Samsung is launching a new SSD 470 package with greatly enhanced user convenience features compared to the existing SSD 470 series. This July, all Samsung 470 Series SSDs will include a full copy of Norton Ghost 15.0 to greatly reduce the frustration of data migration, backup, and recovery. While the physical installation of the drive is trivial to many users, the tedious process of installing the OS, running OS updates, installing patches, reinstalling software, setting up user preferences, and migrating old data is frustrating and time-consuming. With the inclusion of Norton Ghost 15.0, the time it takes to migrate to a new SSD is reduced by up to 75 percent, meaning your new drive can be up and running in under an hour instead of nearly four.

Panasonic today launches the Toughbook CF-H2, its second generation, fully rugged tablet PC designed specifically for field workers. Setting new standards in ease of use, connectivity and productivity, the CF-H2 is the ultimate tool for mobile and field workers helping them to stay productive, even in harsh environments, by delivering constant access to their applications and business data. The lightweight, yet fully rugged tablet is ideal for field workers in utilities, logistics, automotive workshops, rail and aviation as well as sales personnel, retail point of sales and market research.

With the latest Intel Core i5-2557M (1.70 GHz) Ultra Low Voltage processor with vPro and the Intel HD 3000 graphics for enhanced multimedia capabilities, the Toughbook CF-H2 performance has been improved more than 400% over its CF-H1 predecessor. The CF-H2 is ideal for power hungry field applications such as GIS, mobile CAD and powerful diagnostic tools. RAM has also been raised to 2 gigabyte as standard, with up to 8 gigabyte optional, and it comes with a 160 GB hard disk drive as standard with 128 GB SSD as an option.

Chinese memory enterprise flash memory expert RunCore released a trio of solid state drives (SSDs) in the mSATA form-factor, that includes the high end T50 with its 6 Gb/s interface, mid-range I50 and entry-level Lite series, both of which have 3 Gb/s interfaces. The T50 uses SandForce SF-2218 controller, and can provide transfer rates of up to 550 MB/s reads with 470 MB/s writes, with 4K random read and write performance of 60,000 and 35,000 IOPS, respectively. Despite its tiny form-factor, the RunCore T50 comes in capacities of 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB, and even 480 GB; priced at US $198, $358, respectively for the 60 GB and 120 GB variants, with the upper variants' price yet to be disclosed. This makes the RunCore T50 480 GB look like the ultimate mSATA SSD.

The I50, on the other hand, looks to be using SandForce SF-1200 controllers, with transfer rates of 280 MB/s read and 270 MB/s write, with 4K random read/write performance of 45,000 and 30,000 IOPS, respectively. The I50 is available in 60 GB and 120 GB capacities, priced at $178 and $380, respectively. The RunCore Lite runs on SandForce SF-2141, and and is a low-cost, low-capacity SSD for OEMs, which means that retail availability is uncertain. The 16 GB variant is priced at $28, and 32 GB one for $38. The mSATA form-factor is prevalent in embedded systems, ultra portable notebooks, certain media players, and even some consumer motherboards that support Intel's Smart Response technology.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced the introduction of the DuraDrive AT3, an SSD for demanding industrial environments. Not every computing environment is a pleasant one and some of them are down right nasty. For such environments, we have developed the DuraDrive; a line of Solid State Disks designed to perform in environments well beyond the standard consumer specifications. Containing no moving parts, an SSD naturally performs well in high-shock and high-vibration environments. This makes SSD great candidates for such installations, but temperature has always been a limiting factor. While most drives were designed to function in environments from 0°C -> 70°C, the new DuraDrive has been specially designed to withstand operating temperatures from -40°C to +85°C.

Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user friendly designed PC components, today unveiled the 2.5" SATA 6 Gb/s MX-DS TURBO Series SSD. This series offers mobile and desktop users groundbreaking computing experience and unparalleled level of read and write performance.

Advanced high speed SATAIII interface has been implemented in newer systems to remove previous performance bottleneck. The MX-DS TURBO Series is perfect to take advantage of that higher speed interface. This SSD series delivers performance that maximizes the throughput of a SATA 6 Gb/s interface with balanced read/write speeds. It supports DuraClass and DuraWrite technologies. DuraClass technology provides best-in-class endurance, performance and low power consumption. DuraWrite technology optimizes writes to the flash memory over conventional controllers increasing the overall endurance and reliability of the complete SSD. Highly intelligent block management and wear leveling also extends the overall endurance. It maintains backwards compatibility with existing SATA 3.0 Gb/s and SATA 1.5 Gb/s interfaces.

