Apricorn, the leading manufacturer of software-free, 256-bit AES XTS hardware-encrypted USB data storage devices, today announced the release of a 24 TB version of its Aegis Padlock DT and Padlock DT FIPS Desktop Drives. Continuing its position as an industry leader, Apricorn is the first to bring a 24 TB encrypted drive to market, delivering high performance and mass capacity to industries such as healthcare, financial services, education, and government, while ensuring the security of users' data. This is the third time Apricorn has brought to market the industry's largest capacity hardware encrypted USB drive, having previously done so in 20 TB and 22 TB sizes.

"Microsoft this month disclosed that the nation state attack it identified in January was still not fully contained. Since Microsoft is so deeply entrenched in just about every facet of our workflow, encrypting and storing data offline adds a layer of protection and resilience in the face of potential future attacks that could stem from breaches of this nature," said Kurt Markley, U.S. Managing Director at Apricorn. "The Aegis Padlock DT line is an ideal way for large organizations to protect vast amounts of data at rest in a highly secure and economic way."

ASUSTOR Inc. has updated the hard drive compatibility list by adding Seagate's IronWolf Pro 24 TB high-capacity NAS hard drive. The listed model is ST24000NT002. IronWolf Pro is designed for businesses and those that want the very most in data capacity. Using Seagate's 24 TB hard drives in conjunction with the largest ASUSTOR NAS devices means that some ASUSTOR NAS devices can support up to just under 400 TB.

24 TB drives also help ASUSTOR's MyArchive feature. The use of 24 TB hard drives helps make the backup process with MyArchive easier by using fewer drives. This helps facilitate safe 3-2-1 backups as well as providing as much archival storage as needed. Need even more space? Use the Xpanstor 4, one of the only expansion units featuring a 10 Gbps USB interface. It also supports MyArchive cold backup technology even on NAS devices that don't support hard drives. In addition to the additional 96 TB storage space provided by the four hard drive bays, the USB 3.2 Gen 2 port greatly increases the performance.

When it comes to data, everything is growing - quantity, size, format, resolution, use cases, applications, value and more. As people and businesses look for solutions to effectively and efficiently store their data in the zettabyte era, Western Digital HDDs continue to play a critical role in delivering massive capacity, performance and reliability.

Extending its innovation and technology leadership across its portfolio, Western Digital today announced that it is now shipping new 22 TB HDDs targeting three key segments: WD Gold HDDs for IT/data center channel customers; WD Red Pro for network attached storage (NAS); and WD Purple Pro for smart video/surveillance. As highlighted in its What's Next Western Digital Event, these new drives are loaded with industry-firsts, including OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal to deliver the industry's highest areal density at 2.2 TB per platter, delivering 22 TB CMR HDDs for its customers.

Seagate Technology announced today that it is the first hard drive manufacturer worldwide to have shipped 1 billion hard drives - a number not only staggering in size but also emblematic of the massive amount of digital content being created in the home, hand, office, car and dozens of other markets. Consider this: the 1 billion hard drives Seagate has delivered equates to approximately 79 million terabytes, able to store 158 billion hours of digital video or 1.2 trillion hours of your favorite music - and Seagate hard drives and storage solutions enable people to create, share, enjoy and protect more digital content every day.

Assuming the reins as the enterprise hard drive performance and capacity leader, Hitachi today announced the Ultrastar 15K450. The new drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to deliver 450GB of storage, currently the highest available capacity in 15,000 RPM enterprise-class hard drives. The Ultrastar 15K450 is an ideal solution for mission-critical server and storage applications, such as online transaction processing, intensive database queries and other multi-user applications.

Scythe today announced a new all-aluminum hard disk cooler called "Himuro". The product name "Himuro" comes from the old time preservation storage for snow and ice. Hard disks are often neglected for cooling compared to other components inside the computer system, yet it is also important to cool the data storage to prolong its life. The flexible mounting system is built-in for this product to allow the user to mount the hard disk cooler in various ways (bezel hidden or exposed on 5.25inch bays). Compatible with either parallel or serial ATA 3.5inch hard disks up to 10,000rpm. Anti-vibration mounting legs are included to further contribute to silence!

Patriot Memory today announced they will add Solid State Drives (SSD) to their flash memory solutions product line. Available in capacities up to 256GB, solid state drives are the next generation of data storage that offers greater access speeds and increased reliability over current hard disk drive technology.

