Custodian of the Ultrabook specification, Intel pushed the storage industry to churn out slimmer devices to go with increasingly slimmer Ultrabooks sold by the various partner ODMs in the ecosystem. Even as HDD and SSD makers have only just come up with 7 mm-thick storage devices, Intel has a fresh list of changes it wishes to see with storage devices in the very near future, to be able to make it to the constantly-evolving Ultrabook specification. Intel wants near-future storage devices (SSDs and HDDs) to be no thicker than 5 mm.

Further, it wants to see the standard SATA host interface changed from "around" (out of) form, to "along" (inside) form host interface, which further slims down the drive compartment. These proposals were floated at IDF, Beijing. While coming up with slimmer SSDs was never really a tough task for SSD makers, as SSDs are essentially just millimeter-thick printed circuit boards with millimeter-thick components (controller logic, NAND flash memory, and ancillaries), it posed a huge technical challange to mechanical HDD designers, who have had to slim down key components that work to maintain inertial motion of spinning platters. This new proposal for 5 mm-thick HDDs could pose a newer, tougher desgin challenge.

Century Tech of Japan introduced a new SATA HDD/SSD cloning dock with a snap-on design (model: CRAS2U3CP). The dock allows you to quickly clone a SATA HDD/SSD without needing a host machine, as well as connect any two SATA drives to a host machine over USB 3.0 interface, as USB Mass Storage devices, with transfer rates of up to 200 MB/s. The top of the unit has a row of LEDs that displays the progress of disk cloning. When not connected to a host over USB, the device requires power drawn from an AC adapter. Measuring 70 x 16 x 65 mm (WxDxH), it weighs about 55 g, and can be carried around in a small pouch. Slated for next week, the CRAS2U3CP from Century is priced at 4,980 JPY (US $61).

I-O Data released the HDS2-UT USB 3.0 external RAID enclosure. It is available in three variants with pre-installed hard drives: the 2 TB HDS2-UT2.0, 4 TB HDS2-UT4.0, and 6 TB HDS2-UT6.0. Measuring 90 x 135 x 176 mm, and weighing 2.2 kg, the HDS2-UT is a 2-bay external 3.5" SATA HDD enclosure, with the ability to run its two drives in RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD modes. To take advantage of RAID 0, the enclosure connects to the host over 5 GT/s USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface. Also included is software to build, manage, and monitor RAID volumes. The enclosure relies on an external power brick. Slated for market release in late-April, the HDS2-UT 2 TB, 4 TB, and 6 TB variants are priced at 35,490 JPY (US $439); 46,725 JPY (US $578); and 66,780 JPY (US $827), respectively.

Microsemi Corporation, a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced the availability of its ultra secure TRRUST-Stor solid state drive with a unique, ruggedized SATA connector designed to solve severe shock and vibration issues prevalent in defense and industrial applications. Designed in partnership with Hypertronics Corporation, a leading provider of high-performance interconnect systems, the new connectors are designed for operation in hostile environments where industry-standard SATA connectors are inadequate.

"The weakest link in many embedded applications is the connector, which can sabotage the operation of critical hardware," said BJ Heggli, vice president of Strategic Development and assistant general manager for Microsemi. "Our new connector family protects against the effects of severe shock and vibration, which safeguards the flow of data. As a result, we can now offer customers what is perhaps the most secure and rugged SSD available on the market."

I-O Data unveiled a new USB 3.0 host card (model: USB3-PEX2S), which is designed to be server-grade, with out of the box support for Windows Server, including USB 3.0 SuperSpeed support for Windows 2003, 2003 R2 64-bit/32-bit; Windows 2008, and 2008 R2 64-bit/32-bit. The low-profile capable card provides two USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ports, and appears to be driven by a Renesas-made chipset. It connects to the system bus over PCI-Express 2.0 x1, and draws auxiliary power from a SATA power connector. Slated for market launch in late-April, the USB3-PEX2S from I-O Data is priced at 3,885 JPY (US $48).