Shuttle, a world-leading PC manufacturer focused on high-performance small form factor desktops, today announced the availability of the Shuttle H7 5800G Pro and H7 5800P Pro extreme performance PC models for purchase through Shuttle's USA online shop, starting today.

Ready for gamers and enthusiasts, the Shuttle H7 5800G Pro features a 3.06GHz Intel Core i7 950 quad-core processor (up to 3.33GHz Core i7 980X Extreme Edition), NVIDIA GeForce performance graphics (up to GeForce GTX 580 or Radeon HD 6970), 4GB DDR3 memory (up to 16GB), and 500GB hard drive (upgradeable to SSD), starting at $1,299.99 MSRP.

Addonics Technologies today announced the Addonics 1:11 HDD (Hard Disk Drive) Duplicator, which can copy up to 11 target drives from a single source or duplicate any SATA or IDE HDD drive in a 3.5" or 2.5" form factor. The HDD duplicator is an ideal solution for production or data distribution applications.

The 1:11 HDD duplicator comes in three different models and operates as a stand alone device. No computer or complex software is needed. Simply insert the master drive into the source slot and then insert up to 11 hard drives of equal or larger capacity than the master drive into the duplicator slots. Press the "copy" button on the LCD control module to start the copying process. The 1:11 HDD duplicator supports a maximum copy speed of 300 MB/sec.

I-O Data released two new value SATA 3 Gb/s SSDs, the SSDN-SV128 and SSDN-SV64, which as the model number might suggest, are 128 GB and 64 GB in capacity, respectively. The drives offer random read speeds of 143 MB/s, and random write speeds of 206 MB/s. While not much is known about what is the NAND flash type or controller used, it is mentioned that the drives support the TRIM garbage collection feature. Backed by a one-year warranty, the SSDN-SV64 and SSDN-SV128 will be available in Japan for ¥12,800 (US $158) and ¥24,800 ($306), respectively.

CyberPower Inc., a leading manufacturer of custom gaming PCs, today announced a series of desktop gaming PCs based on AMD's new A-series desktop platform featuring all new APUs (Accelerated Processing Units), which integrates the CPU along with the fastest onboard GPU and memory controller into one die to offer low power consumption and high performance at a low cost.

The new A-series APU boasts twice the cache of previous AMD hardware in its class and features integrated the Radeon 6000 series graphics, for a powerful processing unit on a single die. The Radeon HD graphics found on the new APUs are also the first to incorporate Microsoft's DirectX 11 technology for an ultra-realistic gaming experience. Other performance features on the new APUs include the AMD Turbo Core and VISION Engine graphics technology to help digital content like videos, games, and photos look their best, as well as offer native multi-monitor support.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc.,a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the release of the second generation of its proprietary Virtualized Controller Architecture (VCA). Leveraged in OCZ's PCI-Express (PCIe) and SAS SSD solutions for workstation, enterprise, and OEM clients, VCA 2.0 supports a rich enterprise feature-set enabling unprecedented flexibility, increased performance, and the reliability required for high throughput storage systems.

"OCZ's proprietary VCA technology is the next step in the evolution of virtualization layers for solid state storage. VCA 2.0 enables industry-leading configurable performance aggregation along with a rich enterprise feature set not found on competitive products," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "With its scalable performance, TRIM and SCSI unmap support, and enhanced management tools, VCA 2.0 provides superior reliability and superior performance, in a plethora of OCZ's easy-to-deploy storage solutions."

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the first shipments of the Force Series GT line of solid-state drives.

The new Force Series GT is designed for enthusiasts who demand the fastest performance available. It uses the new SandForce SF-2280 SSD Processor, with native support for SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3), combined with ONFI synchronous flash memory. Force Series GT SSDs deliver outstanding read/write performance and significantly faster system response, boot times, and application load times than SATA 2 solid-state drives, with out-of-box performance of up to 85K Random Write IOPS, read speeds of up to 555 MB/s, and write speeds of up to 525 MB/s. The use of synchronous flash memory makes the Force GT Series particularly adept at reading and writing non-compressible data, such as video and music files.

Introducing the MB882HX-1SB 2.5" SATA SSD Xpander Hybrid Adapter. Using a high speed 2.5" SATA SSD and a high capacity 3.5" SATA hard drive, you can combine them to create a new breed of species. Using our hybrid technology, we can take a moderate or 2nd generation 2.5" SATA SSD in combination with a mid to higher end 3.5" SATA hard drive which automatically creates "hybrid partition" and "storage partition". The "hybrid partition" doubles the capacity of the SSD drive and provides high performance in transfer rates. The storage partition gives you the remaining capacity of the hard drive* (the size of the 3.5" SATA hard drive minus "hybrid partition" size).

