WD releases first 12Gbps SAS SSDs
Western Digital subsidiary HGST today announced the world's first solid-state drives (SSD) that sport a 12Gbps serial-attached SCSI (SAS) interface.
The 2.5-in., enterprise-class SSD family ups the SAS interface bandwidth by 2X and boosts throughput by two-and-a-half times from the company's last generation SAS SSD.
The drives range from 200GB to 1TB in capacity. Read more...
Apple’s purchase of Anobit would give it a leg up on rivals
Apple's buyout of Israel-based solid-state drive (SSD) manufacturer Anobit Technologies will give the company a significant technological boost in the mobile market, and the deal could yield huge cost savings.
Apple is the industry's largest NAND flash consumer, so acquiring Anobit gives it a means of addressing the reliability problems that arise as solid-state memory shrinks in size.
According to published reports, Apple will pay around $500 million for Anobit. It sees the purchase of a NAND flash technology developer as key to its product strategy going forward. The acquisition of Anobit would be Apple's largest purchase since it bought NeXT in 1996. NeXT, which produced high-end workstations, was founded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs after he was fired from Apple in 1985. Read more...
Are costly SSDs worth the money? Enterprise users say absolutely
With 5,000 employees and 280 branch offices, Associated Bank is a prime example of a medium-sized business with big data demands.
After acquiring another bank in 2006, its storage area network (SAN) grew form 17TB to 300TB in less than a year. Since then, due to more applications coming online and federal regulations requiring more data retention, the SAN has grown to 900TB, or 52 times its original size.
Dan Marbes, a systems engineer at the Greenbay, Wisc.-based bank, decided to try solid-state drives (SSD) to increase the performance on I/O-hungry applications, while reducing his spindle footprint. Read more...
Industry group releases spec to test consumer SSD performance
The Storage Networking Industry Association this month announced the release of a specification that can be used to test the performance of consumer (client) solid-state drives (SSDs) regardless of the vendor.
The specification, for the first time, creates a level playing field for determining consumer SSD performance.
The SNIA's announcement follows the release of a specification earlier this year for testing the performance of data center-class SSDs.
Like its Enterprise Performance Test Specification, the new Client Performance Test Specification defines a set of device-level tests and methodologies intended to enable comparative testing of SSD devices regardless of the manufacturer. Read more...
SanDisk releases new SSDs for old computers
SanDisk has introduced a new line of SSDs (solid-state drives) that it's marketing directly to retail consumers versus computer system manufacturers.
SanDisk is pitching its new Ultra SSD line as a product that can be used to replace hard drives in older systems and thereby increase the performance, durability and lifespan of existing laptops and desktops.
There is nothing that differentiates the new SSD line from a product marketed to equipment manufacturers other than it's being packaged for retail sales.
The Ultra SSD line, which uses the SATA 2.0 specification I/O interface, sports a sequential read rate of up to 280MB/sec and a sequential write rate of up to 270MB/sec. Read more...