Mark's Personal Blog - markpintor

Backing up data is vital if you have important data files on your personal computer. If your personal computer program crashes, information loss would not be as large an issue since a backup of your files are store elsewhere. To protect your information from program loss, several external back up media and software programs can be used.

There are many techniques of backing up data files from CDs, DVDs, USB drives, to external difficult drives. There are even on the internet services you are able to use you to upload your important files onto their server.

Generally, backups are utilized for two purposes. Very first is to restore your computer after a program failure or virus, and second would be to recover a small number of data files that have been accidentally deleted or corrupted.

This second backup may be the unit that's described in this article. This backup system is greatest at storing created files on your personal computer like pictures, video, documents, and other information that aren't an integral part of the machine.

External backup items, depending on the specifications, are often times costly. Hence, it is required which you select a quality product that provide maximum storage space and will last for a long period of time. Clickfree Automatic Backup provides one of these consumer storage products. The company has focused on user friendly computer backup products and use the latest technology.

Clickfree’s primary external backup items include the following:

The C2N Automatic Home Backup is really a complete multi-computer backup that could be very easily plugged into a computer. It can also be utilized with Windows and MAC operating systems. It has a storage capacity of 250 to 500 GB.

Transformer Network Edition is a backup adapter that operates with any USB difficult drive and supports your computer over an existing computer network. With the Clickfree’s Award winning backup system, it allows you to backup your computer into a free space hard drive. It has added features for example photo sharing, CD/DVD burning, import from iPod and scheduled backup functions.

Their portable backup drives are simple and convenient to use and also handles the critical task of backing up digital files. It can also backs up multiple computers.

Desktop back up is the appropriate unit for large capacity and Clickfree has software programs you can use if you've an extra difficult drive.

The Clickfree Traveler is really a smooth, credit card size, automatic backup solution. With its slim USB connector, it's easily connected to your PC or MAC.

If you’re looking to buy a backup device, take a appear at Clickfree. Make certain you figure out how much room you require to back up all you important files. If the difficult drive room is too little, then you may have to spend more to get a bigger device. Also, just because an item is on sale, doesn’t mean that you it’s a great deal. Look for backup items that are trusted by clients.

View Source

Though other external hard drives provide a preset menu of ports, the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex cuts costs by letting you pick from a buffet of "personality cables" so that you purchase only the connections that suit your system profile. We applaud Seagate for making data backups easier than ever, and recommend the FreeAgent GoFlex external hard drive for extra data storage now and simple upgrades within the future.

View Story Source

OFFERING NOTHING NEW particularly, the unimaginatively named Gigabyte M1405 is the Taiwanese motherboard company's latest notebook, expected to be accessible within the UK from June or July with a price of about £1,000.

The uninspiring specifications start with a choice of Intel microprocessors from Core 2 Duo to Celeron and Pentium in low voltage versions, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and a 14-inch 1366x768 LED display. So no proper HD 1080p then.

If you are happy with sub-standard 720p HD then you may also be glad to have a maximum of 500GB of 2.5" SATA difficult drive storage. Weighing in heavier than notebooks you could have bought in 2009 at 1.6kg, its other disappointment is that to deliver the promised desktop PC performance it requires a docking station, weight unstated. The docking station, half the size with the M1405, has an Nvidia GeForce GT220 GPU with 1GB of DDR3.

The notebook also has all the usual LAN, wireless, Bluetooth features, 3 2.0 USB ports, HDMI, D-Sub, RJ45, mic-in, earphone-out, 4-in-1 card reader, DC-in jack, and docking port.

And finally, it has a "flexibay" for an optical drive or a second battery. The addition of the battery or drive will push the weight to over 1.75kg, docking station excluded. The primary battery is really a six-cell lithium polymer 3600mAh. The flexibay can take a three-cell 2550mAh battery.

