Lite-On unveiled the new iHBS112-04 internal Blu-ray disc writer drive. The drive is built in the standard 5.25-inch form-factor, supporting SATA interface. It is capable of writing BD-R single-layer at 12X, BD-R double-layer at 8X, BD-RE single and double-layer at 2X, and DVD±R at 16X. The drive features Lite-On's ABS (auto-balanced spindle) feature, which works to reduce noise and vibrations caused by the drive when revved up and spinning at high speeds. The drive features 8 MB of write cache. In Japan, it is priced at 6,980 JPY (US $90). It will be sold under its own label and those of various other companies, as Lite-On is a major upstream ODM of optical disc drives.

TYAN offers numerous products for the cloud computing marketplace, including high-density computing, high-density storage, and virtualization environments. TYAN's diverse portfolio provides customers robust options for reducing capital construction and operation costs while offering higher scalability with enhanced performance and energy efficiency.

pureSilicon Inc., innovator of high-performance storage technology for the industry's most demanding applications, has launched a new line of enterprise-focused storage devices that give IT administrators high-performance options for power users.

The new Kage Series comprises the Kage K1 USB Flash Drive - an "impossibly thin" (4.5 mm) USB 3.0-based SSD drive that redefines portable performance and capacity for mobile enterprise and prosumer users; and the Kage K1 SATA SSD that leverages the advanced technology pioneered in pureSilicon's recently announced Renegade and Nitro devices, making it available at a lower price point aimed at power users in the financial services, science, and engineering sectors, as well as creative professionals who need fast, high-capacity storage for digital media.

Intel's X79 chipset for Sandy Bridge-E platform was originally designed to have four SAS (serial-attached SCSI) channels apart from its usual loadout of SATA ports. Early prototypes of socket LGA2011 motherboards displayed at last year's Computex event (June), carried a large number of chipset-driven ports. However, Intel found the chipset-integrated SAS RAID controller (independent device from the SATA RAID controller) to have "unreliable performance", and hence changed its specification at the last moment. So the production specification of X79 ended up having the same SATA port loadout as P67 (two SATA 6 Gb/s + four SATA 3 Gb/s).

This specifications change did not result in a design change of the X79 PCH package, its die remained the same, so did its package and pin-map, which motherboard vendors had for nearly an year. So ECS decided to implement the SAS ports despite being out of specifications. LegitReviews discovered that its X79R-AX sample very much did have SAS ports wired to the PCH. With firmware of the SAS RAID controller and drivers, it could enable and use those ports. Although the SAS ports are physically present on the board, users have to enable them via the UEFI firmware setup program (BIOS).

Over last weekend, Crucial released a new firmware update for its M4 series SSDs, which aims to fix several blue screen of death (BSOD) issues that users are facing. Crucial's investigation into the BSOD complaints revealed that a bug in the older firmware caused the drives to become unstable after 5,184 hours of operation. After that, every hour the previously-rock-stable drives cause BSODs. The firmware update only applies to drives connected to SATA hosts, and not SAS expanders. Crucial is still working on a firmware update for drives connected via SAS expanders.DOWNLOAD: 0309 Firmware Update for Crucial M4

KINGMAX, a world renowned leading brand of DRAM and flash memory, has launched the latest 2.5" SATA III 6Gb/s based SSD series targeting high performance users. The KINGMAX SMP32 Client and SMU32 Client Pro SSD feature the new generation SandForce controller that support SATA 6GB/s for the best performances and deliver read speed up to 550 MB/sec and write speed at 520MB/sec, thus it only takes a few seconds to boot in your operation system.

KINGMAX SSD SATA III Client series equipped with highly reliable SandForce controller supporting SATA III 6Gb/s interface to extend the lifetime of NAND Flash chips and the durability of SSD. Supporting RAISE fault-tolerant technology and ECC error correction technology to prevent errors caused by the volume of data loss, strengthen the data security inside it, and upgrade the computing performance. Moreover the data read and write times will be significantly reduced to extend the durability and lifetime of SSD.

Ideum has announced the release of its new MT65 Presenter multitouch wall display. The MT65 Presenter is a huge 65" interactive display with a 3D LCD, robust multitouch sensor, ultra‐clear tempered glass, a powerful integrated computer, built‐in audio, and webcam housed inside a hardened aluminum case.

The MT65 Presenter features a 65" 3D LCD display with full 1920x1080 HD resolution and flicker‐free FPR 3D imaging that uses an LED backlight rated for 50,000 hours. The integrated touch sensor supports up to 32 simultaneous touch points. The 4" thin Presenter is protected by hardened 3mm tempered glass and a vandal‐proof metal housing.

