The recent flooding reported in Thailand is definitely going to impact the computer hard drive supply for at least the next six months, with Western Digital reporting that as much as a fifty percent reduction in production.  Western Digital’s main facility is mostly under water, and precision tools and clean rooms do not respond well to large quantities of muddy water.  Since many of the component suppliers for hard drive manufactures are located in the same general area, the entire industry will be affected as companies clean up, purchase new equipment and retool.

What does this mean for the consumer? Because computers are assembled largely in the Pacific Rim nations and work on a “just in time” supply basis, expect greater delays in receiving new machines and higher prices. In fact, be prepared to not be able to get certain size drives at any price.  There have been reports that the supply chain is already starting to increase the price on existing stocks.  The smart money would be to go ahead and purchase a new hard drive now, especially the higher capacity drives, even if you don’t expect to use it for a few months.  The other alternative would be to simply wait out the shortage, as often industries that suffer a supply chain problem over build and create excess product and prices drop accordingly.

The growing push toward cloud computing coupled with the price reductions in solid state drives (SSDs), at least in the 120 to 150 gigabyte range may push some PC laptop vendors to offer SSD drives while marketing cloud solutions to access user data. A lot will hinge on SSD suppliers willingness to cut prices further, possibly in exchange for significant order commitments from laptop OEMs to justify ramping up production.  It is a big gap to consider. A 120 gigabyte SSD drives costs anywhere from $99 to $140 USD.  $70 USD can buy one a top of the line two terabyte SATA drive.  For most users, it is not even a question.  Bear in mind while these are retail prices, the gulf between the respective cost per gigabyte is almost prohibitive.

Unless you don’t have a choice, which is where the PC OEMs are or you see a chance to really gain a foothold in the market, which is the opportunity that the natural disaster in Thailand has created for the SSD makers.

We shall see.

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

Hard Drive Shortages Lead to Higher Prices-And SSDs in the Cloud?

Hitachi have recently announced the Ultrastar C10K300 6Gbps SAS HDD with a power consumption of only 3.1W in idle and 6.1W in operational mode. It has 64MB of buffer memory, a 10,000rpm speed for only 29dB.
Available soon these HDDs will be sold in 147GB and 300GB versions.

via Techfresh

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

Hitachi Ultrastar C10K300 6Gbps SAS HDD

Ok yes there are 2TB hard drives now but the new Samsung 1.5TB EcoGreen F2EG hard drive has a few tricks up its sleeve. Thanks to its EcoTriangle technology it will use around 40% less power in idle mode and 45% in read/write mode than most normal HDDs. It will also give off less heat and lower noise levels.

The F2EG family of drives is currently being shipped to major OEM businesses. The 1.5TB HDD is available at $149.00 MSRP.

via Physorg

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

Samsung to release 1.5TB EcoGreen F2EG hard drive

Ok the video is a bit cheesy and annoying but Samsung have had a viral video created to show of their Solid State Drives. Using 24 SSDs in Raid (RAID 0?) they managed to achieve 2GB a second throughput. In comparison your average HD will likely have speeds of around 100MBs a second.

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

24 Samsung SSD’s in Raid on 1 system

If you are a PC enthusiast and have more money than sense then the OCZ Z Drive is quite likely the thing for you.

This is a PCIe enclosure that’ll contain 1TB worth of SSD storage with maximum read rates of up to 600MB/sec and maximum write speeds of up to 500MB/sec whith a sustained write speed of 400MB/sec.

This device will contain four 256GB MLC-based OCZ SSDs along with 256MB of ECC DDR2 RAM.

It can also be set up as a slave drive or a boot drive and OCZ are hoping to have a 4TB version by the end of the year!

via Engadget

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

1TB SSD OCZ Z Drive!!

Micron is starting production of a new line of solid state drives (SSD) that offer much faster data rates than were previously possible. The new drives are capable of 250MB/s data transfer and come in two lines, an enterprise-class RealSSD P200 and the client-focused RealSSD C200. The company hopes the increased speed and reduced power consumption of the new drives will encourage their adoption by the server market. “We are seeing SSD interest in a variety of applications where historically hard disk drives have reigned,” said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron.

“For many, the most logical place is in notebook computers, but there is incredible value for SSDs in enterprise server systems.” The P200 range come in sizes from 16GB to 128GB in 2.5 inch modules, with the C200 ranging from 16GB to 256GB, and comes in 2.5 and 1.5 inch modules for better take-up by notebook manufacturers. The company is claiming that the P200 drives are 10 times faster than traditional platter drives, use a tenth of the power and last about four times as long.

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

Micron develop an ultra fast Solid State Drive – 250 MB/s