovo installs SSDs on motherboards on some laptop models to assist for quick Windows 7 boot times. SSDs are considered faster and less power hungry than magnetic hard drives, and are already being offered as a primary storage option in laptops from most computer makers.

Samsung already offers SSDs with 512GB capacity, but with slower I/O capacity. Samsung faces competition in the space from companies including Intel, Toshiba, OCZ and Super Talent.

The new PM830 SSD offers sequential read speeds of 500MB per second and sequential write speeds of 350MB per second. The new SSD supports the Serial ATA Revision 3.0 interface, and by year-end will replace the older Samsung SSDs transferring data at 3 gigabits per second, Samsung said.

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OCZ Launches Enterprise Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD

2011-08-20T05:11:00.000+01:00

OCZ Launches Enterprise Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD | StorageReview.com HomeStorage ReviewsLeaderboardPerformance DatabaseReference GuidesForumsReliability SurveyAbout SR August 2nd, 2011 by Kevin OBrien OCZ Launches Enterprise Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD

OCZ has launched their latest enterprise-class PCIe SSD, the Z-Drive R4. Packing up to eight SandForce SF-2282 processors, the Z-Drive R4 is able to channel upwards of 5,600MB/s and 1.2M IOPS when equipped with two OCZ SuperScale storage controllers. With a growing popularity in cloud-based storage solutions, OCZ is aiming to position the PCIe interface as the leading standard for tier-one storage solutions utilizing their 2nd-generation Virtualized Controller Architecture.

At the heart of the new Z-Drive R4 is the VCA 2.0, the same interface also found in the consumer RevoDrive 3 X2 we reviewed last month. This virtualization layer adds standard SCSI commands over the PCIe interface, enabling SMART as well as TRIM/SCSI Unmap support. Fully supporting power fail protection, the VCA lets users enable data recovery and non-stop modes with IntegRecover allowing full enterprise-class data integrity.

The Z-Drive R4 will be available in two configurations; half-height for 1U servers, and full-height for larger systems. Both will feature either SLC or MLC NAND depending on specific user requirements.

RM88 (Full-Height) Specifications

Available in 800GB, 1.6TB, and 3.2TB configurations MLC NAND Flash PCI Express Gen. 2 x8 PCIe full height, 3/4 length compliant OCZ SuperScale Storage Controller NAND Controller: 8 x SSD Processors Dimensions (L x W x H): 242 x 98.4 x 17.14 mm Weight: 283g Power Consumption: 23W Idle, 26W Active Operating Temp: 0°C ~ 70°C Storage Temp: -45°C ~ 85°C

RM84 (Half-Height) Specifications

Available in 300GB, 600GB, and 1.2TB configurations MLC NAND Flash PCI Express Gen. 2 x8 PCIe half height, half length compliant OCZ SuperScale Storage Controller NAND Controller: 4 x SSD Processors Dimensions (L x W x H): 168.55 x 68.91 x 17.14 mm Weight: 131g Power Consumption: 14.5W Idle, 16W Active Operating Temp: 0°C ~ 70°C Storage Temp: -45°C ~ 85°C

RM88 Max Performance Data

Read: Up to 2800MB/s Write: Up to 2800MB/s Random 4k Write: 410,000 IOPS Max IOPS: 500,000

RM 84 Max Performance

Read: Up to 2000MB/s Write: Up to 2000MB/s Random 4k Write: 250,000 IOPS Max IOPS: 260,000

Additional Specifications

OCZ VCA 2.0 Architecture TRIM/SCSI unmap (requires OS support) Power Fail Protection with DataWrite Assurance Technology Encryption: 128-bit & 256-bit AES-compliant ECC Recovery SMART support w/ enterprise attributes MTBF: 2,000,000 hours 3-Year Warranty Compatible with Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Linux Red Hat Enterprise 6.1

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Micron Talks About New 3D NAND At Flash Media Summit 2011

2011-08-19T07:24:00.000+01:00

At Flash Media Summit 2011, flash memory is an exciting topic on the mind of all visitors. Near the center of this market, Micron sits with a heavy influence in components ranging from the NAND itself to complete end-user products like the RealSSD m4/C400 SSD. Even as adoption rates are increasing faster than ever, one thing on the mind of most manufacturers is what’s next? For Micron, 3D NAND is the next big thing.

In the past year Micron has seen a large increase in their consumer product division, jumping from 1% to a whopping 10% market penetration no part in thanks heavy advertising of their new SSDs like the RealSSD m4. This drive also marked the first 25nm drive for Micron. Even as most retail shoppers are still coming to grips with the drop from 3x to 2xnm flash, Micron and others are looking at the next lithography shrinks and how they will handle the change.

As many quickly came to realize with the drop to 25nm flash, endurance is a strong concern as write cycles decrease with each shrink in NAND. The drop to the newly announced 20nm and 1xnm continue to push the limits, leaving many to consider what’s on the horizon. During Micron’s keynote presentation by Glen Hawk, Micron gave a glimpse of their upcoming 3D NAND, which puts more emphasis on stacking rather than just continuing to shrink the die size. The benefit to this is relaxing the restrictions on shrinking the process to increase density and instead working on multiple layers. The photos below showing off the difference between planar flash and 3D NAND kind of show the tightly packed layers in a prototype NAND cross-section.

While still a few years away, it does show where the market is heading and that NAND will still have a strong position in the storage market. Micron won't say for certain (nor will others) when the new flash memory will be hitting the shelves, outside of the next few years when planar flash has hit its limits. The main thing consumers and enterprise clients should take away from this is NAND flash still has a life even after the die-shrinking limits of the silicon itself has been reached.

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Hitachi Releases Ultrastar SSD400M MLC-Based Enterprise SSD (FMS 2011)

2011-08-18T10:16:00.000+01:00

Today Hitachi released their new Ultrastar SSD400M, offering SLC-level write endurance using 25nm MLC Intel NAND. With the write endurance levels topping 7.3PB lifetime, or roughly 10 full drive fills per day on the 400GB model for five years, Hitachi is able to bring enterprise-level performance in at a much lower cost. Offered in 200GB and 400GB capacities, the Ultrastar SSD400M is being targeted at datacenters and cloud data companies who need cost-effective 2.5" SAS-interface SSDs.