Japanese company Orange Systems announced a new modular PCI Express SSD, the "Wings" series, which is a collection of products: the PCIe SSD card, its SSD subunits that have to be purchased separately, and those subunits in hard cases that turn them into 2.5-inch simple SSDs. To begin with, Angelbird has three PCIe SSD main card variants: "Lite", 16 GB, and 32 GB. These cards are basically PCI Express x4 SATA 3 Gb/s RAID cards that have SATA power+data interfaces on the card. The 16 GB and 32 GB cards have a localized SSD subunit on the board, while the "lite" variant has no localized subunit, and relies entirely on attached subunits.

These subunits are basically 2.5-inch SSD PCBs stripped of their cases, which Orange Systems refers to as Wings Expansion Cartridges, which are basically SandForce SF-1220 driven SSDs with MLC NAND flash, available in capacities of 60 GB, 115 GB, and 240 GB. When attached in pairs to the Wings PCIe SSD card, the card's main controller runs them in a RAID 0 configuration that is abstract to the host, delivering increased performance. Lastly, these "Expansion Cartridges" are available with their outer shells, branded as "Crest SSDs".

Scythe launched two new lines of power supply units in its home country, Japan, the Solid Power Bronze and Solid Power Gold. As the names might suggest, models of these lines are 80 Plus Bronze and 80 Plus Gold certified, respectively. These PSUs are designed to have high cost-performance ratios, and offer power capacities typically needed by today's gaming PCs. The Solid Power Bronze series includes 550W and 650W models, while the Solid Power Gold series includes 500W and 600W models.

Both lines use identical-looking bodies, measuring W150 x D140 x H86 mm, with fixed cabling, and cooled by 120 mm silent fans. Apart from 24-pin ATX and 4+4-pin EPS, the Solid Power Bronze 550W includes two 6+2-pin PCIe, one FDD power, three Molex, and six SATA power; the 650W variant has six Molex connectors, and eight SATA power connectors, instead. The Solid Power Gold 500W and 600W, apart from 24-pin ATX and 4+4-pin EPS, offer two PCIe 6+2-pin, six Molex, and six SATA power connectors.

RunCore showed off its engineering potential in four "single-chip" solid-state drives (SSDs). If we're playing semantics here, almost every USB flash drive in the market these days is a "single chip SSD", but in context of these drives, "single chip" refers to a component that combines MLC NAND flash and a SATA interface controller into a single package. The number of NAND flash channels internally is not known, but RunCore thinks these chips should offer good performance in the value segment.

The blue PCBs in the first picture depict single-chip SSDs in three main client form-factors: 2.5-inch SATA, 1.8-inch SATA, and mSATA. As you can see, there's just one main chip, no controller, no cache DRAM, nothing else, except power-conditioning components and firmware ROM chips on the back side of the PCB.

ZOTAC also displayed an upcoming socket LGA1155 motherboard based on Intel Z77 chipset, in the mini-ITX form-factor, which is geared for overclocking, that's right, overclocking. ZOTAC has, in the past, designed a similar motherboard based on the Z68 chipset. This mini-ITX board draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, it supports upcoming "Ivy Bridge" Unlocked LGA1155 Core processors out of the box.

The LGA1155 socket (LOTES Black, powder-coated to prevent shrinking when subjected to subzero cooling), is powered by an 8-phase VRM circuitry, complete with a feature-rich controller, Pulse-made inductors, and driverMOSFETs (DrMOS), and High-C capacitors. The DrMOS chips are cooled by a high-density heatsink that shares some of its heat with the heatsink over the Z77 PCH, over a heat pipe.

Here is the first picture of Sapphire's socket LGA1155 motherboard in the works, based on Intel Z77 "Panther Point" chipset. Carrying the model number PT-CI7Z77, the board will probably carry the company's "Pure Black" branding. Its chipset and VRM heatsink designs have not been finalized, yet. To begin with, the LGA1155 socket, which supports upcoming "Ivy Bridge" processors out of the box, is powered by a 10-phase VRM. This VRM uses ferrite-core chokes, Driver-MOSFETs, and a secondary NEC-TOKIN multi-phase capacitor to condition power. Three other phases handle memory and miscellaneous power domains on the board.