This is the perfect upgrade solution without purchasing an expensive high capacity SSD. The Xpander Hybrid Adapter doubles the sequential transfer rates of the hard drive exclusively in the hybrid partition, it is great for people who move, play or edit large media files. Such as a video editor, graphic designer, HD movie enthusiast that use applications like Adobe Photoshop, Sony Vegas and Windows Media Center that require large file loads / transfers. For editing, you can use the hybrid portion as a sketch drive; move the working files to it for fast editing. When you are done with the file we recommend moving the file to a RAID protected archive drive. The "storage partition" is perfect for non-important applications or files i.e. games, movies, music, or other media files.

Weighing little over a kilogram, the new VAIO Z Series notebook PC from Sony is created for mobile professionals who demand absolute performance and portability. VAIO Z blends ultra-desirable styling and premium carbon fibre with no-compromise specifications and innovative productivity features. In the office or on the road, this class-leading business notebook helps demanding users work more efficiently with the ultimate in on-the-move computing power.

All-new VAIO Z takes cutting-edge styling by Sony to new extremes, with a 'full flat' body and display lid that are crafted in tough, ultra-light carbon fibre. At just below 1.2kg and 16.65mm slim, the new VAIO Z is the perfect partner for business travellers who demand ultimate power with less to carry.

Acer America today debuts the Acer AC700 its first Chromebook in the United States and its first product running Google's Chrome-based operating system. The Acer AC700 ultraportable delivers blazing boot times and instant access to the Internet.

The first in a planned line of products that will utilize Google's Chrome operating system, the Acer AC700 Chromebook is ideal for savvy mobile consumers, educational institutions, and business people that spend most of their time on the Internet for cloud computing such as using web-based email, uploading photos to sites like Flickr and Picasa, and keeping up-to-date on the latest news and events. The new Acer AC700 provides WiFi connectivity, a sleek thin and light form factor, long battery life and excellent HD playback.

World famous mainboard and graphic card manufacturer MSI today officially announces their brand new AMD A75-Series mainboard A75MA-G55 with Military Class II components to equip the mainboard with the best quality and highest stability. The amazing graphical performance of the A-Series APUs is complimented by the implementation of USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s ports to give the fastest performance when you're playing games, video editing, transferring files from mobile devices. With support for HDMI, DVI and 7.1 channel audio, the A75MA-G55 in its small MicroATX form factor is the perfect choice whether it is as a complete and powerful desktop PC or a versatile and efficient HTPC. MSI's A75MA-G55 is truly the best choice in high quality, high performance and high convenience.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced their next generation SSD, the TeraDrive PT3.
Featuring the SandForce 2200 processor, SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and Double Data Rate, ONFiTM flash, the new TeraDrive PT3 offers a significant leap in performance over drives offered just a few months ago. The union of these 3 new technologies has forever changed the storage landscape. Right out of the gate, this new generation SSD stretches well within the new found bandwidth promised by the SATA 3.0 bus and breaks the 500MB/s barrier in both Read and Write scores. The comparisons between SSDs and HDDs just became a little harder to justify.

The only SSD processor to compress data before writing, SandForce's unique set of technologies enables the new TeraDrive PT3 to offer enhanced performance, flash durability and data integrity. Add to that the introduction of ONFi, double data rate flash, and the SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and we have one of the largest incremental leaps in performance that the storage market has ever seen.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today launched the Deneva 2 SSD line for enterprise clients. Taking full advantage of the cutting-edge SATA 6Gb/s interface, Deneva 2 SSDs are designed for a wide range of enterprise applications including servers, cloud computing, and data centers. The Deneva 2 series delivers maximum performance while meeting the stringent reliability, security, performance and economical needs of enterprise storage environments.

"Data centers are one application where the speed benefits of a fast SSD visibly fall straight to a company's bottom line," said SSD analyst Jim Handy of Objective Analysis. "This has driven the enterprise to be the fastest-growing market for SSDs - Objective Analysis forecasts for enterprise SSD unit shipments to grow at an average annual rate of 83 percent, nearly doubling every year."

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, today announced the first shipments of its highly anticipated S511 solid state drive (SSD). ADATA is hardly a newcomer to the SSD field; however the S511 is the company's first foray into the latest SATA 6 Gb/sec specification that employs the SandForce SF-2200 series controller. The timing of this release is consistent with the company's historical balance of speed and thorough testing of new technologies.