Korean fanless PC company NoFAN announced two new cases, the micro-ATX CS-70, and the ATX (mid-tower) CS-80. The cases ensure they stay fanless after installation, by including fanless PSUs and CPU coolers. The cooler included is the CR-100C, which is guaranteed to fit in these cases. Both cases include a P-400A fanless PSU with 400W capacity. Measuring 235 x 487 x 284 mm (WxDxH), the CS-70 has three 3.5" drive bays, and one each of exposed 5.25", and 2.5" bays. It includes USB 3.0 front-panel ports (standard header), apart from audio ports.

The CS-80, on the other hand, bears more conventional looks, measuring 200 x 490 x 470 mm. It has a 100% tool-free design, with three exposed 5.25" drive bays, apart from six 3.5" bays. Its front-panel includes an eSATA port apart from USB 3.0 and audio. Although both cases have provisions for fans, they obviously don't include any. Pricing and availability information is awaited.

MSI released pictures and performance numbers of its in-house SuperRAID storage design that's implemented in its GT70 gaming notebook. The GT70 has two drive bays, one of which holds a 500 GB WD Scorpio Black hard drive, and the other, the SuperRAID module. The hard drive is tasked with just storage and a system recovery partition, while the SuperRAID module is where the action is.

Simply put, the SuperRAID module is a PCB with a RAID controller, and two mSATA 6 Gb/s slots. Each of these slots holds a SanDisk U100 64 GB mSATA SSD. Each of these SSDs come with rated sequential transfer rates as high as 440 MB/s (reads) with 220 MB/s (writes), but striped in RAID 0, the volume churns out tested transfer rates as high as 964 MB/s (max. read), 928 MB/s (avg. read), and 843 MB/s (min. read), when tested by HDTune Pro 5.00. The SuperRAID module is bootable, and holds the operating system and programs. MSI claims with transfer speeds well over 900 MB/s, it has the fastest storage solution among gaming notebooks.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today introduced the Vertex 4 SATA III SSD series featuring the company's advanced Indilinx Everest 2 controller platform.

The Vertex 4 delivers the industry's highest input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance for SATA-based drives across a wide variety of application workloads making this fourth generation flagship product line ideally suited for demanding computing and workstation environments. It consistently accomplishes superior real world performance over the long term regardless of whether the data streams are in compressed or uncompressed formats.

I-O Data began shipping the SSDN-3T120B solid-state drive. Originally manufactured by Toshiba, the SSDN-3T120B is a 120 GB drive in the 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s form-factor, with sequential speeds of 480 MB/s (reads), 350 MB/s (writes); and random-access speeds of 440 MB/s (reads), 340 MB/s (writes), with 4K random seek performance of 73,000/58,000 IOPS (read/write). Its pricing is open to the retailers.

Japanese company Princeton introduced the ProNAS DN-503AH-PDC-10T 5-bay NAS for small businesses, with 10 TB of pre-installed storage. Its storage controller supports SATA 3 Gb/s interface, with RAID 6 mode for data redundancy. The NAS is powered by Intel x86 architecture, an Intel Pentium Dual-Core 1.60 GHz processor, with 2 GB of DDR2-533 MHz memory drives the machine. Surprisingly, it features four gigabit Ethernet interfaces. A Linux-based OS drives the NAS, which supports most modern NAS technologies. Measuring 199 x 338 x 264 mm, the DN-503AH-PDC-10T weighs about 13 kg. Its price is not given out, but varies depending on the warranty and on-site maintenence packages that go with it.

Intel made its SSD 313 series official, its product page was activated, and ARK pages of its variants maintain the products are already launched. The SSD 313 series succeeds SSD 311 series, it consists of SSDs specifically designed for SSD-caching technologies such as Intel Smart Response Technology, and upcoming technologies that the upcoming "Ivy Bridge" platform brings with it, including "Rapid Start" and "Smart Connect". The SSD 313 Series is introduced in two variants, a 20 GB variant, and a 24 GB variant.

