The High Speed Data Link (HSDL) interface, designed by OCZ as an alternative to SATA and SAS, for high data-rate and high I/O solid-state drives (SSD) in an enterprise environment, gained quite some attention. Funky Kit scored a sample, and got the chance to dissect OCZ's first SSD that makes use of the HSDL interface, the IBIS 160 GB. OCZ also found a novel way to propagate HSDL, by bundling a single-port PCI-Express x4 addon card. Upon taking apart the card, one can understand exactly how it works. Under the hood, there are two main PCBs, one that houses a HSDL-based 2-port SATA RAID controller, and the other, which holds two independent SandForce-driven SATA SSD sub-units.

Two two SSD sub-units are striped in an internal RAID 0, which is kept abstract to the host. The HSDL itself is technically very similar to PCI-Express, in being a point-to-point serial data link. The IBIS SSD is rated to have read-write speeds of 740 MB/s and 690 MB/s, respectively, with 4KB random write performance of 100,000 IOPS. The drive connects to its host PCI-E addon card over a proprietary-design cable, while retains the SATA power connector input of conventional SATA devices. The drive itself adheres to the 3.5" PC form-factor. More pictures can be found at the source.

Buffalo Technology, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of wired and wireless networking and network and direct attached storage solutions, today announced a refresh on the highly popular LinkStation network storage family, representing the highest performing generation of Buffalo's consumer orientated NAS solutions. The new high performance V-Series line consisting of LinkStation Pro, LinkStation Pro Duo and LinkStation Pro Quad, is based on industry-leading storage technologies, containing data management, remote access and content sharing features that make it the ideal NAS solution for the home or small business user.

"Protecting and managing digital content has always been a time consuming task for home and small business users," said Ralph Spagnola, vice president of sales at Buffalo Technology. "With the new LinkStation V-Series family, users access and share their data twice as fast that they would with a standard NAS device."

SandForce Inc., the pioneer of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors that enable standard NAND Flash deployment in enterprise, client, and industrial computing applications, today announced the availability of the SF-2000 Family of SSD Processors optimized for SSDs deployed in mission-critical Enterprise and Industrial computing applications. These chips feature a 6 Gigabit-per-second SATA host interface, industry applauded DuraClass Technology, an unprecedented 60,000 sustained random read/write IOPS (Input-output Operations Per Second) and sustained sequential read/write performance of 500 Megabytes per second. In addition to state-of-the-art performance, reliability, security, and Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) connectivity enhancements, the SF-2000 family supports single-level, multi-level, and enterprise multi-level cell (SLC, MLC, & eMLC) NAND Flash families from all major suppliers with its high-speed ONFi2 and Toggle Flash interface.

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer peripheral solutions, today announced the immediate availability of the Patriot Convoy 4x4 series of 5.25" bay enclosures for 2.5" Hard Disk Drives or Solid State Drives. The Patriot Convoy 425S and Convoy 425XL expand upon the award winning Convoy product line of 3.5" bay devices for two 2.5" drives.

Designed with storage density and performance in mind, each Patriot Convoy 425S and 425XL storage device provides a simple to install solution for up to four 2.5" HDD or SSD with the 425XL offering RAID functionality. Displayed during the 2010 Computex trade show as part of a technology showcase with high capacity SSD systems, the Convoy 425XL was a key component for the Patriot Artemis II technology demonstration. Paired with 56 Patriot Inferno 100GB SSDs in RAID 0 configuration, the storage and performance benefits of this enclosure were evident: maximum storage density in a small space with extreme performance. In the Artemis II system, the Patriot Inferno SSDs and the Convoy 425XL achieved breathtaking performance of over 240,000 IOPS.

Addonics Technologies, announced a very small storage appliance which, despite being the size of a four inch cube, packs the power and features of RAID storage devices that are much larger and up to three times as expensive. Called the Compact RAID, the unit accommodates up to five 2.5", 9.5 mm height hard drives or SSDs to form high performance storage configurable to various RAID levels up to RAID 5. Drives can easily be removed or added to the Compact RAID, much like a tape cartridge without special tools.

In addition to the powerful RAID engine, the Compact RAID comes built-in with a high speed eSATA connection and can deliver a screaming throughput up to 300 Mbytes/sec. The Compact RAID weighs just over a pound without drive. It also features a silent operation and the ability to be used as a boot drive or as additional storage.

PhotoFast is working on yet another monster SSD, this time one that uses the PCI-Express x8 interface (fits inside x16 slots), the GMonster PowerDrive-LSI. As the name suggests, some of the drive's chippery (such as storage controller) is made by LSI, which runs an internal (abstract to OS) RAID a number of SSD modules. If 2 GT/s interface was any indication of the drive's speeds, then here goes: 1,400 MB/s read; 1,500 MB/s write. The controller has its own 512 MB of dedicated DDR2 memory. The GMonster PowerDrive-LSI comes in capacities of 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. It has a rated MTBF of 1.5 million hours. It is slated for next month. Once again, PhotoFast did not give out pricing.

