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PCI Express based SSDs just keep getting fast and bigger, and the latest offering from Texas Memory Systems is another step up in speed and storage:

"The RamSan-70 "Gorilla" is a high-performance, half-length PCIe card with 900 GB of usable SLC Flash capacity. Delivering 330K IOPS and 2 GB/s of bandwidth, it offers higher performance and greater capacity than any other half-length SLC Flash PCIe card."

Of course cutting edge speed and storage don't come cheap, and like most PCI express SSDs if you have to ask the price you probably can't afford it.

Texas Memory Systems

Lexar has announced a USB 3.0 card reader designed to compliment their range of high speed SD and CF cards (including the latest higher capacity sdxc cards).

The card reader will be available in June for $50.

Lexar Press Release

USB 3.0 seems to be picking up momentum recently and one of the areas where it's increased speed is most noticeable is in data transfer/backup.

IO Data have just announced a USB 3.0 external hard drive with 3 terabytes of storage which makes it a perfect choice for media storage and backups.

The HDCA-UT3.0K drive will be available in Japan later this month for a little over $300.

via Engadget

Yes that is quite a mouthful of a title and we know we gave Eye-Fi a hard time about their iPhone application, but their latest idea is a real killer:

Take a video (SD or even HD) with your camera and have the Eye-Fi SD card automatically upload it to your YouTube account. Wow!, excellent idea.

Full press release follows.

Eye-Fi has announced an iPhone app that just makes us ask "why?".

The concept sounds good - the Eye-Fi application for the iPhone allows you to upload photos taken with your iPhone to your computer or to any of more than 20 online photo services.

So what's the catch? the catch is you need to own an Eye-Fi card to download the application.... the Eye-Fi card is a $100-$130 secure digital memory card with built in Wi-Fi, and the iPhone is a phone without a SD expansion slot and with Wi-Fi already. Major disconnect there.

Another drawback is that the camera on the iPhone is terrible and we rarely use it so why would be buy a $100 SD card just to get functionality similar to what we can already do (in a clunkier manner) with an email attachment?

Our suggestion to Eye-Fi is to offer the application for free and make money off the annual subscription to the webshare service and to use the application to let all iPhone users know about the Eye-Fi cards they can buy for their regular cameras.

full press release

Buffalo has announced 32GB and 64GB SSDs designed to work with the Eee PC 900/901.

The SSDs will cost $150/$300 and will be out in late September.

No information is available on exactly how fast the SSDs are - people assume SSDs are fast but there is a wide range of speeds experienced once the SSDs get into actual use.

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Sandisk has announced a new line of solid state drives (SSDs) designed with ultra low power computers in mind: many SSDs are designed to fit in a standard 2.5" or 1.8" hard drive enclosure but often ULPCs can't spare the space for a full drive so a SSD on a circuit board like this is a better solution.

The press release is full of marketing speak but light on facts: no size, no power consumption and no prices are specified... so what do we know? they will come in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB sizes with read speeds of 39MB/sec and write speeds of 17MB/sec.

Full press release follows:

In the past we have told you about home made adapters that let you turn one of more compactflash cards into a 2.5" SSD drive, well now SansDigital has come out with a finished product that does exactly that.

The CompactSTOR CR2T supports RAID 1 mirroring of two compactflash cards up to 32GB each for a cost of $99.

Compact Flash 2.5" SATA SSD Enclosure via engadget

Samsung has announced the largest solid state drive (SSD) so far, and at 256GB it's storage capacity is up there with the needs of most computer users (yes there are some of us who need terabytes of storage space for recorded tv/movies etc but for the average user 256GB is currently more than enough).

Not only is is big on storage space but it is as fast as most smaller SSDs with a 200MBps sequential read and a 160MBps sequential write speed.

How did Samsung do it? they managed to create a multi-level cell drive that overcame the previous speed and lifespan problems.

The 250GB drives in 2.5" form factor should be out in September and be in mass production by the end of the year. No word yet on price.

Full press release follows.

EeeUser Forums have tested the read/write speeds of the solid state drives (SSDs) shipping with the EeePC 900 and found one of them to be lacking in performance.

The EeePC 900 comes with two SSDs: a 4GB one with the operating system and a 8GB (XP) or 16GB (Linux) one for your data - they system drive performed adequately (faster than the older EeePC 700) but the data drive was slower than a retiree in an oldsmobile "out for a leisurely drive".

Head on over to EeeUser forums for their full testing results, and don't go planning on using that 8/16GB SSD for efficient dual booting.

Eee PC 900 SSD is slow via liliputing

digitimes has reported that shortages of 1.8" and 2.5" hard disc drives are expected later this year due to the fast growing demand for ultra-portable laptops:

"Global supply of 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) may fall short in the third quarter of 2008 due to fast growing demand for use in Eee PCs, mini notebook PCs and UMPCs (ultra-mobile PCs), in addition to demand from traditional applications such as notebook PCs, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

WD's production capacity of 2.5-inch HDDs has been booked up until September 2008, the sources cited WD Taiwan as saying. "

It sound to us that all the Eee PC clone manufacturers are going to have a hard time sourcing hard drives for their machines which can only benefit the more established players (HP, MSI, Asus) who probably already have supplies organized.

It seems like we have new solid state drives (SSDs) coming out weekly, and the latest one from Mtron also claims to be the fastest SSD ever.

