Silicon giant Intel is preparing a fresh round of price-cuts, this time with its High-Performance SATA SSDs. The price cuts revolve around the company's X25-M and X18-M series, with cuts ranging between US $50 and $100. The SLC-based X25-E series however, is exempted from price cuts. The 80 GB variants of X25-M and X18-M get $50 off, while the 160 GB ones get $100 off. The new prices will be effective from April 26. It remains to be seen as of how these prices affect those of the SSDs Intel co-braded with companies such as Kingston, A-Data, etc.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled their first miniPCI-Express Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the affordable flash-based storage option to significantly increase the capacity for netbooks. For on the go computing professionals and students looking for an ideal storage upgrade on their ultra-portable platforms, the OCZ miniPCI-E SSD is the cost effective alternative to traditional standard storage drives as a reliable upgrade on mobile systems.

Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend ), an international leader in storage products, today announced a stylish new addition to its exciting line of StoreJet portable hard drives. The StoreJet 25M-R portable hard drive is an innovative combination of anti-shock construction with an attractive design that masks the drive's true rugged nature in a tantalizing blend of crimson red and jet black.

Pioneer on Tuesday announced the release of its latest Blu-ray, DVD and CD writer, the BDR-2203. Using SATA interface, the BDR-2203 writes dual-layer Blu-Ray media at up to 8x speeds, equal to about 15 minutes of your time for writing a single-layer 25 GB Blu-Ray disc, or just about 30 minutes for completion of a dual-layer 50 GB disc. The burner also writes recordable DVDs at 16x, dual-layer DVDs at 8x, CD-R media at 32x, and CD rewritable discs at 24x. Along with the burner you'll receive CyberLink PowerDirector, PowerDVD, and Power2Go software products. The BDR-2203 should already be in stores, with a suggested retail price of $250.

In the market to compete with the likes of Shuttle, AOpen released a the new XC Encore OE700 barebone PC, that makes for the basic framework of a PC, requiring you to add a compatible processor, memory and storage. Measuring 106 (H) x 200 (W) x 321 (D) mm, the XCore OE700 sports a motherboard based on the Intel GM45 chipset, that supports Intel Core 2 Duo processors, with GMA X4500 integrated graphics that supports output using DVI-D and HDMI. 7.1 channel HD audio and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of the connectivity. Three SATA ports are provided internally. An LED display and slot-in DVD-Writer are provided on the front-panel.

Being on the forefront of technology adoption as far as its graphics products go, AMD will have a notebook platform with DirectX 11 compliant integrated GPUs ready by 2011, reveal company slides sourced by Expreview. The iGPU will be part of the company's "Accelerated Processing Unit" (APU) design approach to the PC's central processing. The APU draws parallels with Intel's upcoming processor designs where the CPU package holds both the CPU and northbridge dice in a multichip-module. One of the first AMD APUs, codenamed "Llano" will be part of the company's "Sabine" mobile platform. Typically consisting of the CPU, a DDR3 memory controller, a northbridge with integrated graphics processor, and the PCI-Express root complex, APU eliminates discrete northbridge from board design.

Slated for 2011, the Llano APU comes out at a time when DirectX 11 is expected to be an established API. The iGPU will also pack UVD 3.0, a next generation hardware-accelerated video decoder by AMD. It will be built on the 32 nm manufacturing process by AMD's foundry partner(s). It features up to 4 x86 processing cores, an iGPU, a memory controller supporting DDR3-1600 memory, 128-bit floating-point execution units (present even with current generation Phenom processors), and a BGA design with a low-TDP package. Llano will be accompanied by the SB9xxM series southbridge. This chip would make for most of the board's nucleated machinery apart from the APU. It will integrate the "DAC" (we interpret audio DAC), USB 3.0 hubs with 16 ports, a 6-port SATA controller, and clock-generator.

The newest in toolless technology, the eSATA EZvault is the pinnacle of stylish design and functionality. Made with the highest quality materials combined with outstanding design, the EZvault is vibration proof and excellent at getting rid of and keeping out any heat that could damage your harddrive.

Patriot Memory,a global provider of premium quality memory module and flash memory solutions, today announced their 128GB Warp SSD v3, Patriot's newest addition to the Warp Series.

The 128GB Warp SSD v3 provides and quenches your thirst for speed. With blazing transfer speeds up to 240MB/s read and 160 MB/s write this drive is a perfect solution for a wide range of applications that require ruggedness, minimal power consumption, cooler temperature and silent operations. Keeping reliability in mind, the Patriot Warp 128GB SSD v3 drives has 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) and built in wear leveling technology. Warp's v3 continues to be in a 2.5" form factor with SATA I/II connections for fast, reliable data transfer rates.