View Content Source

Last year, during research for some project or an additional, we asked Seagate an offhand question about hybrid drives. Where nearly everybody said that hybrid drives (last seen circa 2005) were dead, Seagate said that the technology had shown promise, but that they had no further comment. We instantly assumed that meant they were working on one, and to our immense satisfaction, today Seagate announced the Momentus XT, a 2.5-inch hybrid drive featuring 500GB of 7200rpm mechanical storage, 4GB SLC NAND flash, and a 32MB cache.

With the Momentus XT series, Seagate is trying to bridge the gap between SSD performance (and cost) and notebook difficult generate capacity (and price), by adding 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory to a standard notebook hard drive. The generate uses an algorithm called Seagate Adaptive Memory to move the most frequently-accessed files to the NAND flash memory, so the generate ought to get faster as it tailors itself to each user’s demands. Maximum PC will publish a full review with the Momentus XT in an upcoming issue of the magazine, but we had a chance to run the drive through its paces.
 
We didn’t expect to see SSD-level speeds from this generate, and we didn’t. But our initial testing showed that the generate performed very well for a 2.5-inch mechanical generate and got much better with repeated testing, a good indication that the adaptive algorithm was, well, adapting to our test procedures. Normally, a drive’s efficiency on the PCMark Vantage HDD subtest doesn’t vary a lot. But the Momentus XT’s first three runs averaged 5400 PCMarks, and the scores continued to rise until the drive stabilized around 6950 PCMarks—for reference, the average current-gen SandForce SSD gets around 35,000 and the latest Velociraptor, 7,500.
 
Seagate cautions that raw read/write benchmarks “are not a good measure of the actual efficiency benefit that an end user will experience,” but we’re including them anyway simply because that’s how we roll. 80MB/s average sustained reads and writes, while nowhere near SSD efficiency, are nothing to sneeze at in a 500GB generate. Random-access time varies sharply from .1ms (for files stored on the SLC NAND) to 17.3ms (for the rest).
 
The 500GB Momentus XT has an MSRP of $156, or about $75 more than a regular 500GB laptop generate. Of course, a typical SSD with half that capacity (but 3 times the speed) costs four times as a lot. At not a lot much more than a standard 2.5-inch hard drive with the same capacity, we can see hybrid drives catching on in a big way.

View Full Story

A Rugged Safe HDD case from LaCie has been released. If your subconscious mind needs 128-bit AES hardware encryption, biometric fingerprint access all bundled in a cute little silver shock-proof enclosure so that you can sleep much better at night, then the sub-$200 unit will most likely fit nicely under your pillow.

I’m more worried about losing my data and not ever getting it back then it landing in the hands of a stranger. Most of my essential banking information is encrypted, docs could be encrypted but I don’t see the need to. I’m not about to go doing that to w, so the 500GB model at $189 would suffice. It’s encased in a “protective rubber bumper” with the internal hard drive mounted on four independent suspensions. The Rugged Safe is “shock-resistant for maximum reliability and information protection.” A 1TB version goes for $300, they attach to either USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 and are accessible from LaCie.

View Source

View Original Article
Symantec's Norton division is driving the Norton Everywhere initiative, aimed at bringing security protection and cloud-storage access to the Google Android and Apple iPhone smartphones, reports San Francisco Chronicle.

The free application, Norton Connect, enables users to entry data stored in Symantec's cloud-based storage service.

The Norton Connect applications are expected to be accessible in June this year from the iPhone and Android apps stores.

GoldKey offers 1TB cloud storage

GoldKey Security's USB security token has been KryptoVault certified, enabling users to carry access to massively scalable storage within the cloud utilizing GoldKey's USB hardware token, states PRMac.

GoldKey with KryptoVault offers 1TB of storage for just $100 per month. The answer provides file storage isolated in secure containers called KryptoVaults, where the information is remotely hosted in the cloud and stored in encrypted form.

A GoldKey USB token, enabling on-the-fly encryption and decryption, allows transparent, near real-time access to all the user's KryptoVaults and files. When the GoldKey is removed from the machine, vault entry ends.