LaCie today announced the availability of the first RAID storage solution to incorporate the new USB 3.0 technology - the LaCie 2big USB 3.0. In addition to the 2big USB 3.0, LaCie also announces the availability of its award-winning single-disk professional solution with a USB 3.0 port - the LaCie d2 USB 3.0. Developed for professionals who require high capacity and fast transfer speeds, the LaCie 2big USB 3.0 offers the highest performances ever achieved in a USB 3.0 external storage solution, up to 205 MB/s - setting a new standard in the market.

The LaCie 2big USB 3.0 is available with up to 4TB, allowing users to store and transfer large files without waiting. In fact, you can transfer a 50GB Blu-ray disk in less than five minutes, which is six times faster than USB 2.0. The 2big USB 3.0 is backward compatible with USB 2.0, making it dependable for transfers with any workstation.

At the ongoing Intel Developer Forum event, OCZ Technology showed off its upcoming RevoDrive X2 PCI-Express SSD. For those unfamiliar with RevoDrive, it is a PCI-Express addon card that holds a couple of SandForce-drive SSDs in an internal (abstract to OS) RAID 0. The SATA bandwidth bottleneck is eliminated, as the drive connects to the system bus over PCI-Express x4. The RevoDrive X2, uses no less than four SandForce-driven SSDs in an internal RAID. The drive connects to the system over PCI-E x4, and is bootable. According to OCZ's internal testing, the drive offers read speeds of up to 740 MB/s, writes of up to 730 MB/s, and 4K random write performance of up to 120,000 IOPS. An IOMeter session running on the demo rig measured 107,124 IOPS live.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers today announced the Fall 2010 refresh of its Business Series Turbo NAS servers which are hugely popular with SMB and corporate users for their sheer performance and business-ready features. Announced today are the 2-drive TS-259 Pro+, the 4-drive TS-459 Pro+, the 5-drive TS-559 Pro+, and the 6-drive TS-659 Pro+ with up to a whopping 12TB of online storage (using 2TB hard drives). The new Business Series Turbo NAS Pro+ models incorporate new dual-core Intel Atom processor D525 with 1.80 GHz clock speed and 1GB RAM, which can achieve up to 116 MB/s transfer rates (FTP/Samba reads) while maintaining guaranteed low power consumption.

Buffalo Technology, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of wired and wireless networking and network and direct attached storage solutions, today announced a refresh of the highly popular DriveStation Duo and DriveStation Quad, formerly DriveStation Quattro, representing the latest generation of high-performance direct attached storage solutions. Combining performance and reliability, these new multi-drive external hard drives, equipped with NovaBACKUP Business Essentials, are ideal for small servers, creative professionals, offices and consumers requiring redundant and high performance external storage. Also announced today is the new DriveStation Axis, a single drive storage solution combining unique features and simplicity with Buffalo's distinguished reliability for an exceptional value.

"Consumers and businesses alike have become quite savvy when it comes to protecting mission-critical or personal data such as file backups, work documents, music, photos and videos," said Ralph Spagnola, vice president of sales at Buffalo Technology. "Buffalo has always recognized this need and has once again put forth best-in-class storage solutions providing a perfect blend of reliability, performance and flexible features at affordable prices."

Fusion-io, the pioneer of a new tier of flash-based memory (ioMemory), today announced the availability of its new ioMemory module. With support for the latest generation of MLC NAND Flash, 3X-nanometer (nm), Fusion-io is able to double the capacity of its family of products and achieve up to 1.28 terabytes (TB) of capacity from a single PCI Express card.

"We are at an inflection point in the industry where MLC technology has moved from consumer-grade products to datacenter systems, creating a much needed shift in the enterprise flash market to thinner, smaller, high capacity solutions with more than ample storage," said Joseph Unsworth, Research Director at Gartner.

G.Skill International Co. Ltd., manufacturer of extreme performance memory and solid-state storage with solid quality, has today added three new capacities to its ultra-high performance Phoenix Pro series SSD, including 40GB, 80GB and 160GB models.

Based on the popular SandForce SF-1200 SSD controller that has been tuned to deliver an unparalleled performance in 4k random write speed up to 50,000 IOPS, G.Skill's Phoenix pro SSD family has been the international award winning drive of choice since its recent debut at Computex 2010.

