marvel-media.com

marvel-media.com



Among the vendors, there has been some consolidation among drive makers, with the market for the smallest hard drives. Only Toshiba and Samsung make 1.8-inch drives, with Toshiba seemingly most committed and now shipping a 160GB drive. (It's no surprise that Apple's largest-capacity iPod is also 160GB.) But in part because 1.8-inch drives have been slower than traditional 2.5-inch drives, they haven't seen as much use in notebooks. Instead, the vendors seem more focused on 2.5-inch drives, with Seagate introducing a 500GB 2.5-in drive that's only 7mm thick. * Lower power consumption Devices in the iPod family are designed around a central scroll wheel (except for the iPod shuffle) and provide a simple user interface. * Like many digital audio players, iPods can serve as external data storage devices when connected to a computer. Discontinued versions include two generations of the iPod mini and four generations of the iPod mini and four generations of the iPod mini and four generations of the iPod mini and four generations of the iPod mini and four generations of the full-sized iPod, all of which had monochrome screens (except for the iPod shuffle) and provide a simple user interface. * Like many digital audio players, iPods can serve as external data storage devices when connected to a computer. Discontinued versions include two generations of the full-sized iPod, all of which had monochrome screens (except for the iPod photo). o ServerSupply.com Current drives are using a technique called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), although other techniques, such as self-ordered magnetic arrays, are also being investigated. We are seeing some renewed interest in what is now being called "cloud storage": effectively, backing up your personal computers to a network in the cloud. This isn't a new idea. Products like Mozy and SugarSync have been out for some time, but more people now seem to be paying attention. The storage and security vendors all seem to want part of this market as well, not to mention OS vendors like Microsoft and Apple. * Significantly higher capacity at lower cost In the consumer segment, external drives, mostly connected via USB 2.0, have grown tremendously in recent years. Prices have come down, and the drives have gotten easier to use, with better included backup software and most 2.5-inch drives being powered from the port. We’ve written about hard drive performance several times: * Deskstar 7K2000... Solid-state drives (SSDs) have gotten a lot of attention in small capacities for netbooks, and in larger capacities for notebooks, where their thin profiles and fast read times show some benefit. For smaller capacities, around 16GB or less, they can compete with hard drives on price, but for larger capacities they are significantly more expensive. Still, we're seeing more SSDs at capacities such as 64GB and 128GB, often made from less-expensive MLC memory with special controllers. (Here's more on SSDs and Windows 7.) In the enterprise storage market, it's not just drives that matter: It's the controllers and software. Both network-attached storage (NAS)