Toshiba Corporation today announced new 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDD) that integrate a performance enhancing serial ATA interface: the MK1216GSG offers a storage capacity of 120GB, while the MK8016GSG has a capacity of 80GB. Mass production of both drives will start in April.

WD today introduced its new My Passport Essential Portable USB Drives. Redesigned to complement WD's popular My Book family of external drives, the drives introduce a sleek new form that feels good in your hand and fits neatly in a pocket or purse. Available now at select retailers and at WD's online store (www.shopwd.com), the new My Passport Essential USB Drives feature a beautiful glossy black finish and put almost a third of a terabyte of digital storage in the palm of your hand.

This is another story which is still at the rumour stage I'm afraid, but some sources are claiming that Hitachi, Toshiba and Fujitsu could be planning to form a new company dedicated to producing hard drives and storage systems. The deal would be instead of Hitachi selling its struggling hard drive division to a private equity firm, and comes following unsuccessful talks with Silver Lake, the company responsible for turning around Seagate's fortunes years ago. It is thought that Hitachi is not particularly keen on selling part of its company to 'outsiders' such as Silver Lake for cultural reasons, and would be more trusting of other Japanese companies such as Toshiba and Fujitsu. Any deal is expected to be reached by April 1st, which represents the start of the business year in Japan.

Toshiba launched five new hard drives for portable and consumer electronics applications with capacities of 60 GB, 80 GB and 120 GB. Toshiba isn't breaking the maximum storage capacity for the 1.8" segment with its new drive overall - which the company currently holds with a 160 GB version - but the updated models introduce more storage for the "slim" 1.8" sub-segment. Instead of the typical 8 mm height of 1.8" drives, all new models are 5 mm "slim" drives. In addition to the already available 80 GB version, which was announced back in September, the company is now offering a 60 GB (one disk) and a 120 GB (two disks) model. Additionally, there is now a "light-weight" 80 GB model, which Toshiba says weighs just 45 grams (and 3 grams less than the other 1-disk 5 mm 1.8" drives in its lineup). All four drives are rated at 4200 rpm and an average seek time of 15 ms. Toshiba also announced two 1.8" drives targeted at the consumer electronics market, 60 GP 4200 rpm version as well as a 60 GB 3600 rpm model.

Western Digital Corp. today announced it is now shipping its new WD Scorpio 320 GB 2.5-inch SATA (Serial ATA) hard drives for notebook computers and portable storage devices.

WD uses advanced head and media technology to achieve the world's highest capacity 2.5-inch, slim, 9.5mm form-factor hard drive and includes proprietary features that make the drive extraordinarily quiet while running at cool operating temperatures. The WD Scorpio 320 GB hard drives deliver high performance with 3 Gb/s transfer rate and are destined for use in OEM notebook platforms that offer the highest storage capacities to the worldwide market.

WD today announced that the company is a proud sponsor of the National Breast Cancer Foundation (www.nationalbreastcancer.org) with the introduction of its new pink WD Passport Portable Drives. Available now in the U.S. from WD's online store (www.shopwd.com) and expected next month at Best Buy stores, the new pink-colored WD Passport Portable Drive features a whopping one-quarter terabyte capacity. To aid in the fight against breast cancer, WD is making a donation to the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NCBF).

Following false advertising by Seagate with regards to hard drive capacities, overstating capacities by 7% due to the differences between a gigabyte and a giga binary byte (both of which are commonly abbreviated to 'GB'), the company is now required to reimburse customers with either a 5% cash benefit for drives purchased between 22nd March 2001 and 1st January 2006 or a software benefit in the form of a free copy of Seagate Software Suite for drives purchased between 22nd March 2001 and 26th September 2007. To get the cash benefit customers must visit the settlement website and fill out the mail-in form, and to receive the software benefit customers must fill in an online form. This offer is only applicable to hard drives purchased as a discrete unit and not hard drives in pre-built computers.

The new Fujitsu MHY2 BS Series of 2.5" hard disk drives (available up to 200 GB) are designed for 24-hour continuous operation. Whether for use in industrial equipment, such as ATMs, POS systems, and medical equipment, or for enterprise applications, such as entry-level servers and storage systems, there is a need for HDDs that deliver exceptional reliability and meet a variety of needs, such as for 24-hour continuous operation and high-frequency access, as well as for lower heat generation and reduced energy consumption. Fujitsu developed the MHY2 BS Series of 2.5" HDDs, with storage capacities of up to 200 GB, to meet these needs.