A-Data Memory introduced its first line of solid-state drives (SSDs). The company co-branded the X25-M series SSD originally manufactured by Intel. Information of the partnership between the two companies surfaced in February, early this year. A similar deal was also reportedly struck between Intel and Power Quotient International (PQI).

The A-Data X25-M SSD comes in capacities of 80 GB and 160 GB. Featuring the SATA II interface, the drive supports advanced SATA features such as Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with 32 concurrent operations. The drive uses multi-level cell NAND flash chips built on the 50 nm manufacturing process. The read/write speeds on this drive are commonly known to be 250/70 MBps.

Western Digital Corp., a world leader in hard drive storage for computing and consumer electronics applications, today announced that it has completed a $65 million cash acquisition of SiliconSystems, Inc., Aliso Viejo, Calif., a leading supplier of solid-state drives for the embedded systems market.

Since its inception in 2002, SiliconSystems has sold millions of SiliconDrive products to meet the high performance, high reliability and multi-year product lifecycle demands of the network-communications, industrial, embedded-computing, medical, military and aerospace markets. These markets accounted for approximately one third of worldwide solid-state drive revenues in 2008. SiliconSystems' product portfolio includes solid-state drives with SATA, EIDE, PC Card, USB and CF interfaces in 2.5-inch, 1.8-inch, CF and other form factors. SiliconSystems has developed extensive intellectual property to address the stringent embedded systems market requirements to ensure data integrity, eliminate unscheduled downtime, protect application data and software and provide for data security and protection through its patented and patent-pending PowerArmor, SiSMART, SolidStor and SiSecure technologies.

WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today expanded its My Book family of external hard drives to include a 2 TB capacity, the largest available capacity in a single-drive system. With its wide variety of models, WD offers a solution for every type of user, whether they're a creative power user on a Mac or a home user on a PC. The new 2 TB My Book family includes: My Book Studio Edition, My Book Mac Edition, My Book Home Edition and My Book Essential Edition models.

Market research shows that consumer creation and acquisition of digital media is growing rapidly, driving demand for increasing storage capacities. According to market research firm IDC, the number of digital cameras and camera phones in the world surpassed 1 billion (Mar. 2008). Separately, market research firm GfK reports that HD (high definition) video camcorders are experiencing record growth and now account for 42 percent of total camcorder sales (Aug. 2008). HD video requires massive amounts of drive space: at least 8 GB per hour of video. Since 2006, when Apple began offering movie downloads, the Apple store has already sold more than 250 million TV episodes and sold or rented more than 33 million movies (Apple, Mar. 2009).

Patriot Memory, a global provider of premium quality memory module and flash memory solutions, today announced their 256GB Warp SSD v3. Patriot's newest Warp will be showcased at CeBIT Germany.

"Our new 256GB Warp SSD v3 now gives the consumer the fastest data-transfer rates plus all the storage space large enough to quench their multimedia thirst," says Meng Jay, Flash Product Manager for Patriot Memory. "With games and applications becoming larger all the time, for the hardcore gamer, some of the smaller SSDs would make poor investments, as they would quickly run out of space." Warp's v3 continues to be in a 2.5 form factor with SATA I/II connections for fast, reliable data transfer rates. For more information about Patriot's 256GB Warp v3 SSD and other memory module and flash memory solutions, please contact your Patriot Sales Representative or visit Patriot Memory.

After the heated feedback of the M912 Series with swivel screens that were launched in 2008, GIGABYTE will demonstrate various 10.1-inch mobile PCs at the CeBIT 2009 held in Hannover according to public expectation. These include the Touch Note M1028 also equipped with the swivel screen, the Thin Note M1024 which is only 890 grams and 2cm thick, and the Booktop M1022 equipped with the exclusive docking station for turning the Booktop into a desktop. These models will again display GIGABYTE's excelling R&D power. Also, the new-generation Intel Centrino 2 notebook PCs with different screen sizes will be the focus at the present CeBIT. As one of the leading brands in notebook PCs, GIGABYTE will surely bring refreshing models to the public in 2009.

Touch Note M1028: With a fashionable and elegant appearance, the Touch Note M1028 has a golden coffee top cover of exquisite quality and a 10.1-inch LED backlight swivel screen. It is a combination of notebook and tablet PCs that delivers multiple application modes for convenience use. The two resolution options for this model include 1024x600 and 1366x768, which are the mainstreams of the market. In addition to the mobile features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Express Card slot. What is noteworthy is that the M1028 is equipped with a wide range of crafty designs from GIGABYTE. Besides the 92% full-scale keyboard with premium quality, the M1028 supports the embedded 3.5G (HSDPA) module for users to experience the wonder of mobile life.

AMD and Seagate are set to demonstrate the new 6 Gbps SATA storage device interface. The companies will hold the demo today, in New Orleans, USA. Although not a player in the enterprise storage controller market, AMD is using this demo to exhibit the kind of technology that will go into its future chipset. The company already has plans to build chipset for its own current-generation Opteron processors.