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today its award-winning OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD line has begun shipping in the largest capacity model available of any SandForce-based processor SSD on the market - up to 480GB - by being the first SSD on the market to use the new SandForce SF 1232 processor which is optimized for the higher flash density required by these capacity leading drives.

The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD line, which has won class leading performance awards and reviews from Tweaktown, Hot Hardware, MacPerformanceGuide, BareFeats, and Benchmark Reviews, is available for immediate ordering in eight configurations from 50GB to 480GB starting at $194.99. All models are Macintosh and PC compatible and install easily into notebooks, as well as into desktops/towers with an OWC Multi-Mount adapter kit sold separately.

Synology America Corp. today officially launched the RackStation RS810+ and DiskStation DS411+, 4-bay NAS servers with rich, business-oriented features, appealing to SMBs that demand flexibility and great performing network attached storage solutions.

Businesses need a strong foundation to face mission-critical tasks, and can rely on the Synology RS810+ and DS411+ to deliver high-performance. Tested in a RAID 5 configuration in a Windows environment, the Synology RS810+ and DS411+ deliver an average of 112 MB/sec reading speed while RS810+ writes at 107 MB/sec and DS411+ writes at 106 MB/sec. The web server responsiveness rates are remarkable; the Synology RS810+ and DS410+ take less than 32 seconds to handle 1,000 simultaneous requests.

The age of USB 3.0 is almost here. Today, storage leader Thecus Technology is proud to announce its first portable storage device featuring the new USB 3.0 standard - the D0204. With massive storage capacity in a tiny package no larger than a paperback book, the D0204 delivers impressive data security and performance with an integrated USB 3.0 port, making it the most powerful and versatile portable DAS on the market.

The D0204 is a small and compact direct attached storage (DAS) device. Wrapped in a housing measuring a mere 86mm x 55.3mm x 132mm, the D0204 may appear to be a mere portable hard disk at first glance, but peering inside this tiny form factor reveals a powerful storage unit.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, releases the RevoDrive PCI-Express SSD, an innovative storage solution that focuses on both performance and affordability for consumers. The new RevoDrive was developed to push the limits of economical SSD technology to deliver a revolutionary product with a remarkable price point.

Moving beyond the bottleneck of SATA 3 Gb/s, the OCZ RevoDrive features a PCIe interface to deliver superior speeds over 500 MB/s reads and random small file writes up to 80,000 IOPS, nearly twice the speed of other consumer SSDs. Thanks to a proprietary RAID 0 design, the RevoDrive maximizes data access and bandwidth to promote a faster, more responsive PC experience compared to not only hard drives, but other SSDs on the market.

HighPoint Technologies, announces shipment of the RocketRAID 2722. The RocketRAID 2722 delivers the next generation of SAS 6Gb/s performance with 8 channels of external point-to-point direct connectivity. The newest member broadens the HighPoint SAS 6Gb/s RAID product portfolio which now includes all generations of SATA (6Gb/s, 3Gb/s & 1.5Gb/s) and SAS 6Gb/s storage interface.

HighPoint RocketRAID 2722 is first 8 channel external member of the SAS/SATA 6Gb/s RAID host adapter family series. There two SFF-8088 connectors to support up to 8 external SAS/SATA devices. A PCI-Express 2.0 x8 bus interface is backward compatible to PCI-Express 1.0. HighPoint hardware assisted RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD offers a balance of storage performance with protection.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced a new milestone in the affordability of Corsair Solid State Drives. For a limited time, Corsair's award-winning Nova Series SSDs are available for as little as $69.99 after mail-in rebate.

"The 32GB Nova Series SSD is great for streamlined boot drives, netbook upgrades, and even RAID configurations," stated Jim Carlton, VP of Marketing at Corsair. "The aggressive pricing of these drives makes the benefits of SSDs accessible to everyone."

OCZ Technology is ready with a new PCI-Express SSD that harnesses the power of SandForce SSD processors. Called the RevoDrive, the drive's design is based around placing two SF-1200 driven SSDs onto an addon card, connected to a RAID controller, which connects to the system bus over PCI-Express x4. The internal RAID 0 volume can stay abstract to the host. It is expected to be bootable.

The drive makes use of Multi Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash chips, and can churn out transfer rates of 540 MB/s read and 490 MB/s write. It will be available in capacities of 120 GB and 240 GB, which will be priced at around 433€ and 757€, respectively. Although SandForce driven SSDs are popular for their high-performance and TRIM support on Windows 7, when working in RAID, the TRIM feature is said to not work in RAID. This means that the RevoDrive is as good as any two SSDs in RAID 0.

Shuttle Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of multi-form-factor solutions such as the world-famous XPC Mini-PC Barebones, proudly announces today the launch of Europe-wide delivery of the new XPC Barebone SX58J3. This new model offers extraordinary computing power and its key features places it at the top end of what is currently feasible in terms of miniaturisation.