Buffalo bolsters storage encryption

Japan-based networking and storage solutions provider Buffalo Technology has unveiled the DriveStation USB 2.0 hard drive HD-CXTU2 series, says Channel Times.

The 2TB difficult drive features an integrated hardware AES 256-bit encryption chip; which offers optional full disC encryption for protection against unauthorised access.

Susumu Kobayashi, country head, Buffalo Technology, says: “Drive Station is an innovative storage answer for consumers simply because it has a easy plug-and-play choice and advantages like eco manager and secure lock.”

Seagate is readying the introduction of two new kinds of hard drives, such as a pair of 3-TB enterprise difficult drives that will not work with today’s systems and a hybrid drive with built-in flash memory to eliminate the need for a separate SSD in mobile PCs.

Channel sources indicate that Seagate is planning to introduce both SAS and SATA versions of its upcoming 3-TB hard generate as part of its enterprise-class Constellation ES family, which would make them the storage industry’s largest drives in terms of total capacity.

Seagate’s Constellation ES family currently tops out at a maximum storage capability of 2 TB.

A Seagate spokesperson confirmed that the upcoming 3-TB difficult generate would be for the enterprise business.

Nevertheless, such a large capacity generate could pose difficulties for storage OEMs and systems builders simply because of a capability limit imposed on difficult drives back within the days when breaching the 100-GB capability mark was still mainly a dream.

Barbara Craig, a senior product marketing manager at Seagate focused on the nearline enterprise storage market, without admitting that Seagate will offer a 3-TB generate, blogged recently on her company’s website that program builders need to be aware of this new capability point when considering adopting larger drives in the future.

Craig wrote that the original computer architecture included numerous limitations, including a 2.1-TB LBA (logical block address) limit on difficult generate capacity.

While 2.1 TB at the time was more than enough capability per drive, that limit in today’s operating systems, BIOS controllers, difficult generate controllers, and device drivers is really a wall against users’ growing stores of digital content is pressing, Craig wrote.

She called for the industry to adopt Lengthy LBA (LLBA) as a way to allow access to generate capacities of over 2.1 TBs. “If high capacities are in your future, I highly recommend you check with your software and hardware suppliers on their plans for implementing Long LBAs today,” she wrote.

System builders confirmed that The 3-TB hard drives are slated to ship around September or October of this year.

View Source

View Source
While being pricier per gigabyte of storage than difficult drives, solid state drives are increasing in popularity thanks to superior performance, including the ability to boot your OS significantly faster. So what if you are able to weld together the speed of an SSD using the bigger capacity (and much lower cost) of a hard generate?

That’s what Seagate has been working on in what’s becoming called a hybrid difficult generate, which mostly entails adding a flash-memory chip to a conventional difficult disk. The very first time the storage company tried releasing it two years ago, it went nowhere, but apparently Seagate thinks now’s the time to give it a second try. According to Engadget, an event is planned for Might 26 that will unveil the generate becoming used in Asus’ ROG G73Jh gaming laptop. In addition, the Momentus XT drive is currently available for preorder at Provantage.com, combining a 4GB SLC Nand flash chip, 32MB cache, and a 7,200rpm 500GB 2.5-inch SATA (3Gbps) hard drive, for $133.45. Fudzilla says that 250GB and 320GB flavors will also be accessible in the 2.5-inch form factor.

Seagate is claiming that the Momentus XT will boost system overall performance up to 150 percent. What does that convert to? Apparently being 80 percent swifter than an ordinary 7,2000rpm difficult drive and 20 percent quicker than a 10,000rpm hard drive, though still six seconds slower than a dedicated SSD drive. On the other hand, it won’t cost anywhere near the price of an equivalently sized SSD. Obviously benchmarkers are already planning to put those claims to the test with the G73Jh laptop. If they deliver the promised performance, these hybrid drives might look a lot more like a Prius and less like a Frankenstein.