Seagate, on the other hand, is a large player in the hard drive industry, enterprise storage included. The company notes that SATA 6 Gbps will benefit solid-state drives before they can significantly help conventional hard-drives. "Flash will take advantage [of the new interface], in applicable markets, sooner than you think," said Marc Noblitt, senior marketing I/O development manager for Seagate. "Six-gig is a perfect interface. OEMs tell us that they want to have the same SATA interface for flash as for a 1.8-inch rotating drive, so they can swap in a drive for flash, or vice versa." he added.

Sony-Optiarc, a subsidiary of Sony, is preparing the new AD-7240S DVD-Writer drive that is built to write DVDs at 24X. The drive rivals Lite-On, which is already out with a drive that burns DVDs this fast. The drive has a standard-sized internal form factor, and uses the SATA interface. It features adaptive self-tuning and burns media at the following speeds: Up to 24X for single-layer DVD-R/+R; 12X for dual-layer DVD-R/+R, DVD-RAM, and DVD-R9; 48X and 32X for CD writing and re-writing respectively. The drive will reach retail by next month.

SiS Group Company- LinkVast Technologies Inc. today announced the first generation solid-state drive (SSD) memory controllers - LVT820 and LVT815 which manage the latest solid-state memory devices and support external DRAM interfaces to meet the advanced SSD hard drive performance requirements. In addition to standard size of Hard Disk Drive in Desktop PC, LVT820 and LVT815 also can be applied in various forms and sizes for different devices for Notebook/Netbook PC, Embedded system and specific application system markets.

With SATAII interface design, the data transfer rate of LVT820 and LVT815 up to 3Gbps. They support 8 channels (64bit/64CE) and 4 channels (32bit/32CE) memory systems respectively for the flexible and diverse capacity SSD hard drive usage. By designing with the architecture of 16-bit ECC technology, that ensures data transfer accuracy and achieve the reliability and longevity to SSD hard drive with built-in the Advanced Dynamic & Static Wear Leveling technology supporting.

Our friends at PC Perspective talk about a new series of OCZ solid-state drives that is supposed to hit retail shelves sooner or later. Summit series, as they'll be called, are housed in a 2.5-inch shell and feature a brand new controller from Samsung. The MLC flash memory drives use standard SATA 3.0Gbps interface to transfer data. Another characteristic that's worth noting is that the Summit series SSDs feature 64MB of cache, that helps the drives to achieve read/write speeds of up to 208MB/s and 172MB/s respectively. The OCZ Summit will be available in 250GB, 120GB and 60GB models. A full in-depth preview based on an engineering sample Summit drive is accessible here.

A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in high performance memory products, announced today that it has launched A-DATA XPG 3.5" SSD Enclosure to expand its portfolio of SSD solutions. This device is an ingenious hard drive converter, turning up to two 2.5" SATA SSDs into a 3.5" SATA drive.

With this converter, installing a 2.5" drive into a regular PC will be easier than ever, allowing more convenience to recover data from notebooks onto a desktop computer and vise versa. It's very valuable and functional for users who expect SSD speed on their home or office desktop; a perfect product with the speed of SATA II for any average or advanced computer user. Also, the hard drive converter features a safety lock mechanism that allow users to lock up the storage drives, making them unattainable to keep the drives fully secured and safe when they are in operation.

Transcend Information Inc., the world's leading manufacturer of memory products, is proud to release its all-new 192GB high speed 2.5-inch Solid State Drive (SSD). This SSD is made of reliable NAND flash memory that contains no moving parts, and therefore is not susceptible to mechanical failure resulting from vibration, shock or heat. Featuring a powerful new controller, Transcend's MLC-equipped 192GB SSD far outpaces standard 2.5" hard drives, delivering exceptional sustained read/write speeds of up to 150MB / 90MB per second to guarantee fast throughput regardless of file size. With these high-speed transfer rates and virtually non-existent (0.2ms) latency, an SSD-equipped computer boots-up faster, games run more smoothly, and overall system responsiveness is improved. Moreover, this SSD's industry-standard SATA II interface and 2.5" form factor allow easy and straightforward user installation in most notebook computers and mainstream PCs just like regular hard drives.

Korean silicon giant Samsung is ready with its 1.5TB high-capacity desktop hard drive, under the EcoGreen F2 series. The drive is labeled HD154UI. With this drive Samsung looks to focus on storage rather than performance, giving this drive a spindle speed of 5400 rpm, aided by a 32MB cache. This is where the company gets to brandish energy-efficiency, thus living up to its EcoGreen brand name.