The new Ultrastar SSD400M is no slouch when it comes to transfer speeds, boasting 495MB/s read and 385MB/s write. Also specified are its sustained 4K random transfer speeds, listed at 56,000 IOps read and 24,000 IOps write. Aimed at replacing platter-based storage in datacenters, the SSD400M offers substantially higher random transfer speeds, which factor into lower performance per watt power figures, or cost savings for large server arrays.

Hitachi is currently shipping qualification samples of the Ultrastar SSD400M, with full production listed as starting later this year in September. Pricing has not been announced, but given the MLC-NAND inside, expect to see pricing below that of similarly sized SLC-based enterprise SSDs.

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Asus K93SV Notebook Supports 3.5" Hard Drives

2011-08-17T22:06:00.000+01:00

Asus has released details around their new K93 series of notebooks. Sure, they have the latest Intel processors and other great highlights like IceCool technology to keep the motherboard cool and an award-winning chicklet keyboard. But when it comes to storage the Asus K93SV really gets creative, sporting an option for dual drives with a 3.5" hard drive as the primary system drive.

Asus lists the following storage configurations:

2.5" SATA 750GB

5400 rpm / 7200 rpm 640GB

5400 rpm5 00GB

5400 rpm / 7200 rpm 320GB

5400 rpm Dual HDD Support(Optional)

A note at the bottom of the spec sheet indicates dual drives will be accomplished with the 3.5" drive being the primary and the second drive using the 2.5" bay. IceCool or not, the first concern when thinking about a high-performance 3.5" jammed in a notebook is heat. Asus may be using select drives in the 3.5" slot to help control heat, but even so, notebooks aren't designed to manage the heat output from what are traditionally desktop hard drives.

We'll have to wait and see what sort of interest there is in a system like this and what drive reliability looks like over the heat, bumps and bruises the 3.5" drive will be subject to. Regardless though, it's an interesting take on storage in the mobile computing ecosystem.

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SSD drives promise to enhance storage performance, but a new host-interface-standard holds the key

2011-08-17T00:48:00.000+01:00

Network World - This vendor-written tech primer is submitted on the behalf of the NVMe Promoter Group, which is backed by Cisco, Dell, EMC, IDT, Intel, Micron, NetApp, Oracle, SandForce, and STEC. Readers should note it favors the NVMe's approach.

Flash-memory-based solid-state disks (SSDs) provide faster random access and data transfer rates than electromechanical drives and today can often serve as rotating-disk replacements, but the host interface to SSDs remains a performance bottleneck. PCI Express (PCIe)-based SSDs together with an emerging standard called NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory express) promises to solve the interface bottleneck.

SSDs are proving useful today, but will find far more broad usage once the new NVMe standard matures and company's deliver integrated circuits that enable closer coupling of the SSD to the host processor.

ANALYSIS: SSD could ultimately replace hard disk drives, Hitachi CTO says

The real issue at hand is the need for storage technology that can match the exponential ramp in processor performance over the past two decades. Chip makers have continued to ramp the performance of individual processor cores, to combine multiple cores on one IC, and to develop technologies that can closely couple multiple ICs in multi-processor systems. Ultimately, all of the cores in such a scenario need access to the same storage subsystem.

Enterprise IT managers are eager to utilize the multiprocessor systems because they have the potential of boosting the number of I/O operations per second (IOPS) that a system can process and also the number of IOPS per watt (IOPS/W) in power consumption. New processors offer better IOPS relative to cost and power consumption -- assuming the processing elements can get access to the data in a timely fashion. Active processors waiting on data waste time and money.

Storage hierarchy

There are of course multiple levels of storage technology in a system that ultimately feeds code and data to each processor core. Generally, each core includes local cache memory that operates at core speed. Multiple cores in a chip share a second-level and sometimes a third-level cache. And DRAM feeds the caches. The DRAM and cache access-time and data-transfer performance has scaled to match the processor performance.

The disconnect has come in the performance gap that exist between DRAM and rotating storage in terms of access time and data rate. Disk-drive vendors have done a great job of designing and manufacturing higher-capacity, lower-cost-per-gigabyte disk drives. But the drives inherently have limitations in terms of how fast they can access data and then how fast they can transfer that data into DRAM.

Access time depends on how fast a hard drive can move the read head over the required data track on a disk, and the rotational latency for the sector where the data is located to move under the head. The maximum transfer rate is dictated by the rotational speed of the disk and the data encoding scheme that together determine the number of bytes per second read from the disk.

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Seagate GoFlex Turbo External Hard Drive Released

2011-08-16T09:11:00.000+01:00

Seagate has added another offering to their line of GoFlex external hard drives, the GoFlex Turbo. The Turbo is highlighted by SafetyNet data recovery services. While many external drives have some sort of recovery service available, the Turbo includes two years of the service as part of the purchase price. Inside, Seagate is using a 7200 RPM 2.5" drive that connects via USB 3.0.

Should something go wrong and the drive inside the Turbo gets damaged, the SafetyNet service covers one recovery attempt over the two-year service period. Send the drive in for recovery and the lab will do its best to recover as much of the data as possible.

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7-Zip Compresses Files Efficiently

2011-08-15T17:43:00.000+01:00

PC World - When people talk about file compression, they usually mean ZIP. In fact, they often make it into a verb--much like we "Google" things on the Internet, we "zip" files before sending them over email. But ZIP is just one compression format, and it isn't necessarily the best. Free, open-source utility 7-Zip supports ZIP, but also the much-improved 7z compression format. It's available in a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version.

In fact, 7-Zip is the official reference implementation for the 7z format, and since it is open source, the format specification is distributed right within the source code. To test it, I used a folder with 65MB of easily-compressed documents such as DOC, XLS, and BMP files; it also contained a few small ZIP files for good measure. Zipped using Windows Explorer, the folder compressed to 8,881KB. 7-Zip compressed the same exact folder down to 6,036KB, shaving almost 3MB off the archive. That's a difference of more than 25%--phenomenal, really, when you consider ZIP's market dominance.

Speaking of market dominance, that's another key difference between the 7z and ZIP formats. Windows Explorer has been handling ZIP files like folders for years, and most people recognize them instantly and work with them all the time. But send someone a .7Z file, and they may not know what to do with it--in fact, they may not even realize it's a compressed file.

Note that I call it a "difference" rather than a disadvantage: These days, many email providers (including Gmail) snoop into any ZIP file you send, and if it contains executable files, simply don't let you send it. Compress your executables using 7-Zip, and you can email them to anyone you like.