May 31, 2010, Taipei, Taiwan ~ One of the world’s leading flash manufacturers, Silicon Power today (5/31) announces a new addition to the ultra rugged Armor series lineup, the A80. The Armor A80 uses the royal blue color on its base frame that's commonly found in high overall performance sports cars; as for A80’s performance, its outstanding read/write speed is coupled with the latest USB 3.0 interface and is backwards compatible with USB2.0. The USB three.0 interface features a 5 Gbps/sec bandwidth which is 10x the bandwidth of a USB 2.0 interface. It saves users precious time backing as much as and from the difficult drive when transferring mass data files. Come and experience speed like a higher overall performance sports car!

In addition to its excellent read/write performances, Armor A80 continues the Armor series rugged functionality feature. Armor A80 is in compliance with US military grade transit drop test (MIL-STD-810F 516.5 procedure IV) and it also passed IEC529 IPX7 (waterproof check). The Silicon Power Armor A80 could be placed under water up to a meter deep and for as much as 30 minutes without damage. Under normal operations, it is also dust-proof and pressure resistant. Its’ hot plug and play functionality is supported by a convenient cable storage design, bringing its practicality up another level!

Armor A80 portable difficult drive is in compliance with USB three.0 specifications and it also comes with seven major protection functions which are featured in the SP Widget (free of charge download). It also comes with a 60 day trial version of Norton Internet Security (NIS). Built-in having a LED status indicator light, it shows energy and data transfer statuses.

Features

- USB 3.0 Super Speed (High transferring rate up to 5 Gbps/sec)
- Meet the water resistant regular "IEC 529 IPX7"
- Meet the U.S. military drop-test standards MIL-STD-810F 516.5 procedure IV (transit drop test) with advanced two-stage anti-shock technology
- Anti-pressure and anti-dust function
- Cable carry style
- LED indicates power on and data access
- SP Widget free download software features seven main functions to maximize your SP Portable Difficult Drive

Specifications

- Dimensions: 139 x 96 x 18 mm
- Weight: 270g
- Regular Compliance:USB 3.0 / 2.0
- Data Transfer Rates: Max. 5 Gbps (USB three.0 Mode)
Max. 480 Mbps (USB 2.0 Mode)
- Energy Supply:DC5V (Energy supplied via USB)
- Support OS: Windows 7, Windows Vista, WinXP, Win2000, Mac 10.three.X above, Linux 2.6.X above
- Operating Temperature:five?~ 55?
- Storage Temperature:-40?~ 70?
- Capacity: 640GB, 500GB, 320GB
- Color: Blue
- Three-year warranty


About Silicon Energy

Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded by a group of specialists with more than 20 years experience in the field of international trading, global marketing, technical know-how of flash information storage products, is the world's leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, DRAMS, and card readers. We are also the initiator to offer Lifetime Warranty service both for the Flash Memory Card series and USB Flash Drive products. At the heart of Silicon Energy, it exists a strong atmosphere of "Sharing, Caring, and of being Trustworthy." These are our finest commitments at the core. Recognized and supported in over 90 countries, Silicon Energy provides fast, international lifetime service and superior products. Silicon Energy makes a remarkable and successful achievement within the global community. The company is headquartered in Taipei and has established branches worldwide including the Netherlands and Japan.

View Original Article

EMC-owned cloud storage outfit Mozy will become significantly less cloudy with plans to include Email Backup in its next release.

Mozy v2.0 for Windows will backup to local difficult drives too as to the cloud, recognising that cloud backup and restore can take a long time.

Abandoning a purely cloud-based model is a bit of a come-down for the firm. It will supporting USB-connected difficult drives - EMC is no doubt hoping that clients will buy Iomega ones.

The new Mozy facility, Mozy 2xProtect, is included in Mozy 2.0, and automatically backs up files to an external difficult drive in addition towards the cloud so you get double protection of your files, and get it quicker.

