Western Digital starts shipping the WD Blue HDD and WD Black SSHD-- a pair of 2.5-inch drives just 5mm thick, a world first according to the company.

The current mobile storage standards stand at either 7mm or 9.5mm thickness.

Designed for slim devices and space-constrained environments, the drives deliver 500GB capacities with 400G (Blue) and 1000G (Black) non-operation shock specifications, Edge Card technology (including new small form factor SFF-8784 edge connector) and dual stage actuators. Continue reading...

Crucial announces the Crucial M500-- a set of 2.5-inch SATA SSDs featuring capacities of up to 960GB, increased response time and an advanced feature set.

Based on the Marvell 88SS9187 controller and custom Micron firmware, the M500 should deliver up to 80000 IOPS with 500MB/s sequential read and 400MB/s write speeds.

Further features include hardware-based encryption (TCG Opal 2.0 + IEEE 1667), data protection against unexpected power loss and an adaptive thermal monitoring system.

The M5 Continue reading...

Scientists at EPFL believe the future of flash memory makes use of a pair of materials-- graphene and molybdenite, two materials already used in promising component prototypes.

The Laboratory of Nanometer Electronics and Structures (LANES) discovered the electronic properties of molybdenite (MoS2) back in 2011. Similar in structure to graphene (being a "2-dimensional" material), molybdenite has interesting semi-conducting properties allowing it to switch very easily between "on" and "off" states Continue reading...

Seagate celebrates a milestone-- the storage maker claims it is the first to ship 2 billion HDDs, a total fueled by demand from mobile applications, cloud infrastructures, social media and various consumer markets.

The company shipped 1 billion HDDs on April 2008 after 29 years of operation, and the second billion after just 4 years.

“This is truly an impressive accomplishment and I am proud to lead this company as we celebrate this success," Seagate CEO Steve Luczo says. "This achievement is Continue reading...

Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) announces the European availability of the THNSNH SSD drive family using the company's 19nm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash technology.

Ideal for high-end notebooks, tablets, AIO desktops and PCs, THNSNH drives come in a 2.5-inch form factor with either 7.0mm or 9.5mm profiles and 60, 128, 256 and 512GB capacities.

The drive series also includes data protection via Toshiba's Quadruple Swing-By Code (QSBC) technology.

Go Toshiba Storage

HGST announces it managed to combine self-assembling molecule and nanoimprinting technologies to create “dense patterns of magnetic islands” only 10nm wide-- allowing it to increase the densities of future HDDs.

The company says the 10nm pattern shows "excellent" initial read-write and data retention results from lab tests, as well as double the bit density of current disk drive platters.

The highest capacity (4TB) HDDs on the market have a platter density of 1TB, meaning the doubling of densities Continue reading...

In a sign of the market shifting from HDDs to SSDs Seagate announces it will stop production of 2.5-inch HDDs with 7200rpm spindle speeds by end 2013.

The company also says it will start selling 2.5-inch 5400rpm HDDs for value notebooks.

Mobile HDDs with 7200 RPM rotational speeds are something of a minority, generally finding use in high performance notebooks for professional or prosumer customers.

Seagate currently offers 4 different 2.5-inch 7200 RPM drives-- the Momentus 7200.4, 7200.2 Continue reading...

Integral launches the USB 3.0 Portable SSD-- the first external solid state drive (SSD) from the company making use of the USB 3.0 interface.

Around the size of a credit card and weighing just 41g, the drive features read speeds of up to 230 MB/s and write speeds of up to 140 MB/s. Being an SSD, it is shock-proof, silent and more durable than regular portable HDDs.

The USB 3.0 Portable SSD is available in 128, 256 and 512GB sizes and is compatible with both Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Continue reading...