LAKE FOREST, Calif., July 23 -- Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today announced a new environmentally friendly GreenPower(TM) family of WD(R) desktop, enterprise, CE and external hard drive products. The new GreenPower (GP) family will ship in capacities from 320 gigabytes (GB) to one terabyte (TB), and will save up to 40% in hard drive power consumption, or as much as $10 per drive per year. Based on extensive customer input toward supporting ENERGY STAR 4.0 compliance and incorporating the latest in engineering technology, WD has delivered the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute.

Seagate today announced the 1 terabyte (TB) Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2 hard drives for consumer and enterprise markets. As the industry's only second-generation desktop and enterprise perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) hard drives, the Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2 deliver 1TB of capacity, 7,200-rpm spin speeds, average seek times of 8.5ms, caches up to 32MB and Seagate's industry-leading five-year limited warranty. Seagate's newest hard drives pack 1TB of data on just four discs to provide cool operating temperatures and low power consumption, which help extend drive life. The Barracuda ES.2 and 7200.11 will begin shipping in volume during the third quarter. The 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 will be offered at an MSRP of $399.99.

Metro.CL, the man behind ChileHardware, says that Seagate has a 10 000 RPM drive in the works. The HDD will compete with WD's Raptor drive, that has reigned as the highest performance SATA hard drive for enthusiasts for quite some time now.

Seagate will bring healthy competition to the market, which will hopefully result in price drops of 10 000 RPM hard drives.

There is no estimated time frame in which the HDD should debut.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is finally joining the 250GB 2.5-inch notebook hard drive market with the introduction of Travelstar 5K250. The Travelstar 5K250 is Hitachi's best in its class 250GB 5400RPM SATA II HDD. The drive is perfect for notebook PCs, external storage devices, gaming consoles and other mobile devices. It also features a host of category-leading features including 400G shock protection, quiet acoustics and optional Bulk Data Encryption for hard-drive level data security. The 5K250 uses perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, which builds upon the highly-successful debut of the Travelstar 5K160 hard drives. Hitachi will also offer an enhanced-availability version, the E5K250, which is designed for applications needing around-the-clock access in lower transaction environments, such as blade servers, network routers, point-of-sale terminals and video surveillance systems.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today announced that it has met its commitment to begin shipping the world's first one-terabyte hard drive (HDD) to retail customers within the first quarter of 2007. The Deskstar 7K1000 began shipping to retailers and e-tailers in March 2007 with inventories reaching critical mass in April 2007. Announced at CES 2007, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive is built using a 5-platter design to deliver 1TB of storage capacity. The drive is available with Serial-ATA 3.0Gb/s interface and 32MB of data buffer. At a suggested retail price of $399 (USD), the Deskstar 7K1000 is now ready to meet the needs of high-performance, gaming and media center PCs as well as external storage devices.

Samsung has launched the latest addition to its wide range of hard drives with the new SpinPoint N2 Series of 1.8" drives, ranging from 30GB to 120GB. Spinning at a rate of 4,200 RPM with 2-8MB caches, these drives are aimed mostly at ultra-portable laptops, ultra-mobile PCs and portable media players where a compact size is more important than overall performance. This means they could soon be finding their way into 120GB iPods and Zunes, a nice boost for hardcore music fans with enormous collections of songs. Samsung also commented on the pricing of Solid State Drives (SSDs) which are being viewed as the replacement for spinning hard drives within the next few years, particularly portable computers. Samsung's market research has suggested that by 2010 1.8" SSD drives could have come down in price to costing just 3x more per gigabyte than their spinning equivalents - still quite a considerable gap, but an improvement nonetheless.

Hitachi GST today announced three new hard drive models targeting the enterprise market, including the 15K RPM Ultrastar 15K300, 7200 RPM Ultrastar A7K1000, and the company's first small form factor (SFF) hard drive, the 10K RPM Ultrastar C10K147. The new 15K300 Ultrastar is a 3.5-inch Ultra320 SCSI 15K RPM 300GB hard drive with 16MB data buffer. The drive comes with Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) as well as Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) and is also available with 3Gb/s SAS and 4Gb/s FCAL interfaces. Optimized for the power, performance requirements of servers the Ultrastar C10K147 is a 2.5-inch 3Gb/s SAS interface 10K RPM HDD with up to 147GB capacity and 16MB data buffer. The third Ultrastar A7K1000 hard drive offers 1TB of space for lower duty cycle enterprise environments. The Ultrastar 15K300 is available now with production quantities available in the first week of May 2007. The Ultrastar C10K147 and Ultrastar A7K1000 will be delivered in the second quarter of 2007. Additionat information is available at Hitachi GST.