Mozy 2.0 lets you pause or throttle a cloud backup on the computer it's operating on if you want to do something else with your broadband link, for example have a Skype phone call. It also backs up around 25 per cent quicker to the cloud, Mozy claims, and also the GUI has been improved to be simpler and quicker to use.

You are able to get the software on the web from MozyPro and Mozy Home.

View Source

Here’s a media player that can play HD content from PC to large screen Television. EDWIN KEE writes.

WD Tv Reside HD Searching for a media player but in the wilderness about which model to get? Western Digital has a winner with the WD Tv Live HD media player, exactly where it boasts network capability alongside full-HD 1080p resolution, although enjoying the distinction of becoming the very first network media player that is compatible with the Windows 7 operating system.


Playing media stored on USB and network drives using the WD Television Live HD media player is really a snap. It offers you the opportunity to enjoy content from popular Web sites on your spanking new HDTV in your living room — just in time for the World Cup this summer as well, we may add.


Using the Windows 7 Play To feature, users are able to initiate and control the streaming of video, music or photos towards the WD Television Live HD media player utilizing any Windows 7-powered machine which is connected on the same network.

You will be able to bring this puppy home for RM499 a pop as it will ship with a one-year limited warranty.


http://www.wdc.com Blob and Flow Touch Sensitive Light Pets Want a pet but don't have the time to dedicate yourself to its upkeep? Why not go digital instead with the Blob and Flow Touch Sensitive Light Pets.


This unique pet comes with a shiny metal body as well as expressive eyes. All you require to do is touch it to “communicate”, exactly where you can wake it up, make it wink, induce a momentary madness spell or even stroke it to sleep.

Available as blue-eyed Blob and feisty Flow (blue and red colours, respectively), they ought to make for a decent desktop toy should you think that your workspace is searching a little bit sparse.


Of course they can be powered via USB, but you are able to also hook it up to a mains adapter if you want to keep them juiced up all year long. All light effects are created by its internal chip controlled LEDs, and the asking price of STG35 (RM168) isn’t too a lot even after conversion, considering the fact that there are no vet fees to be concerned about! http://www.mathmos.com Seagate Momentus XT drive brings hybrid technology towards the fore.


Solid State Drives (SSDs) have been touted to usher in a whole new era of computing, but it seems that the traditional difficult drive still has some way to go prior to it hoists a white flag and hands over the baton towards the SSD camp. Nicely, Seagate balances things up using the latest release of its Momentus XT drive that is basically a solid state hybrid with Adaptive Memory technology, where the drive is in a position to provide SSD-like performance having a a lot higher storage capacity while being merciful on your wallet.

Specially created to play nice with all standard notebooks, the Momentus XT holds the advantage of being independent of operating program, software and driver, making it a snap to integrate onto an existing program. The use of Adaptive Memory technology also helps the drive tailor its performance towards the user, which means it doesn’t matter whether you use your notebook primarily for gaming, editing digital media or number crunching, the Momentus XT is well poised to cater to your next move.


Within its chassis, you'll find a 7200 rotation-per-minute hard drive with 32MB of cache, 4GB of solid state SLC NAND flash storage, and the aforementioned Adaptive Memory technology that monitors your frequently used applications and data files in an intelligent manner, placing them into the solid state portion of the drive for easy and quick recall when needed. The Seagate Momentus XT will come in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB capacities, exactly where each purchase will be accompanied by a Seagate five-year restricted warranty for added peace of mind.

View Content Source

You’ve got to figure flash drives are ubiquitous when they arrive as ikura sushi. It happened last week. I opened an envelope and also the sushi generate fell out. It looks fishy, but it works.

When not serving as an artistic expression, flash drives earn their popularity as perhaps the most commonsense of all personal computer peripherals. All they're is really a memory chip on a USB plug. The drive acts exactly like a hard drive but is totally portable.