7-Zip doesn't always offer a superior compression ratio: When I tested it with a folder full of JPG files (which are already well-compressed), the resulting 7z archive was actually 78KB larger than a ZIP of the same folder produced by Windows Explorer. However, the archive was nearly 34MB in size, so a 78KB difference is negligible.

When you first launch 7-Zip, its interface is simple and sparse: Just a list of files, along with six large toolbar buttons and a menu. No Wizards, welcome dialogs or any other pesky interruptions between you and your files. If you'd like to give the interface a bit more "oomph," hit F9 and 7-Zip will be transformed into a basic dual-pane file manager. You can even save up to ten folders as "Favorites" if you use it often for traversing your file system.

All in all, 7-Zip's user interface will probably not blow you away. Its impressive compression ratios, however, just might.

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Data center surprises

2011-08-14T22:46:00.000+01:00

Network World - It isn't surprising that virtualization topped the list of technologies expected to have the biggest impact on data center investments over the next two years, according to a new Network World study, but the survey turned up some surprises as well.

One surprise: The 376 respondents reported a healthy average ratio of opex to capex data center spending: 53% to 47%, respectively. That shows companies have been successful implementing technologies that require less care and feeding, freeing more money up for investment in innovation, a marked departure from the 80/20 opex to capex ratio so often cited in this business.

MORE SURPRISES: Google, data centers using less power than expected

Less surprising is the fact that three flavors of virtualization were cited as big-boom items. Almost half the respondents said server virtualization will have the biggest impact on data center investments over the next two years, showing the headroom left with this technology, followed by storage virtualization (cited by 40%) and desktop virtualization (35%).

What about cloud? Some 31% believe private cloud technology will have a significant impact on data center spending over the next two years, followed by hybrid cloud at 25% and public cloud at 19%.

Asked about the need to migrate to flatter networks or network fabrics to contend with the shift to virtual resources, 26% of the respondents said they aren't sure the need is real. A larger group, however, sees the writing on the wall: 20% said it is real and they will evaluate the technology this year; 23% said it is real but they are a year away from the need to evaluate further; and 18% said it is real but they are more than two years away from evaluation. A final 12% don't foresee the need to change anything.

Asked how their data center strategy is affecting resource utilization rates, 60% said they are driving it up, which perhaps explains some of the shift in opex to capex monies. But some ancillary results were less intuitive.

For example, even with big investments in virtualization, 40% of the respondents said the device count in their data centers is increasing, while only 28% are seeing decreases (and 18% report no change). And 29% see vendor counts increasing, despite years of effort to turn that around. Only 23% have managed to reduce vendor count (39% report no change).

What's more, even as companies have strived to reduce the number of applications they manage, 52% of the respondents report application counts growing. Only 10% report declines, while 31% are treading water.

Big picture: It would appear that gains from virtualization have lessened the need to simplify environments by reducing device, vendor and application count.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

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HighPoint Releases New USB 3.0 Card Supporting 2GB/s

2011-08-14T04:22:00.000+01:00

Are you looking for a relatively inexpensive way to upgrade your slightly outdated Windows or Linux PC so you can use the latest generation of USB peripherals? HighPoint Technologies is hoping you are because they've begun shipping a 4-port USB 3.0 adapter they're calling the RocketU 1144A. With a list price of $89.00, the PCIe 2.0 x4 adapter is capable of 5GB/s of throughput on each of its ports.

The HighPoint RocketU 1144A is aimed at high-performance desktops and workstations, with a strong emphasis on fast transfer speeds to make the most use out of newer USB3 external SSDs. The PCIe x4 slot also allows this card to support up to 20Gb/s of total bandwidth simultaneously.

HighPoint RocketU 1144A Features:

4 USB 3.0 type-A ports5Gb/s per portPCI-E 2.0 x4Supports up to 4 external USB HDD/SSDMax Performance up to 20Gb/sBackwards compatible with USB 2.0 & 1.1Hot-Swap and Hot-PlugCompliant with xHCI SpecificationSupports Windows and Linux operating systems

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SandForce First To Pair 24nm Toshiba NAND With Own Controllers (FMS 2011)

2011-08-13T07:54:00.000+01:00

At Flash Media Summit 2011, SandForce was the first to show off 24nm Toshiba MLC NAND working with their existing SATA 6.0Gb/s SF-2000 processor. As flash manufacturers continue to shrink existing NAND sizes, having compatibility means more options and ultimately lower prices for buyers.

Toshiba NAND is cropping up in quite a few SandForce SSDs lately, especially high performance models like the new OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G, OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS, and the Patriot Wildfire... all of which use their very fast 3xnm toggle NAND. Needless to say, expect to see more flash options in upcoming SandForce-powered drives, besides the current toggle, synchronous, and asynchronous options already the market.

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Seagate Momentus XT Hits 1 Million Drives Shipped, Second Generation Due This Year

2011-08-12T13:30:00.000+01:00

Seagate has announced that they have shipped one million Momentus XT hybrid hard drives. The 2.5" hybrids offer 7200RPM platters with 500GB of capacity, boosted by 4GB of solid state SLC NAND used for caching frequent activities, making the XT more responsive than traditional hard drives.

The question though on storage enthusiasts minds is when will we see the next Momentus XT. The good news is that it won't be long, Seagate said in their release that the second generation Momentus XT will ship before the end of this year, meaning we should know a good deal about what the Momentus XT 2 looks like in the next month or two. For now we'll have to be content knowing the hybrid hard drive will "give consumers an even better, faster computing experience."

John Rydning, research director at IDC, sees a very bright future for hybrid hard drives, “Fast, capacious, and economical hybrid HDD and NAND flash storage solutions like the Momentus XT drive will be found in roughly 25 percent of all new PCs shipped in 2015.”

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Related News

Seagate Momentus XT Review

Seagate Momentus XT SD24 Firmware Update

Buy the Momentus XT at NewEgg.com

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OCZ releases new customizable enterprise-class SSD

2011-06-27T15:58:00.001+01:00

Computerworld - OCZ Technology today released a new enterprise-class solid-state drive (SSD), the Deneva 2, which comes with SandForce's latest controller technology, almost doubling the performance over its last iteration of the drive.

Like the original Deneva SSD, the Deneva 2 is a customizable product, coming in two series with multiple form factors, interfaces and NAND flash memory types, from high-end single-level cell (SLC) flash, and enterprise-class multi-level cell (MLC) flash to consumer-grade MLC.