Despite these specifications, the drive manages a decent set of scores on the HD Tune benchmark, churning out read/write speeds of around 105 MB/s sequential, and around 48/72 MB/s random access. It has a rated average seek-time of 8.9ms. This Samsung drive comes in the standard 3.5" form-factor. It uses the standard SATA II interface. The drive features some proprietary acoustic management features such as SilentSeek and NoiseGuard. It will be available in Japan later this week at a price of ¥11,580 (around US $130).

Earlier this week, reports emerged of a simple firmware update going wrong for Seagate, rendering some batches of the company's Barracuda 7200.11 hard-drives useless. The flaw in the said firmware update (version SD1A) locked the drive's microcode, preventing the system BIOS from even detecting the drive, in case the user wanted to restore a drive damaged from the update. SD1A was released to fix stuttering problems caused as a result of a bad implementation of the drives' SATA micro-controllers, the earliest diagnosis of the problem the drives were facing. An employee of Seagate working in its engineering, attempted to explain the SD1A firmware debacle, from the perspective of someone who doesn't work with the company's public-relations.

The SD1A firmware, according to the employee, wasn't given out as a singular release, but rather in several revisions to individual customers on a support-customer level, rather than an all-out public download. That was to address customers quickly, when the issue first surfaced as a flaw with the firmware. The problem actually existed where errors during drive operation was written to the drive's firmware to build on a log. When that log reached 320 entries, it would cause errors during initialization of the drive, when it is powered on, when the drive's firmware micro-code is read by the system BIOS. Errors in that process would cause the drive not to be detected / improperly initialized by the system. In a Tom's Hardware report, the employee explains that normally, a customer would go through the usual process of contacting tech-support for the preventative update and "this firmware had to go through five different checks to make sure it applies to the specific conditions to qualify sending to a customer, before now. 5 chances for us to go 'your drive needs the other (or none) firmware update'." However, management, in order to quell the possibility of liability for drive failures, pushed a general public release of the firmware. "Suddenly, it's down to one check, and even that was more designed for a contingency just in case the wrong firmware was sent out." The SD1A firmware mostly affected 500 GB versions of the Barracuda 7200.11 series, after it was released last week. Seagate pulled back the SD1A firmware after the issue of the firmware damaging hard-drives became chronic. The company later released a newer firmware update that can be found here.

Spire, manufacturer of pc components and world famous for its quality and affordable thermal products today officially announced the Spectrum II. This upgraded version is a great little back-up tool to transfer and back up your valuable data from any IDE/SATA Hard Drive at speeds of up to 480 Mbps. At home, in the office or on the go, simply plug and play and secure your data by utilizing the one touch backup (OTB:optional) on the Spire Spectrum II.

The Spectrum II supports any 2.5" / 3.5" and 5.25" IDE/SATA Hard drive or other applicable device with the support for both PC and MAC Desktops or notebooks. If you want the most versatile back-up device on the market, choose Spectrum II. Don't settle for 1-year warranty as offered by others. Trust the brand with the industry experience and 3-year warranty, Spire - Powered by Innovation.

Transcend Information, Inc., the leading manufacturer of memory products, proudly announces the release of its stylish new 1.8-inch portable solid state drive (SSD) - the SSD18M. Combining the speed and durability advantages solid-state technology with the versatility of eSATA and USB connection interfaces, Transcend's SSD18M is an innovative new type of storage device that offers fashionable good looks and high-capacity mobile storage convenience. Unlike traditional hard disk drives, this handy device is made of reliable NAND flash memory that contains no moving parts, which not only eliminates the possibility of mechanical failure resulting from vibration and shock, but also provides substantial weight savings and reduced power consumption. With both eSATA and USB2.0 interface options, this portable SSD features the ultimate in connection flexibility, offering guaranteed speed along with multi-platform compatibility. Its new high-speed eSATA interface provides a maximum read speed of 90MB/s and write speeds of 50MB/s, while its USB2.0 interface assures maximum compatibility with all types of notebook and desktop PCs.

Team Group has just launched new more roomy and refined 256GB Combo solid-state drives. These MLC drives deliver a super read and write speeds of 170MB/Sec and 100MB/Sec respectively. They use the latest SATA 3gbps interface for internal use in computers or mini-USB when an external connection is necessary. The 2.5-inch Combo SSDs also come in a number of different capacities - 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. All drives ship backed by a 2-year warranty.

According to reports by TechConnect Magazine, the third generation of the SATA interface could be introduced as early as the second quarter of this year. The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), who have developed the technology, are expected to finalize specifications, with the launch of products sporting the new interface at the same time. The first backwards compatible drives to feature the new interface are expected to be solid state drives (SSD), followed by hard disk drives (HDD) shortly after. The main advancement is doubling the bandwidth from 3Gbps to 6Gbps, but until the official announcement of the final specifications are released, we will not know what further changes are in store.