The Pro 7500 series SSDs from Mtron are said to have a read speed of up to 130MBps and a write speed of up to 120MBps through a SATA II interface in capacities from 32GB to 128GB.

It's great that they're speedy but what is the point of speedy when they are so costly that no average joe can afford one. Wake me up when the prices drop.

Full press release follows.

Mtron claims fastest SSD ever (via akihibaranews)

Fujitsu has come out with a 400GB version of their "handy drive" portable 2.5" hard drive.

This thing is about 5.6" x 3.3" x 0.9", weighs 9oz and gets it power through it's USB 2.0 connector. What's the downside? it's only a 4200rpm drive: usable for backups not so good for something you access regularly.

It's out in Japan now for about $335.

Fujitsu 400GB Handy Drive at Akihibaranews

Corsair 32GB Flash Survivor USB Drive is the subject of a new review posted at OhGizmo.

Here's what they thought of this ultra rugged USB flash drive:

"There's no question that the Corsair Flash Survivor delivers on all of its promises. The overall build quality and use of aircraft-grade aluminum makes the drive feel like it will survive whatever tortures or trials you put it through. While it might be overkill for the average commuter, if your job has you traveling to areas that are a bit more extreme than the subway or an office tower, you can rest easy knowing your files are extremely safe. Of course I have to point out that 32GB of flash storage in your pocket doesn't come cheap at this point in time ($180-$200) but Corsair also sells versions of the Flash Survivor in 16GB, 8GB and 4GB capacities that are considerably more affordable."

They forgot the best part of the review: throwing it off stuff and running over it with trucks to see just how tough it really is. One other thing we would add is that no matter how rugged your storage is your #1 priority should still be regular backups.

Corsair 32GB Flash Survivor USB Drive review at OhGizmo

Is it a book or is it an external HDD? well the ventilation slots, the led lights, and the power and USB cables coming out the back will probably give away the fact that it is a new 3.5" external hard drive called the WIZPLAT W-31 from Korean company Sarotech.

It supports up to 1TB hard drives but it isn't clear what configurations it is offered in and what comes with the 315,000 Won price tag (approx. $300)

We have to admit though: it looks a lot classier than most hard disk drives on the market.

Sarotech Hardbox via aving

We told you about the Eye-Fi wireless SD a little while back and we were of the opinion that it was too pricey and they should just come out with a basic version that just uploads to your home network.

Guess what they just came out with? yep, 3 new eye-fi wireless SD cards, one of which does just what we wanted.

The Eye-Fi home is $79 for 2gb and just supports uploading to your home network, the Eye-Fi Share is identical to their original model adding uploads to online services such as Flickr for $99, and the Eye-Fi Explore adds a year of uploading at any of the 10000 wayport wi-fi hotspots across the US for $129.

Buyer beware though: we have heard reports that the read/write speeds on these cards are slow and that is a limiting factor on many digital cameras.

Eye-Fi wireless card article at Gizmodo

Hp Mini-Note PC Blog has posted a how-to with some photos of how to upgrade the hard drive in the HP2133 mini-note PC.

Compared to some of the upgrades posted for the eee pc and the min-note this one is easy, all you need is a new 2.5" hard drive (like the nice new hitachi 320gb ones) plus some basic tools (small philips screwdriver, small torx screwdriver, pliers).

This is a great upgrade for people that got the basic 4GB mini-note and need more storage space.

Don't have the right tools? worried about causing damage to your mini-note? hand in your "man card" right now and go take up a more relaxing hobby, knitting maybe.

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Toms Hardware has reviewed the Memoright 32GB solid state disk (SSD).

Here's what they thought of it:

"The benchmark results for the Memoright flash SSDs (we used four 32-GB models MR25.2-032S) speak for themselves. A sequential throughput of 115 MB/s is a new record for flash-based drives, and Memoright even managed to sustain almost the same throughput for write operations as well. I/O performance is stellar and the drive's power consumption is lower than the power requirements of the direct competitor, the Mtron Flash SSD. The only benchmark sections where it cannot beat everything else is the PCMark05 Windows XP startup benchmark and the IOmeter Webserver benchmark. In every other test, Memoright slaps the other drive manufacturers in the face by providing bone-crushing storage performance. Server administrators should especially study the benchmark results carefully, as we're talking about many hundreds to thousands of I/O operations per second on an individual drive."

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So this guy was looking for a way to hide his "sensitive" files (also known as stopping mom finding his adult movie collection), so he decided to rewire a phone outlet so you could use it to access a hidden 4GB USB drive.

He soldered some wires to the USB drive, opened up the outlet and connected the USB drive to the phone plug, built a USB to phone cable, and hooked everything up.

Personally I would have just encrypted my files with some free software like TrueCrypt, but one area where this idea has potential is in security camera recording:

A thief gets into your house and steals the computer where the video from your security cameras is stored, what he doesn't know is that the video is really being stored on a 1 terabyte linkstation mini hidden in the wall behind a phone jack.

source

Greenhouse has come out with two new products that allow you to add eSATA to your laptop or desktop PC so you can run external hard drives faster than over USB.

The GH-ESC-ESA2 has 2 eSATA slots that transfer data at up to 3GB/sec (much faster than USB or firewire), and it supports RAID 0/1.

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