Despite its size, there’s a lot packed into that Bic lighter (origin of 1 of its numerous names, the “flick drive”). A huge advance is you can move files and use them between different operating systems.

Linux, Mac and PCs all treat it the same. If you have a Mac at school and a PC at home, no problem.

With all things personal computer, we always wonder how lengthy will this miracle last. With flash drives, that depends.

Average drives will last at least 10,000 writes, that is, information saves. The more costly drives are in the millions. The drives are too new to test how lengthy they will hold data. A minimum of 10 years is really a good starting point.

New drives do a trick called “leveling.” When you save a file, the drive ensures it doesn't go to the same memory sectors each time. It spreads out the data, and this increases its longevity.

For this cause, never defragment a flash generate. It offers no speed enhancement. One defragging can cost you thousands of writes. The exact same is true for other utilities we use on our hard drives. Anything that exercises the drive will hasten its failure.

Still, I’ve yet to hear of or find a bad flash drive. I cannot say that for DVDs and their burner drives.

The biggest problem so far is losing the little drives. Every has a clip for a neck strap. That at least makes them simpler to discover.

Some with the drives have been waterproofed. Apparently there are users who wash their drives with their shirts. Normally, water can kill a flash drive.

You can spend about 50 percent more and get a secure generate. These include encryption preventing prying eyes with the generate is misplaced or stolen.

Perhaps the sushi design is the best security. It certainly doesn’t appear like a storage medium.

WARNING ON FAKE DRIVES

There’s considerable commerce with drives listed as a particular capacity that aren't. This can happen with higher-end drives selling for $100 or more. It could be a cheap, one-gigabyte drive electronically altered to look like 32 gigabytes or much more.

For this cause, purchase drives from reputable sellers with warranties.

Generate NAMES

All of these are the exact same:

Jump drive, flip drive, flick generate, Bic drive, flash drive, USB drive, finger stick, memory stick, pen generate, keychain drive, thumb generate.

View Full Story

For a while, it has seemed impossible to design anything new or innovative when it comes to portable hard drives other than to increase their storage space or add minor features, like an e-label, in the case of the WD My Passport Studio. As it turns out, nevertheless, Seagate has been working on an additional major evolution.

View Source
The organization announced Tuesday an entirely new line of storage solutions called FreeAgent GoFlex that emphasizes flexibility. The new storage family includes both portable and desktop external drives. Each comes with an array of cable adapters that permit it to quickly switch to difference interfaces. With this new family, the concept of an external difficult drive has changed significantly.

Traditionally, an external hard drive has circuit boards with selective built-in ports for different interfaces. These interfaces includes USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA. Low-end or ultraportable drives usually assistance USB 2.0 only, whereas higher-end and desktop drives tend to support more interfaces. Nevertheless, all of them share one common shortcoming: they're stuck with whatever ports they come with.

A tipster has been telling the people at Engadget that Apple has an exciting, new update to announce for its fans, a 99$ iPhone-shaped AppleTV, powered by software and hardware similar to that of the well-liked handset. Featuring a limited number of ports, the small device will reportedly boast 1080p HD capabilities, it's most likely to utilize the A4 chip found in Apple’s iPad, 16GB of local storage, and will focus on streaming content from the cloud.

Allegedly already confirmed by "a source very close to Apple," the details leaked by Engadget’s tipster definitely paint an attractive picture of Apple’s following "hobby." The outlook for the next version of the Apple TV includes a new architecture based directly on the iPhone 4, the report says, consequently, the device will most likely share the internal hardware of the iPad, and perhaps the next-generation iPhone, right down to the A4 chip.

This tipster specifically said that Apple’s next TV-device would boast 16GB of flash memory – more than enough, given that it's said to focus on cloud storage. Other key features allegedly include the ability to output video at 1080p, and the quite attractive $99 price tag. It has been described as "an iPhone without a screen," the report goes to mention. Finally, an option to store content locally beyond the included 16GB of storage will also be feasible, according towards the rumor, by utilizing Time Capsule, or a computer’s hard drive.