The Deneva comes in the "R" or Reliability series and the "C" or Commercial series. The R series comes with SandForce's 2582 controller, and sports a 10 million hours meantime between failure (MTBF) rating. The C series comes with a SandForce 2281 series controller and has an MTBF of 2 million hours.

The SSD can also be purchased with SATA 3.0, SAS 2.0 or PCIe interfaces, and it can come in 1.8-in, 2.5-in and 3.5-in form factors as well as customizable casings, according to Alex Mei, OCZ's chief marketing officer.

The Deneva 2 comes in capacities ranging from 64GB to 512GB and has a read speed of up to 550MB/sec, a write speed of up to 525MB/sec and, using 4K random writes, can generate up to 80,000 I/Os of throughput per second (IOPS).

The first version of the Deneva came with a SandForce 1500 controller, which offers I/O performance of up to 285MB/sec for reads, 275MB/sec for writes, and 4KB random writes up to 50,000 IOPS.

Like the original Deneva SSD, the new product is targeted at the highest-end customer: the makers of enterprise-class storage systems, Mei said.

"You can't even find Deneva products on our commercial site. They are customizable for equipment manufacturers in the enterprise space," Mei said. "These probably won't find their ways into end user's computers."

The Deneva 2 also comes with version 2.0 of OCZ's Virtualized Controller Architecture firmware, which balances I/O across the drive's multiple controller chips for better performance. The drive also supports ATA-TRIM command, which allows the operating system to erase data marked for deletion and consolidate existing data so it can be read sequentially instead of randomly.

Additionally, the Deneva supports AES 128- and 256-bit encryption.

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OCZ Talos 6Gb/s SAS SSDs Announced

2011-05-27T21:36:00.000+01:00

OCZ has announced the Talos series of enterprise-class SSDs. Talos drives feature a 6Gb/s SAS interface, MLC NAND and OCZ's Virtualized Controller Architecture. The Talos SSD comes in a 3.5" form factor, with capacities ranging from 200GB to 960GB.

OCZ Talos SSDs are optimized for enterprise usage and deliver 64,000 4K random IOPS. The drives offer optional power fail protection and VCA technology which provides features including TRIM, SMART monitoring, native command queuing (NCQ), tagged command queuing (TCQ) and wear-leveling; all within a single solution.

Talos SSDs are sampling now, the 3.5" models will be available through OCZ's B2B channel. A 2.5" version of the Talos SSD is also being developed.

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Corsair Updates Flash Voyager to USB 3.0

2011-05-27T02:39:00.000+01:00

Corsair Updates Flash Voyager to USB 3.0 | StorageReview.com HomeStorage ReviewsLeaderboardPerformance DatabaseReference GuidesForumsReliability SurveyAbout SR May 19th, 2011 by Charles Jefferies Corsair Updates Flash Voyager to USB 3.0 Corsair announced it has started shipping the USB 3.0 version of its Flash Voyager series flash drives. Corsair says its USB 3.0 drives have up to four times the read speed of their USB 2.0 drives, allowing for much shorter transfer times. The USB 3.0 drives are backwards-compatible with USB 2.0, meaning legacy users are not left out.

The Flash Voyager USB 3.0 drives feature a rugged rubber housing; adding to their shock-protection and water-resistantance. The drives will be available worldwide this month at the following pricepoints; the 8GB version carries an MSRP of $19.99, the 16GB is $29.99, and the 32GB version is $69.99.

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Enterprise SSD testing spec released

2011-05-26T08:15:00.001+01:00

Computerworld - The Storage Networking Industry Association today announced the release of a specification that can be used to test the performance of solid-state drives regardless of the vendor.

SNIA, an industry trade group of vendors and universities that develops and promotes standards for storage systems, said its Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) came up with the SSD Performance Test Specification to level the playing field in benchmark testing.

The SSSI is releasing two versions of the test specification: one this week for enterprise SSDs, and another for server or client-side SSDs, which will be released in the third quarter of this year.

The Enterprise Performance Test Specification defines a set of device-level tests and methodologies intended to enable comparative testing of SSD devices in enterprise systems, such as storage arrays.

Previously, there has been no widely accepted test methodology for measuring SSD device performance. Each SSD manufacturer used different measurement methodologies to derive performance specs for their products.

"You couldn't compare one data sheet to another data sheet and expect to understand if one drive was faster than another, because the manufactures used different metrics," said Paul Wassenberg, chairman of the SSSI Governing Board.

"Today, the SSD market is where the HDD market was in the 1970s. There are a lot of different suppliers offering products with a lot of different abilities, and there's a lot of variability," he added.

More than 40 companies spent two years developing the Performance Test Specification (PTS), Wassenberg said. Among those companies were all of the major SSD and storage system manufacturers, including Samsung, Intel, Marvell, Toshiba, IBM, Seagate, Dell, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, and Western Digital.

Jim Handy, an analyst at market research firm Objective Analysis who was in the specification's technical working group, said, "The SNIA test specification is not an end-all, but it is certainly a big step ahead of the specifications that are commonly used by SSD makers."

Handy said one of the most important aspects of the specification is that it takes care to ensure that SSDs are first "pre-conditioned" prior to testing, meaning data is first written to them and then erased to break the drives in.

All SSDs slow down after initial use because once a sufficient amount of data has been written to them, the processor in the drive begins to move data around in a process known as the read-modify-erase-write cycle.

Simply put, when an SSD is new, data can be written to it without interference from management software. However, once the drive has had a certain amount of data written to it, the NAND flash memory used to make SSDs requires that old data first be marked for deletion before new data is written to memory. Then, once the new data is written, the old blocks marked for deletion are actually deleted in a process known as "garbage collection."

SNIA has created a set of nomenclatures used to describe the life cycle of an SSD. A new SSD is called FOB, for "fresh out of the box."

After an SSD's initial use, it settles into a stage that SNIA terms the "steady state," which is when performance levels out and can be accurately measured. "In terms of performance, reads are fastest, writes [are] slower, and erases are the slowest yet," Wassenberg said.

Handy and Tom Coughlin, founder of consultancy Coughlin Associates, teamed up with Calypso to compile a study on SSD performance that involved 18 different drives.

G.Skill Phoenix II SSD Announced

2011-03-29T21:22:00.000+01:00

G.Skill has announced an updated SSD line, the Phoenix II. The Phoenix II family will leverage the new SandForce SF-2200 processor, SATA 6Gb/s interface and 25nm NAND to deliver read and write speeds of 550/500 MB/s.