The processor is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting dual-channel DDR3 memory. It is also wired to two PCI Express 3.0 long slots, which are auto-configured as x16/NC or x8/x8, depending on the second slot being populated. Other slots include a PCI Express 2.0 x1, and a PCI Express 2.0 long slot (gray), which is electrically PCIe 2.0 x4, and wired to the Z77 PCH. There are two legacy PCI slots, driven by an ASMedia-made bridge chip.

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.

Plextor, leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and storage equipment, announces the release of its latest Solid State Drive, M3 Pro, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas today.

The new M3 Pro Series offers improvements to the current M3S, including a significant boost in sequential and random read/write speeds. Other changes include high-grade 24 nm Toggle Flash, firmware updates, and a new 7 mm height form factor to fit ultra-slim notebooks.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the Accelerator Series solid-state cache drives.

The Accelerator Series is designed for desktop PC users who want to give their Microsoft Windows based PC a dramatic performance boost with minimal cost and hassle. Corsair's new line of SSD cache drives includes premium caching software from NVELO, for improved boot times and lightning-quick file access. After connecting an Accelerator Series SSD cache drive to their computer's SATA port and installing the caching software provided with the drive, users will see an immediate speed boost. No drive mapping, no reinstallation of the operating system or applications, and no complex file management is needed - the Accelerator Series SSD cache drive works in tandem with the customer's existing hard drive to provide optimized performance. Customers may see an improvement in file read/write speeds of up to 5x their current hard drive performance after installing a Corsair Accelerator Series SSD cache drive.

LaCie announced its latest peripherals featuring Thunderbolt technology today at the 2012 International CES. The new 2big Thunderbolt Series delivers speed, flexibility and capacity, while the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series allows users to connect external eSATA drives to their new Macs. This announcement follows the unprecedented success of LaCie's Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series and further asserts the company's commitment to deliver high-quality products featuring Thunderbolt technology.

"LaCie is proud to offer the widest range of storage solutions featuring Thunderbolt technology," said Erwan Girard, Professional Business Unit Manager, LaCie. "These products are some of the fastest and most flexible storage solutions on the market. They will dramatically accelerate the workflow of even the most demanding digital users."

HighPoint Technologies, Inc., an industry leading HBA and storage solutions manufacturer, has announced a new milestone in 6Gb/s SSD storage performance. Recent driver and firmware updates for the best-selling RocketRAID 2700 series of 6Gb/s SAS HBA's dramatically improve the performance of RAID and non-RAID SSD configurations.

As the cost-per-gigabyte ratio of Nand Flash Chips continues to improve, SSD's have become the storage device of choice for many PC enthusiasts, gamers and media professionals. Multi-SSD configurations, once regulated to ultra-high-end workstations and enterprise servers, are now realistic propositions for the high-performance personal computing market. HighPoint SAS 6Gb/s HBA's are the ideal storage companion for such configurations. The RocketRAID 2700 series has been performance tuned to support today's fastest 6Gb/s SSD's, boosting transfer rates by as much as 50%.

The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of Serial ATA (SATA) technology, today announced the completion of SATA DevSleep, a new feature that reduces power consumption of devices. SATA DevSleep enables the development of ultra-portable computing devices based on SATA storage solutions that consume significantly less power than current offerings, resulting in longer battery life and enhanced ease of use.

DevSleep defines the lowest power state for SATA technology, allowing the PHY and other circuitry to be completely powered off, unlike existing partial/slumber states, which require a partially powered PHY. The feature allows devices to be always on and always connected without unnecessarily reducing battery life. For example, with DevSleep an ultra-thin laptop that would have previously needed to be put into standby to conserve battery life can now stay on and be immediately available for use.

Apart from the powerful little Mr. Clone 3.0 drive-cloning and docking device, Japanese company AREA also launched the SATA 6 Gb/s TwinTurbo Hybrid addon-card. 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s cards aren't new, but they either come in 2-port internal SATA, or 2-port eSATA forms, making you have to choose between the two types. This addon-card from AREA features two internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, two eSATA 6 Gb/s ports, and uses a common 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s controller.

The ingenuity here is a simple jumper-based way of configuring those two SATA channels to individually work as internal SATA or eSATA. So now you can set the card to have two eSATA 6 Gb/s ports, two internal SATA ports, or one internal SATA and an eSATA, whichever way you'd like, by simply toggling two sets of four jumpers switching which way the data traces of each SATA channel end up. The card uses an ASMedia ASM1061 2-port PCIe SATA 6 Gb/s controller, which supports IDE, AHCI, and simple RAID modes. It connects to the host over PCI-Express 2.0 x1. Slated for May 2012, the AREA SATA TwinTurbo Hybrid will be priced at 2,980 JPY, or $38.