The SX58J3 is particularly remarkable thanks to its compatibility with Intel's ground-breaking 6-core processor, the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (codename: Gulftown), as well with all Core i7 CPUs for socket 1366. To complement this, the four slots on the Barebone are able to accommodate up to 16 GB DDR3 memory. The central interface for all components is provided by an Intel X58 Express chipset which was especially developed for high-performance systems.

Synology Inc. today launched DiskStation DS110+ and DS210+, high-performance and secure NAS servers for SMB users to share and backup data efficiently and increase productivity with rich business-oriental features.

The Synology DS110+ and DS210+ are ideal for users who require a reliable data storage solution and demand high-performance speed for file sharing. The performance test conducted by Synology's lab showed that in a Windows environment, the Synology DS110+ serves an average of 108+ MB/sec reading speed and 68+ MB/sec writing speed while the Synology DS210+ delivers 108+ MB/sec reading and 58+ MB/sec writing. The web server responsiveness is impressive, too. The Synology DS110+ and DS210+ take 85.08 and 78.14 seconds respectively to handle 1,000 simultaneous requests.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, is pleased to announce the Company has become an official LSI Alliance Partner. OCZ enterprise class Intrepid SSDs are now qualified for use with LSI's MegaRAID controllers, ensuring optimal compatibility, performance, and reliability.

"OCZ and LSI are both dedicated to the development of innovative, high-performance SAS/SATA solutions, and the partnership between both organizations demonstrates our shared commitment to deliver robust total solutions to our clients that address the complete spectrum of enterprise applications," stated Alex Mei, CMO, OCZ Technology Group.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Video Players today announced the TS-859U-RP Business Series Turbo NAS server enclosure, the most affordable 2U rack-mounted unit with 8 hot-swappable 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch hard disk drives and a redundant power-supply for maximum up-time in corporate and entry-level enterprise datacenters where high performance, high data-availability, and maximum reliability are paramount. QNAP is the only network appliance company to currently offer 8-drive NAS enclosures, and does so in desktop and rack-mounted configurations.

The TS-859U-RP features a dual-core Intel Atom D510 1.66GHz CPU and 1GB DDRII RAM, delivering exceptionally fast performance coupled with ultra-low power consumption that translates into lower total cost of ownership without sacrificing performance. The TS-859U-RP contains two power units. Should one power supply fail, the other will continue to supply the power for the entire system and alert the administrator via email or SMS to the failure. The TS-859U-RP is chock full of advanced networking features including dual Gigabit LAN ports with 7 bonding modes, including failover (if one network port fails, the other LAN port is still active), load-balancing (aggregates the network load to boost transfer speed), multiple-IP settings. The fail-safe dual OS DOM architecture for positive system boot ups, and single, JBOD, RAID 0/1/5/6/5+ hot spare/6+ hot spare with online RAID capacity expansion and online RAID level migration, and RAID recovery. The TS-859U-RP also features iSCSI for business, which allows easy network storage capacity expansion by simply attaching other QNAP Turbo NAS units to the network and establishing virtual volumes, a feature not offered by other competitors currently in this product segment.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), announces the Company's plan to enter mass production of the Z-Drive R2 Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the second rendition of the original Z-Drive family. The Z-Drive R2 builds on the existing solution but provides greater performance and design flexibility due to the implementation of a series of optimized NAND modules.

"Our 4th generation PCIe SSD, the Z-Drive R2, tackles the performance challenges facing enterprise IT professionals head-on" said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The Z-Drive R2 is a total solution that delivers exceptional performance over a wide of range of applications due to its superior sequential performance, making it a winner in both high IOP and high-throughput environments. In addition, it is the only bootable and field serviceable PCIe SSD option on the market today, and due to an innovative interchangeable module design, it enables low cost field upgradability and capacity increases giving storage architects unprecedented flexibility."

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Video Players today expanded their popular Business Series Turbo NAS lineup with the addition of a new 5-drive desktop model, the TS-559 Pro. The TS-559 Pro provides up to 10TB of storage (using 2TB hard drives and single disk volume/ JBOD configuration), has been certified as compatible with VMware's vSphere 4 (ESX 4.0) virtualization platform, ideal for departmental file sharing, storage, and advanced server applications in the office environment.

The TS-559 Pro incorporates the Intel Atom D-510 1.66Ghz dual-core processor and includes 1GB of DDRII RAM, delivering exceptional performance and high reliability for multiple concurrent tasks and intensive data transfer with lower power consumption. Businesses of all sizes are able to enjoy the interoperability between VMware virtual machines and QNAP high performance storage to take the advantages of VMware cloud computing environments.