G.Skill will offer the Phoenix II in capacities of 60GB, 120GB and 240GB, meaning they're enabling RAISE for extra endurance and performance, just like the Vertex 3. Patriot has opted to go the other way, disabling RAISE in their Wildfire SSD series in exchange for more drive capacity.

G.Skill has the drives on display during CeBIT 2011, and expects retail availability in the middle of the second quarter.

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Icy Dock Intros 4-in-3 SATA Internal RAID Device

2011-03-29T00:51:00.000+01:00

Icy Dock has introduced its MB974SP-B 4-in-3 SATA Backplane, allowing users to install four 3.5" hard drives into a computer case's 3 available 5.25" device bays. Each drive has its own power button and LED indicators as well as a multi-locking latch mechanism. The device has a USB and eSATA port on the front.

The MB974SP-B is cooled by a large 80mm cooling fan at the rear, which pulls air through the device. A three-speed fan control is built-in.
A full list of specifications is as follows:

Fits 4 x 3.5” SATA HDD into 3 x 5.25” Device BaysScrew-less, tool-less design for genuine plug &play and hot swap useCompatible with SATA 6 Gb/secStylish aluminum construction for durability and heat dissipation80mm cooling fan for maximum air flowOn-demand power system - Fan power only when a drive is powered onFan is replaceable with aftermarket fans that use 2-pin or 3-pin connectors3 speed fan control including Smart Cooling Technology providing temperatureFront and rear ventilation slotsFront side USB and eSATA ports for convenient external storage connectionsIndividual power switches and LEDs for each driveChild-proof power buttons to avoid accidental power shut downMulti-locking door latches to prevent accidental drive ejectionInternal SATA cable and USB header cable built into rear of device

Pricing and Availability

The Icy Dock MB974SP-B is available now for $125.99. It comes with a three-year warranty.

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Addonics Announces External CipherChain Full Disk Encryption

2011-03-28T03:04:00.000+01:00

Addonics Technologies has announced a tool used to fully encrypt storage solutions. The CipherChain is a pass-through device between the storage device and the system.

The CipherChain supports devices connected via SATA or eSATA; inserting the Cipher key will activate the encryption and decryption of the data on the fly with no noticeable performance degradation. No software or drivers are required; the CipherChain is operating system independent.

In addition to SATA/eSATA, the CipherChain can also connect via USB 2.0/3.0 using an optional Addonics adapter.

The CipherChain has a NIST & CSE certified cryptographic AES engine. The Cipher key used for the encryption is AES 256-bit. All of the information on the drive, including the boot sector, is encrypted using the CipherChain.

Pricing and Availability

The Addonics CipherChain is available now for $95.

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Intel Thunderbolt Technology Released

2011-03-27T05:56:00.000+01:00

Intel's Thunderbolt technology hits the market today, nestled inside Apple's refreshed line of MacBook Pro notebooks. The new machines now have a Thunderbolt port on the side, denoted with a lighting bolt logo. What consumers want to know though is "What exactly is Thunderbolt and why should I care?" Simply put, Thunderbolt is a new high-speed PC connection that runs at 10Gb/s. A single cable supports both HD video and data transfers at the same time pretty much making all those other ports on your notebook useless, at least that's if Intel has its way.

What really makes this new connection unique is that it uses the same DisplayPort interface and still retains the same compatiblity with other DisplayPort devices. For most users this translates down to smaller devices that still retain high-speed connections, instead of being chopped out in favor of compatibility with USB.

With claimed speeds as high as 10Gbps, ThunderBolt comes out swinging as twice the theoretical max of 5Gbps USB SuperSpeed 3.0, and faster than eSATA, which as of today supports devices connected at 6Gbps. This is great news for any mobile or desktop user as it means faster file transfers, shorter backup times, and more instant gratification... which is never a bad thing.

In practical terms Intel says users could transfer a full-length HD movie in less than 30 seconds or backup 1 year of continuous MP3 playback in just over 10 minutes. While exact details of those processes aren't disclosed, the point is, it's very fast. The question remains though about adoption. Most Windows-based machines have just been refreshed with Sandy Bridge, meaning Thunderbolt has largely missed the Windows user base and may not see widespread inclusion in platforms there for another year. Apple certainly has the strength to push the interface on its own though, we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out.

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Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Shipping (ST33000651AS)

2011-03-26T17:46:00.000Z

The Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB hard drive has started shipping. Seagate is going without an included HBA as some have done, instead solving the legacy drive over 2.2TB issues with software. An updated version of Seagate DiscWizard gets the job done, making it easy to use the entire 3TB capacity, even within Windows XP and legacy BIOS.

The Barracuda XT 3TB hard leverages a SATA 6Gb/s interface, 64MB cache and 7200RPM spin speed to deliver sustained transfer rates of 149 MB/s. Other highlights include SmartAlign technology for drive-based sector alignment and five year warranty.

To access the entire 3TB of space on legacy systems, users will need to download the revised DiskWizard software, which is available here. To be fair, XP users won't get it all in one partition, but they can get access to the entire 3TB drive without the need for an HBA. By comparison to the rest of the industry, Western Digital provides an HBA with their 3TB Caviar Green and Hitachi provides neither hadware or software. The Barracuda XT 3TB is the only drive that's bootable with non EUFI motherboards and legacy systems like Windows XP.

Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Specs - ST33000651AS

Interface - SATA 6Gb/sMax Sustained Data Rate - 149MB/sCache - 64MBAverage Latency (ms) 4.16Spindle Speed (RPM) 7200Heads/Disks 10/5Bytes per Sector 512Load/Unload Cycles 300KNonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read, Max 1 per 1014Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) 0.34%Mean Time Between Failures (hours) 750,000Limited Warranty - 5 yearsStartup Current +12 Peak (A, ±10%) 2.0W, Standby 0.55W, Operating, Average 9.23W, Idle 7.37W3.5" form factor

Pricing and Availability

The Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB is shipping now with an MSRP of $279.

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HighPoint Launches RocketRAID 600 SATA 6Gb/s Series HBAs

2011-03-25T20:28:00.000Z

HighPoint Technologies has launched its Rocket and RocketRAID 600 SATA 6Gb/s series HBAs. They use PCI-express 2.0 x1 and x4 with two or four SATA ports.