The 20 GB variant offers sequential performance up to 220 MB/s and 100 MB/s (read and write), while the 24 GB variant offers 160 MB/s and 115 MB/s, which might make one wonder about the need for a 24 GB variant, given that it's also slower at 4K random-seek performance 33,000 IOPS / 4,000 IOPS vs. 36,000 IOPS / 3,300 IOPS of the 20 GB. One reason behind the 24 GB variant's existence could be that a combination of different Intel technologies partition the SSD, taking away small amounts of capacity. The extra 4 GB of capacity might more than make up for the slightly lower performance. Both drives use SLC NAND flash chips, which are more durable than MLC NAND flash, and can take more rewrite cycles (something that factors in heavily for caching SSDs). Both drives are available in 2.5" SATA 3 Gb/s and mSATA 3 Gb/s form-factors. The 20 GB variant was earlier put to test.

A-Tech Fabrication, a company that specializes in hand-crafted HTPCs, unveiled the HeatSync 1200 fanless HTPC. The part that makes it fanless is the chassis itself, which is made of aluminum, with fins on the sides, that dissipate heat. Copper heat pipes transfer heat from key components such as the CPU and chipset to the sides of the chassis, which takes care of the rest. Although most of the chassis is anodized black, with its front-panel, you can choose between silver and black options.

The HeatSync 1200 internally packs an Intel DH61AG thin mini-ITX motherboard, which seats an Intel Core i3-2100T dual-core 35W processor, clocked at 2.50 GHz. 4 GB Corsair Vengeance SO-DIMM memory comes standard. Also standard is the Intel SSD 310 40 GB mSATA SSD. Considering there are no mechanical hard drives, or a PSU with active-cooling (a 160W power-brick does the job), the HeatSync 1200 is literally silent. A consumer IR (CIR) receiver with Windows Media Center remote, and Windows 7 Home Premium make for the rest of it.

Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user-friendly designed PC components, today announced improved MX-JET ULTRA Series 2.5" SSD for mainstream users. MX-JET ULTRA Series delivers blazing fast, smooth and stutter free performance at an affordable price point.

The MX-JET ULTRA Series SSD provides outstanding performance, endurance and power efficiency resulting in exceptional user experience. This series is offering users robust data protection with enhanced hardware BCH ECC engine, StaticDataRefresh technology support and data shaping for higher data reliability.

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company) today introduced the world's first 4 TB enterprise-class hard drive family, the Ultrastar 7K4000.

Ushering in a new generation of 512e Advanced Format drives, the Ultrastar 7K4000 family provides space-efficient, high-performance, low-power storage for traditional enterprises as well as for the explosive big data and cloud/Internet markets where storage density, watt-per-gigabyte and cost-per-GB are critical parameters. Hungry for massive storage, cloud and Internet businesses are redefining the datacenter by designing new types of servers and storage architectures to help manage explosive petabyte (PB) growth. Critical to their datacenter infrastructure is the ability to scale and efficiently manage performance, power and storage space to help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

AREA released a unique portable hard drive enclosure that allows you to switch between SATA and USB 3.0 interfaces (model: SD-S35U3-SL2). Its modular design allows this change. When in SATA mode, the USB adapter is detached, and a cap covers the direct SATA (power+data) interface of the enclosed drive. When in USB 3.0 mode, the adapter interfaces with the SATA power/data connections, supplies power from an external DC power adapter, and connects the drive to a USB 3.0 host. It is backwards-compatible with USB 2.0. Switching between the two modes, and replacing the enclosed drive is a tool-free process. Measuring 190 x 133 x 38.3 mm, and weighing about 780 g (empty weight), the enclosure's body is largely made of brushed metal that's ridged on the sides to dissipate heat. Slated for April 16, the SD-S35U3-SL2 is priced at 2,480 JPY (US $30).