Apple hasn’t had a lot of success with the Apple TV, hence the company’s stance on the matter – "just a a hobby." However, everybody will agree that it has potential, especially within the form described above. The Mac maker has currently struck deals with numerous labels, as far as iTunes is concerned, so content will definitely not be a issue for the customer. Integration with MobileMe (particularly iDisk) is certainly not out with the question either. Still, Apple is yet to confirm the device. At this point, such speculation is truly just speculation, nothing more.

View Original Article

View Source
Whether you're purchasing storage for a laptop or for a desktop, your choice for a while has been restricted to difficult drives (inexpensive, lots of capacity, relatively slow) or solid-state drives (costly, limited capacity, super-fast). Desktop users could split the difference with a 10,000rpm difficult drive like Western Digital's Velociraptor, but laptop users who needed small drives had to sacrifice either speed or a substantial portion of their bank accounts.

During the first day of Computex 2010 in Taipei, Hitachi-LG Information Safe-keeping Inc. (HLDS) officially unveiled the world’s first hybrid SSD / ODD drive for use in small kind element netbooks, set-top boxes and even tablets. Put simply, the HyDrive is a standard mobile form factor DVD optical drive with embedded NAND flash memory functioning as an SSD, designed to deliver optimal overall performance for cellular computing devices with tight physical package constraints while enabling broad compatibility using the world’s vast collection of optically stored information.

The HyDrive essentially enables a total safe-keeping answer on the PC utilizing the benefits of 3 storage devices kinds – traditional difficult drives, solid-state disks and optical drives – without the need for system manufacturers to modify package constraints in order to accommodate all three storage components into a single cellular design.

The reason behind the approach to combining non-volatile optical storage with NAND flash memory is easy. As the cellular computing producers realized the overall performance benefits and low-power benefits of solid-state disks when combined using the high-capacity safe-keeping capabilities of traditional magnetic drives, they immediately saw a require to implement each types of storage technologies into their products. The issue, however, was being able to cram a 2.5-inch SSD, a 2.5-inch HDD, and a 5.25-inch ODD (optical disc drive) all into the same device. Previously, this kind of three-drive arrangement was only available in high-performance enthusiast notebooks like those produced by Sager and Eurocom.

Hitachi-LG Information Safe-keeping soon realized the physical style advantages of incorporating both a solid-state disk along with a difficult drive into a single mechanism. Despite what may be perceived as an oddly ingenious hybrid combination of each solid-state safe-keeping and optical disk safe-keeping, the HyDrive is certainly an economized answer for the small form factor and mobile marketplace moving forwards and validates the philosophy that solid-state and magnetic safe-keeping will continue to be implemented in unison their exclusive safe-keeping advantages.

If all goes as planned, the first HyDrive will probably be accessible in the South Korea market in August 2010 and globally in September 2010. Executives at HLDS have stated that first-generation HyDrive items will come in 12.7mm thick form factors and will unfortunately not fit into most conventional laptops. Instead, they will be targeted towards HPTCs, little form element (SFF) PCs and other mid-tower desktops. In March 2011, the company plans to shrink the size of its HyDrive items down to just 9.5mm thick by embedding the SSD component directly within the PCB assembly. This will enable the company to target smaller cellular computing markets including CULV notebooks, netbooks as well as thin capacitive multi-touch tablets. Based on the press announcement from Computex, the slides note that each slot-loading and tray-style models will eventually ship, and we can only hope that any tablet designs receive the 9.7mm slot-loading implementation.

First-generation HyDrive configurations will probably be accessible in 32GB and 64GB configurations and will feature SATA II 3Gbps interfaces. However, the company insists that second-generation configurations are expected to scale all the way up to 256GB of NAND flash memory and will probably be available in SATA III 6Gbps configurations. More on those next year.

View Source