The new HBAs use the SATA 3.0 standard, providing a maximum of 6Gb/s transfer speed. The PCI-express 2.0 interface provides 500MBps per lane bandwidth. The Rocket and RocketRAID 600 series support the latest 3TB hard drives, support up to 20 disks via port multipliers, and meet the standard AHCI 1.0. They are compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Linux.

The HighPoint Rocket and RocketRAID 600 series is available now with prices ranging from $29.99 to $269.

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Western Digital to Acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

2011-03-25T04:51:00.000Z

Hitting the wire today is news that Western Digital is acquiring Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $3.5 billion in cash and 25 million Western Digital common shares, valued at $750 million based on the closing price on March 4, 2011. The board of directors for both companies have approved the transaction which is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2011.

Other terms of the agreement have two Hitachi executives joining the Western Digital board of directors. The new entity will retain the Western Digital brand and remain headquartered in Irvine, CA. John Coyne (CEO of Western Digital), Tim Leyden (COO of WD), and Wolfgang Nickl (CFO of WD,) will all remain in their positions. Steve Milligan, president and CEO of Hitachi GST will join WD as president.

Hitachi, Ltd. will own 10 percent of outstanding Western Digital shares.

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Patriot Wildfire SSDs Announced

2011-03-24T13:23:00.000Z

Patriot has announced their new line of performance SSDs, the Wildfire. The Patriot Wildfire SSD family will be based around the SandForce SF-2281 processor, the same processor that the recently reviewed OCZ Vertex 3 uses, to deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 500MB/s.

Patriot Wildfire SSDs will feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface and 25nm MLC NAND. Interestingly, the Wildfire will come in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities, which means they've disabled RAISE. This means Patriot has decided to give up a little bit of performance in exchange for extra SSD capacity. By way of comparison, the Vertex 3 we reviewed at 240GB would be comparable to the 256GB Patriot Wildfire. Consumer choice is a great thing though, we'll be very interested to see what the actual performance cost of disabling RAISE is when we get the Wildfire in for review.

Patriot told us they expect the entire Wildfire line to hit production in the next 90 days, shipping to consumers shortly thereafter. No pricing has been announced.

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Samsung Spinpoint F4EG Review (HD204UI)

2011-03-23T18:26:00.000Z

Samsung is a brand that might not immediately come to mind for most users when they think of hard drives, but those in the know have likely been using them for a while. In this review, we're looking at Samsung's updated green hard drive, the Spinpoint F4EG (EG for EcoGreen). Building on the success of the F3EG, Samsung historically has a good history of producing a quality hard drive with a very competitive price.

So what does the F4EG bring to the table? The big gain is a reduction in the number of platters. While its predecessor, the F3EG, ran with four platters, the F4EG is able to get away with just three. That's three platters with a stunning density of 667GB each, ratcheting the overall capacity of the F4EG to 2TB. The increased platter density means less platters are needed to hit the 2TB target, giving the motor a reprieve and reducing power consumption and noise in the process.

Competing with the F4EG in our testing is its predecessor, the F3EG, along with drives from Western Digital and Seagate. Like the F3EG, Western Digital's Caviar Green is a four-platter drive (though transitioning to 3-platter), placing it at something of a disadvantage against Samsung's drive and the three-platter Seagate Barracuda Green. Additionally, the F4EG only sports 32MB of cache and a standard SATA II interface, while Seagate and Western Digital's drives bump cache up to 64GB, and Seagate's Barracuda runs on the newer SATA III.

Samsung Spinpoint F4EG (HD204UI) Specs

2TB unformatted capacitySATA 3Gb/s interface32MB cache5400RPM spin speedAverage Seek time - 8.9 msData Transfer Rate / Media to/from Buffer(Max.) - 250MB/secData Transfer Rate / Buffer to/from Host(Max.) - 300MB/secAverage Latency - 5.52 msDrive Ready Time(typical) - 13 secNon-recoverable Read Error 1 sector in 1015 bitsAcoustics - Idle 2.5/2.6 Bel, Performance Seek 2.8/2.9 BelTemperature / Operating 0 ~ 60 °CTemperature / Non-operating -40 ~ 70 °CSeek (typical) 5.7WRead/Write (typical) 6.3WIdle (typical) 5.1WStandby (typical) 1WSleep (typical) 1WWeight (avg.) 650g

Aesthetics

The Samsung Spinpoint F4EG looks pretty much identical compared to the F3EG before it. The top cover design still makes use of a vibration dampening plate that covers the entire top, with a nicely contoured edge tracing the outline of the platter and head assembly inside. Samsung uses the same label design, which actually makes identification difficult if you are just picking a drive out by looks and not paying attention to the model number.

The front of the drive has the industry standard SATA power and data connection, with four pins for various service modes. Looking in the Samsung F4EG installation manual it doesn't look like those pins activate any particular modes, although they may be used for servicing the drive.

Disassembly

The Samsung F4 EcoGreen is designed with the components soldered to the circuit board facing up, with most designs from Seagate and Western Digital doing the opposite. In some ways I kind of prefer the hidden look, as it can allow components to shed heat into the drive body instead of needing airflow across components to keep parts cool. In newer designs with very power efficient parts this might not be a huge deal anymore.

The EcoGreen F4 is very easy to take apart after removing five Torx screws that hold the circuit board in place. After lifting away the PCB a thin insulating piece is exposed which probably keeps some of the electronics from shorting on the metal body and acts as a vibration isolation pad.

Looking closer at the circuit board we see a Marvell 88i9122 controller, a 32MB Samsung DDR memory chip, and a Texas Instruments motor driver.

Synthetic Benchmarks

For our synthetic tests we'll be using IOMeter and CrystalDiskMark to see how well the Spinpoint F4EG and its three-platter design fare in terms of raw data crunching compared to the four-platter F3EG and Caviar Green, as well as the more handsomely spec'ed Seagate Barracuda Green.

Right away, the F4EG trades blows with Seagate's drive and shows a healthy improvement over the preceding generation. The increased platter density is already paying off here.

When we get to random transfers the situation only improves. Samsung's drive posts a minor lead with read speed, but write speed is nearly 25% faster than the next fastest drive.

Samsung's F4EG is able to maintain its strong performance in our 4K random transfer testing, again placing at or near the top of the charts and posting a healthy improvement upon its predecessor.