Scythe Japan unveiled its Gouriki mid-range PSU series. Consisting of 500W (SPGRN-500), 600W (SPGRN-600), and 700W (SPGRN-700) models, the series consists of 80 Plus Bronze-certified PSUs with fixed-cabling. The cables are not sleeved, and the PSU's body doesn't have any paint. It appears, however, that Scythe tried to spin this to its advantage, by referring to it as a design element it calls "Naked Herculean Strength" (not a case of bad-translation, it's literally what Scythe prints on its PSUs).

All three models feature a single 12V rail design, and a compliance/feature-set that includes ATX12 Ver2.3/EPS 12V, OCP, OVP, OTP, SCP, and UVP. A 120 mm fan is employed to cool the units. PCI-Express power connectors include 6+2-pin and 6-pin power connectors for all models. The power connector loadouts of the three models differ only with the numbers of SATA and Molex connectors available. The 500W (SPGRN-500), 600W (SPGRN-600), and 700W (SPGRN-700) models are priced at 5,980, 6,980, 7,980 JPY, respectively (US $72, $84, $96, respectively).

Japanese PC peripherals webstore Kuroutoshikou unveiled a new 2-bay HDD dock, the KURO-DACHI/CLONE/U3. Built in the top-loading "toaster-dock" form-factor, it measures 108 x 62 x 149 mm (LxHxW). The dock takes in two SATA hard drives and solid-state drives in the 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch form-factors. It can connect the two drives to a PC over fast USB 3.0 interface, as USB mass-storage volumes, and can also clone drives 1:1, without needing a PC. Windows 7, Vista, and XP; 32-bit and 64-bit, are supported. Slated for early-April, the dock is priced at 4,000 JPY (US $48.7).

inXtron showed off its newest small-business NAS server at Intel Storage Forum, the Akitio MyCloud Pro. As the venue might suggest, this 2-bay desktop NAS is powered by Intel x86 architecture. inXtron even put is logic board for display, which revealed it to be driven by an Intel Atom D425 single-core (HTT-enabled) processor, with its usual NM10 chipset. The board also revealed several interesting components, such as two 2-port USB 3.0 controllers, giving out two ports on the rear panel and two for the front-panel, via a standard header.

The primary storage controller is the Intel NM10 chipset itself, the NAS uses a USB DOM (disk-on-module) it boots from, to hold its operating system. The primary network interface is a 1 GbE, driven by a Realtek-made PHY. Interestingly, the board has a vacant mini-PCIe slot, on which WLAN cards can be installed. The MyCloud Pro supports two SATA 3 Gb/s hard drives in the 3.5" form-factor. It supports all modern NAS features, such as UPnP-AV, NFS, FTP, Samba, but DLNA wasn't mentioned. The OS also includes a Bit-torrent client, and Apple iTunes-compatible music server. inXtron has apps for Android and iOS smartphones, with which you can use the phone to control the NAS. inXtron is targeting a sweet price-point under US $200, with the Akitio MyCloud Pro NAS.

RAIDON releases the latest USB3.0 storage module with energy saving mode, GR3630-SB3, to respond the current concept of environmental protection.

RAIDON GR3630-SB3 is able to synchronize with PC to standby or sleeping mode for reaching energy saving concept. GR3630 accommodates 2 of 3.5" HDD over 3 TB each and collocates with USB3.0 host interface to deliver excitement to users from experiencing a conspicuous increment in performance. In addition, it embedded eSATA interfaces for data transfer options to eliminate possible USB upgrade hassles for users.

Sapphire released the new Pure Platinum A55V motherboard to the market. The board offers a value socket FM1 platform based on AMD A55 FCH chipset, in the ATX form-factor. The motherboard supports AMD A4, A6, A8, and Athlon II "Llano" APU/CPUs in the FM1 package. This model is not exactly designed to be "no-frills", as it does pack an interesting mix of features that could help it grab a comfy price-point in the market.

