With the Ultrabook form-factor gaining prominence, there's an urgent need for notebook components to shape up, so is the case with storage devices. A little earlier this month, Crucial announced its latest M4 series SSD in the 2.5" SATA form-factor, which is just 7 mm-slim, as opposed to the ~9.3 mm thickness that's standard. It looks like more SSD makers are hopping into this trend, including Memoright, which launched its FTM Plus Slim series. For SSDs, slimmer 7 mm enclosures don't affect components inside, as SSDs are essentially a printed-circuit board with controllers, DRAM and NAND flash chips.

The FTM Plus Slim series have otherwise the same specifications as the regular (9.3 mm-thick) FTM Plus series. These drives are driven by SandForce SF-2281 controllers, with sequential transfer rates of up to 550 MB/s reads, 500 MB/s writes, and 55,000/50,000 read/write 4K IOPS. They take advantage of SATA 6 Gb/s interface to achieve those speeds. Like its thicker siblings, the FTM Plus Slim will be available in 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB capacities.

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash, storage, and enthusiast computer products today launches its new portable cloud solution the Gauntlet Wifi. Designed for seamless integration with tablets and other popular mobile devices, the Gauntlet Wifi offers superior portability with the ability to connect up to 5 devices for immediate access to stored data on the go.

With App support for IOS, Android, and plug and play compatibility with Windows based operating systems, the Gauntlet Wifi will offer one of the most robust and easy to use personal cloud storage solutions. For ultimate portability and streaming on the go, a built in lithium-ion battery will power the Gauntlet Wifi for up to 5 hours of data streaming. Streaming content will be supported in media player applications and IE 6 or higher, Firefox, and Safari.

Toshiba Corporation today announced the development of BENAND, a versatile, multi-application single level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory with an embedded error correction code (ECC). BENAND's diverse applications include LCD TVs and digital cameras along with robots and other industrial applications. Samples of eight BENAND products in two capacities, 4 Gigabit and 8 Gigabit, will be available from today and mass production will follow from March 2012.

The simple interface and high reliability of small capacity SLC NAND has won it wide use in consumer applications and industrial programming. Until now, the ECC has been embedded in the host processor and corrected 1 bit per 512 bytes. However, advances in memory process technology require enhanced error correction; more than 4 bit correction per 512 bytes for NAND flash fabricated with 32nm process. For NAND flash memory without ECC fabricated with 32nm and beyond, the controller in the host processor must be changed to secure the required level of correction.