Our first stumble is in write latency, where the F4EG is only able to best the F3EG at maximum latency despite posting another victory in overall average time.

So far in our IOMeter testing, Samsung's drive is constantly at the top of the heap. We'll check in with CrystalDiskMark and see if those results remain consistent there.

Sequential speeds are again the best, and apart from a negligible stumble in random speeds the F4EG continues to post respectable numbers.
From these basic tests we've gathered that Samsung's new EcoGreen drive is at least theoretically able to produce class-leading performance, but what happens when it's faced with server-style workloads? That's what we aim to find out when we move back to IOMeter and run the drive through a gauntlet of server-style simulations.

In most cases the F4EG is only really bested by Seagate's Barracuda Green, a drive that has the benefit of both twice the amount of disk cache and an apparently underused SATA III interface.

Real-World Benchmarks

We've taken our synthetic tests and thrown just about everything we can at Samsung's Spinpoint F4EG and thus far the drive has shown virtually no weaknesses, continually meeting and often besting Seagate's Barracuda Green. The improved platter density has enabled it to completely leapfrog the preceding F3EG as well as soundly beat Western Digital's Caviar Green. Synthetic testing doesn't tell the whole story though, and for that we use custom traces in StorageMark 2010 to get a feel for how the drive fares under actual stress and workloads more typical of a desktop user.

The first real-life test is our HTPC scenario. In this test we include: playing one 720P HD movie in Media Player Classic, one 480P SD movie playing in VLC, three movies downloading simultaneously through iTunes, and one 1080i HDTV stream being recorded through Windows Media Center over a 15 minute period. Higher IOps and MB/s rates with lower latency times are preferred. In this trace we recorded 2,986MB being written to the drive and 1,924MB being read.

With our first run out the gate, the F4EG fallen behind compared to the F3EG, in this case posting lower performance than its predecessor and hanging out in the back of the class.

Our next real-life test covers disk activity in a gaming environment. Unlike the HTPC trace, this one relies heavily on the read performance of a drive. To give a simple breakdown of read/write percentages, the HTPC test is 64% write, 36% read, the Productivity test is 59% write and 41% read, while the gaming trace is 6% write and 94% read. The test consists of a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit system pre-configured with Steam, with Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead 2, and Mass Effect 2 already downloaded and installed. The trace captures the heavy read activity of each game loading from the start, as well as textures as the game progresses. In this trace we recorded 426MB being written to the drive and 7,235MB being read.

While the F4EG is able to post stellar numbers in our synthetic testing, when we get to real-world usage it again lagging slightly behind the F3EG, falling behind the pack of low-power 2TB models.

Power Consumption

If anything, Samsung's Spinpoint F4EG should put in a strong showing with our power consumption testing. The F3EG and Western Digital's Caviar Green all have to work harder to spin their four platters while the F4EG and Barracuda Green are able to trim some fat and get away with just three.

Once again, Samsung's drive walks away with the gold in a big way. The Barracuda Green may tie it in synthetic testing and run roughshod over it in our real-world tests, but it's going to need a lot more power to do it. Particularly alarming is the Seagate drive's startup power consumption, which pulls seven watts more than the F4EG. Meanwhile the F4EG is able to produce major gains over Samsung's last generation EcoGreen. Users interested in large home server or small business storage arrays will probably notice a larger wallet each month after paying their power bills.

Warranty

As is common with low-power mass storage drives, Samsung backs the Spinpoint F4EG with an industry standard three year warranty. Only Western Digital is willing to top this in the consumer space, and only on their performance-tuned Caviar Black series.

Conclusion

When being run through synthetic testing, Samsung's Spinpoint F4EG put in a strong showing if not the strongest. At that point we're really looking at two classes of drives: the older four-platter drives (the Western Digital Caviar Green and the Spinpoint F3EG) and the newer three-platter drives (the Seagate Barracuda Green and the Spinpoint F4EG). There are simply advantages that are going to be imparted by virtue of being able to ditch one of the platters and still keep capacity up. While Seagate has strapped all the newest trimmings to their drive in the form of a 64MB cache and SATA III interface, Samsung elected to stick with the tried and true, opting to keep the cache at 32MB and stick with the old (and not liable to be saturated by a mechanical drive) SATA II interface.

The problem is that while the F4EG was fun to talk to backstage, when we finally pulled up the curtain and asked her to dance she tripped over her own two feet. Synthetic testing showed a strong drive, but people don't run IOMeter for kicks, and when real-world workloads were applied the F4EG slowed compared to its predecessor.

Of course, performance isn't absolutely everything and Samsung still has two strongholds: price and power consumption. Seagate's 2TB Barracuda Green may be faster, but it's also $30 more expensive. Power consumption also weighs heavily in the F4EG's favor, and simulated server loads seem to suggest a good niche for it.

Pros:

Least expensive drive in this classStrong synthetic and server load performanceRemarkably low power consumption, especially in idle

Cons:

Slower than previous generation in real-world testing

Bottom Line

While the Samsung Spinpoint F4EG did well with synthetic tests, it stumbled behind the prior generation drive in our battery of real world tests. But the green drives aren't about performance; here power is king, along with price. If those two variables are key in your purchase decision, then in the 2TB capacity there isn't a better choice than the F4EG.

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LaCie Intros External Drive with Thunderbolt Connection

2011-03-23T00:02:00.000Z

Following Apple's product announcements, LaCie is introducing its Little Big Disk featuring Thunderbolt technology. The company says this is a first of a wave of new Thunderbolt products.

Thunderbolt technology supports two 10Gb/s bi-directional channels from a single port, making it the fastest connection available on a personal computer. It also guarantees high sustained transfer rates and low latency. Thunderbolt also supports daisy-chaining up to six peripherals. The LaCie Little Big Disk includes two ports for daisy chaining.

The LaCie Little Big Disk weighs 1.5 pounds in its aluminum enclosure and is bus powered, meaning no power cable is required. The device features two 250GB Intel 510 series Solid State Drives (SSDs). They are configured in RAID 0 by default.

Pricing and availability information has not been announced.

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NetApp to buy storage array firm Engenio

2011-03-19T11:01:00.000Z

Computerworld - NetApp announced today that it has entered into an agreement to purchase Engenio, a maker of external high-performance storage arrays targeted at storing data from high-bandwidth applications such as video processing.

NetApp expects to pay $480 million in an all-cash deal for Engenio, which is a subsidiary of LSI Corp.