Japanese company AREA announced this nifty new gadget that can help you set up a quick external storage solution, or clone SATA drives in a jiffy. Called the AREA Mr. Clone 3.0, the device is a small box measuring 72 x 48 x 10 mm, with two sets of standard SATA interfaces (data + power) attached on its two longer sides, to which SATA drives (hard drives and SSDs in 3.5", 2.5", and 1.8" form-factors) can be simply plugged in. The device takes in an AC power input (includes a DC power supply to power connected drives and itself), it can connect to a host system using USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface.

Even without a host PC connected to it, the device can be used to clone hard drives. It will come handy when cloning drives for medium-large deployments, or moving from a slower HDD to a faster SSD. The device has its own control panel to manage and track progress of the cloning process. The SATA interfaces support SATA 6 Gb/s specification. Apart from a self-sufficient drive cloning tool, it can be used as a drive dock, connecting SATA drives (up to 6 Gb/s speed) to the host PC over fast USB 3.0 interface. Poised to release in May 2012, the AREA Mr. Clone 3.0 will be priced at 4,280 JPY, or US $55.

Thermal Solutions specialist GELID Solutions reveals its first tower case of its GAMER product line. This completely black painted 0.7mm steel ATX / Micro-ATX tower case is designed for gamers and includes a long list of features.

As thermal specialist GELID Solutions certainly offers solid cooling options for this case and provides locations for up to 8 fans. Two silent 120mm fans (rear and front) come preinstalled with the case. The case even enables to mount a 80mm or 120mm fan with a max. 15mm thickness onto the side panel. The DarkForce supports a 120mm or 240mm radiator at the bottom of the case and offers 8+1 slots for extra connection of peripheral devices.

RAIDON is releasing the new generation of SAS storage solutions, GR2880 and GR4880. These models can to be easily deployed while offering a stable performance and scheduled backup to the SMB. GR2880 and GR4880 offer remarkable SAS storage solutions, embed dual SAS host interface to the fastest data throughput for an extraordinary performance, also provides up to RAID 6 the highest RAID level protection to data from work station and data server for a secured operating environment.

Both models also provide snapshot function which only offered from high standard storage devices. This function will backup stored data in records from designation time, to prevent data encounters inevitable problems through capability of restoring primitive correct data from files of saved records.

Galaxy, better known for its NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards in the western world, sells more than that in its home country China, where it unveiled its Laser GT series consumer SSDs. Built in the common 2.5-inch SATA form-factor these drives use the SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and are driven by SandForce SF-2281 SSD controllers. Pictured below is its 120 GB model. The drive offers maximum sequential transfer speeds of 550 MB/s (read), and 500 MB/s (write), with 4K random performance of 30,000 IOPS reads, and 41,000 IOPS writes. It makes use of MLC NAND flash with 5,000 rewrite cycle life. The 120 GB Laser GT variant is priced at 1,399 RMB, that's about US $221.

The market for socket LGA775 is still far from dead as there are large inventories of cheap Core 2, Pentium, and Celeron chips left in the market, as well as buyers upgrading their DDR2 systems to those with DDR3, to benefit from the DDR3 fire sale. Gigabyte introduced a new revision of its GA-EG41MFT-US2H, revision 1.4, with an updated gigabit Ethernet chip. The micro-ATX motherboard uses 3+1 phase VRM to power the processor, a wide range of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors are supported. The processor is wired to Intel's G41 northbridge. Surprisingly, its graphics controller gives out an HDMI connection apart from DVI and D-Sub. It is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 8 GB of memory.

Expansion slots include two PCI, one each of PCI-Express 1.1 x16 and PCIe x1. The ICH7 southbridge drives four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and an IDE connector. The gigabit ethernet controller has been updated to RTL8111E, from the 8111D found on the older revision. Other features include 8-channel HD audio, Firewire, FDC, COM, and a number of USB 2.0 ports. Expect a sub-$100 pricing for this board.

Chinese data storage solutions provider Orico unveiled its new P5K line of portable hard drives. These drives feature rugged brushed-aluminum bodies. The drives are available in variants that feature both eSATA 3 Gb/s and USB 3.0, and those which feature just USB 3.0. Some of these variants even pack internal SSDs instead of HDDs, with a single "direct" PCB that holds both the host interface logic and the SSD. Unfortunately, these designs are still in the realm of CGI, and the manufacturer did not publish detailed specifications.