The FM1 socket is powered by a 6-phase VRM, which uses a simple whine-free choke + DPAK MOSFET design, but throws in a heatsink to cool the MOSFETs. The socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory, with speeds of over DDR3-1600 MHz with overclocking. The APU is also wired to a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot, and two PCI-Express 2.0 x1 slots. Apart from these, you get three legacy PCI slots, wired to the FCH.

Imation Japan unveiled two new lines of NAS server products, the T5R desktop/tower, and R4 1U rack-mount NAS. The T5R has five 3.5" SATA HDD bays, along with one Imation RDX cardridge slot (for tape backup of vital data). The T5R comes in two variants, the T5R-5X1TB-HDD, which has five 1 TB HDDs; and T5R-5X2TB-HDD, which has five 2 TB HDDs. The R4, on the other hand, has four 3.5" SATA drive bays, and comes in two variants: R4-4X1TB-HDD with four 1 TB HDDs, and R4-4X2TB-HDD, which has four 2 TB HDDs.

There is a lot in common between the T5R and R4. Both models are driven by Intel Atom D2700 dual-core processor clocked at 2.13 GHz, with 2 GB DDR3 memory, the storage controllers support RAID 0,1,1 E, 3,5,6,10; the primary network interface is a single 1 Gbps Ethernet connection, and expansion features include two USB 3.0, three USB 2.0, and one eSATA. All modern x86 operating systems are supported. Imation did not give out pricing information.

Centon Electronics, Inc. has announced the release of their SATA III 2.5 line. While SSD has become a standard specification for enthusiast PC gamers owing to its features including high-speed read/write performance and high shock resistance that can break through the performance bottleneck of PC systems, the introduction of SATA III SSDs further highlights the advantage of SSD's read/write performance.

Twice as fast as the SATA II, Centon's new line of SATA III will take full advantage of the bandwidth and provide extremely fast data transfer rates that reach as high as 400 MB/s read speed and 300 MB/s write speed. Centon's SSD models now address the growing market demand for fast, high density and reliable drives.

You are probably not new to overpriced digital data cables, such as $100 HDMI cables that claim to improve quality of digital video, but this one takes the cake: a $300 (starting) SATA cable, made of 97% silver (wiring), and 3% gold (contacts), which claims to improve fidelity of data transferred, that can bring about subtle improvements to the quality of digital audio/video produced.

WireDream (WD-SATA-INDRA), from Korean company Zionote, is just that. It's a braided SATA cable, with wires made of silver, and contacts made of gold. It is available in lengths of 40 cm (WD-SATA-INDRA-40x), 50 cm (WD-SATA-INDRA-50x), and 60 cm (WD-SATA-INDRA-60x); with three variants based on the way the connectors are angled: straight-straight, straight-L(upwards, WD-SATA-INDRA-x0SU), and straight-L(downwards, WD-SATA-INDRA-x0SD).

Apacer will display our newest embedded offerings along with live booth demonstrations emphasizing Apacer's strengths in managing abrupt power failure in all of our products, please join us at booth #848 during the ESC DESIGN West 2012 exhibition in the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

With an established background in providing reliable embedded memory solutions, Apacer looks forward in presenting our latest products including high capacity 2.5" SSDs with both SATA and PATA availability, high speed mSATA 6Gb/s and embedded flash cards.

Data storage expert TDK corporation unveiled the eSSD, a single-package embedded SSD chip. The chip combines a SATA 3 Gb/s SSD controller, and NAND flash in capacities ranging between 1 GB to 4 GB. The SSD controller logic is based on TDK's new GBDriver R3 controller design, and the NAND flash is of single-layer cell (SLC) type. The eSSD provides sequential transfer rates of 55 MB/s read, and 30 MB/s write, it packs an automatic garbage disposal and wear-leveling logic, along with native 128-bit AES data encryption. The package measures 17 x 17 mm, with a ball-count of 208. The chip can be part of anything, from large logic boards of embedded computing appliances, to tiny half-height mSATA SSDs. TDK is giving the chip in its mSATA board forms as evaluation samples.