NetApp CEO Tom Georgens said in a conference call that Engenio gives NetApp a foothold in emerging and fast-growing market segments such as video, including full-motion video capture and digital video surveillance. It also serves high-performance computing applications, such as genomics sequencing and scientific research.

Emphasizing little overlap with the product portfolio, Georgens said the video processing and high-performance computing markets are ones that NetApp cannot currently serve with its Fabric-Attached Storage line of products and Data ONTAP operating system.

NetApp's current line of storage arrays are focused on capturing and serving up data to traditional enterprise server applications, such as transactional databases, financial and ERP systems, as well as unstructured data such as e-mail.

"We're not looking for an asset to be a holding company. It has to have some relation to our core business. It needs to be something our existing channels can sell or will enable us to sell more of our core products into," Georgens said. "I think this adds new capabilities to our company without duplicating functionality."

Based in Milpitas, Calif., 10-year-old Engenio has about 900 employees. The company sells no-frills modular, high-performance serial SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel-attached storage arrays.

Its arrays do not offer deduplication, thin provisioning and some other enterprise-class functionality that NetApp's arrays offer.

Engenio's arrays include solid state drives (SSD), Fibre Channel drives and serial ATA (SATA) drives with transfer speeds as great as 8Gbit/sec via Fibre Channel, or 1Gbit/sec via iSCSI host cards.

The arrays expand from as many as 16 in a 3U (5.25-in high) to as many as 112 using six additional expansion drive enclosures.

Engenio took in about $705 million in revenue last year. The company also has a deep reseller base that includes giants IBM, SGI, StorageTek, Cray and Teradata.

That reseller base was also key to NetApp's purchase of the company, giving it an opportunity to expand into more channels that they otherwise could not have entered into, Georgens said.

Georgens said the digital video surveillance, movie-making and high-performance computing markets will represent a $5 billion incremental market opportunity by 2014.

Georgens, who took over NetApp a year and a half ago, said at the time that once the recession ended and refresh cycles began anew, corporations would be focused on "very different architectures," and would not simply be upgrading to new versions of arrays they already have.

NetApp said it expects to close the deal in the next 60 days.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

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Five Steps to a Better New PC

2011-03-17T01:12:00.000Z

PC World - It's exciting to buy a new computer. As soon as you haul the laptop home from the store, or the delivery truck drops off the extra-large box, you just want to tear into your new machine and see what it's capable of. If you want to have a better experience, however, you'll stop, take a few deep breaths, and do a little preparatory work first. Taking a bit of time to set up your new PC can make a world of difference in its performance, its long-term stability, and your personal sanity. Besides, your old PC almost certainly has some data on it that you'll want to move to the new one, and that's a task best not delayed.

1. Back Up Data for Transfer to the New PC

The first step in setting up your new computer requires spending time on your old computer: You need to back up all the important data on your old machine for transfer. (Of course, this assumes that you aren't buying a new computer because your old one is hopelessly broken and entirely unusable.)

You can find tools to automate this process somewhat. Microsoft's built-in Windows Easy Transfer tool does a good enough job but doesn't necessarily transfer everything you want; other third-party tools are similar. These aren't bad choices for moving data and settings from an old PC to a new one, but I don't like them for two reasons: First, if the data is that important, you should be backing it up, not just switching it from one point of failure to another. Second, none of these tools really grab everything you want them to get, so you end up manually transferring stuff anyway.

Here's a better solution: Buy a cheap external USB hard drive if you don't already have one. You can burn your data to a bunch of DVDs if you prefer, but that's kind of a hassle. Plug in the USB hard drive, name a folder 'Old PC Backup' or something similar, and start copying files and folders there.

1. Back up your music, photos, and videos. Personal photos and videos can never be replaced--those are your most precious megabytes.

2. Next, turn to your documents. If you have been saving everything to the My Documents folder in your user directory, your job is easy. Otherwise, you'll have to hunt around in Windows Explorer and the Desktop to find every important document and copy it to the external hard drive.

3. Fire up your Web browser and go to its bookmarks manager, and then export your bookmarks and copy that file to the external drive--assuming that you aren't using Xmarks or another bookmark-sync tool. This is a great time to clean out old, unused bookmarks, too.

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Back Up Your Web E-Mail Account

2011-03-16T06:15:00.000Z

PC World - Yes, we know--it's hard enough to remember to back up your desktop, your laptop, your smartphone, and your tablet, and now we want you to think about backing up your cloud-based e-mail account, too.

This may seem like a drag, but we're not being paranoid. Recently, 150,000 Gmail users were left in the dark when a glitch in Google's system deleted all of their e-mail messages and disabled their Gmail accounts. Sure, only 0.02 percent of Gmail's user base was affected, but that 0.02 percent was pretty ticked off, to say the least. Luckily, Google not only keeps multiple copies of user data in multiple data centers (under different circumstances, knowing this fact might actually make you feel worse), but it also keeps tape backups, and thus was able to restore the deleted e-mail within a week.

The recent Gmail outage may have ended happily, but it still should be a wake-up call for anyone who relies too heavily on the cloud. The time to back up your Web-based e-mail is now.

Gmail

Google's Gmail gives you plenty of space--over 7.5GB of space, actually--to store thousands of e-mail messages, but that doesn't mean you should put all of your e-mail eggs in one basket. Fortunately, you have a simple, free way to back up your Gmail account in one fell swoop: Gmail Backup.

Gmail Backup works with both Windows and Linux. Here's how to back up your Gmail in just a few minutes:

1. Download and install Gmail Backup. The install is quick and painless, and leaves you with a Start menu shortcut and a desktop icon.

2. Open Gmail Backup. Enter your full Gmail address and password, and choose the backup folder to which you'll save your messages. You can either use Gmail Backup's default folder or find/create your own folder by clicking Directory.

3. Choose which messages to back up. You can back up only the newest e-mail messages, or you can back up all of your e-mail from a specific date range. If you want to back up all of the e-mail in your account, just select a 'Since date' from before you opened the account.

4. Start the backup process by clicking the Backup button. The process can take a long time if you have a lot of messages, so you can run it in the background. If you're interested in watching the progress, though, Gmail Backup will keep a running log of the e-mail that it has backed up. You can also back up your account incrementally; in this procedure, Gmail Backup skips over messages that have already been downloaded into a particular folder.

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NetApp to buy storage array firm Engenio

2011-03-14T15:23:00.000Z