According to YJ Choi, Senior Vice President at ADATA. "ADATA does comprehensive testing and review before bringing products to market, to ensure that our customers enjoy a worry-free experience for their systems and data. We are confident that the S511 will provide dependable performance at industry-leading transfer speeds."

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today expanded its Lightning(R) Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD) family with six new 2.5-inch 6Gb SAS (6 gigabits per second Serial Attached SCSI) models. The Lightning products are part of the new Enterprise Storage Solutions (ESS) division that SanDisk created following its recent acquisition of Pliant Technology.

The new drives include three SLC (single-level cell) flash drives with capacities of 100 gigabytes (GB), 200GB and 400GB; and three MLC (multi-level cell) flash drives with capacities of 200GB, 400GB and 800GB. The new drives extend SanDisk's position as the industry leader in EFD performance, performance predictability and reliability. SanDisk also confirmed today that HP has qualified and integrated the new Lightning 6Gb SAS drives into its HP Qualified storage drive offerings.

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today announced the OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD, a new consumer/prosumer targeted SandForce Driven SATA Revision 3.0 6Gb/s Solid State Drive. Designed and built in the USA utilizing the highest quality components available, including Tier 1/Grade A NAND, the OWC Mercury Electra delivers 556 MB/s read and 523 MB/s write sustained data rates for over 7X faster performance than a standard factory hard drive found in Mac and PC computers.

Three Consumer/Prosumer Models Offered Starting At $229.99. Offering the SATA Revision 3.0 performance of a 6 Gb/s SSD, but aggressively priced like a SATA Revision 2.0 3G SSD, the OWC Mercury Electra 6G is ideal for high speed personal computing, home office environments, gaming, and production workstations, can be incorporated into a RAID 1 or SPAN configuration, and is available for immediate ordering in three capacity sizes:

First making their existance known in April, Intel's new enterprise-grade 710 Series and 720 Series solid-state drives (SSDs) are inching closer to launch, with more specifications being known. The two series are very distinct from each other, the 710 series codenamed "Lyndonville" comes in the 2.5-inch SATA form-factor, with SATA 3 Gb/s interface; while the 720 series codenamed "Ramsdale" comes in the PCI-Express add-on card form-factor, probably using the PCI-Express x8 interface.

Intel 710 series SSDs make use of new 25 nm MLC NAND flash, cached by 64 MB of DRAM. It comes in capacities of 100, 200, and 300 GB; offer transfer-rates of 270 MB/s read, 210 MB/s write; with 36,000 IOPS and 2,400 4K IOPS performance; and offers endurance of 500 TB for the 100 GB model, and 1 PB (petabyte, equals 1024 TB) for the 200 GB model on full capacity. The Intel 720 series SSDs use PCI-Express interface, 34 nm SLC NAND flash, comes in capaities of 200 GB and 400 GB; transfer rates of 2,200 MB/s read, 1,800 MB/s write; 180,000 IOPS with 56,000 IOPS 4K random write performance; and massive endurance figures of 36 PB for 200 GB (8K random writes).

Sharkoon expands their range of ATX cases and complements the T-Series presented in March: The Sharkoon T5 Value is equipped - in contrast to the already available Sharkoon T5 Economy - with a front USB3.0, two pre-mounted 120mm LED fans and an acrylic window on the side panel. The black interior lacquer sets a stylish scene with the installed hardware.

The other functions are identical to the Economy Edition: The black case offers five installation bays for 5.25 inch drives behind its mesh front panel, plus additional space for five 3.5 inch drives and seven extension cards. With help from a special mounting frame, SSDs in 2.5 or 3.5 inch formats, or a 2.5 inch hard drive in a hard drive cage can be also attached. The optical drives and the hard drives are installed through the quick-locking mount, behind the main board mounting plate a cavity is provided for the mounting of a CPU cooler and the orderly installation of cables.

Corsair issued a recall notice for its Force 3 120 GB solid state drive (model: CSSD-F120GBG3-BK). Other variants of the Force 3 series are not affected. Corsair noted a hardware issue where Force 3 120 GB SSDs shipped had much less performance than advertised. Owners of Force 3 120 GB can apply for a completely free replacement (shipping costs will be borne by Corsair), for a Force 3 120 GB drive from a normal batch. Owners can apply for a replacement at Corsair Support. Corsair will be pulling faulty batches of Force 3 120 GB off the shelves until they are restocked with fresh batches of normal drives.

Mushkin, Inc., a global leader in high-performance computer products, today announced "Chronos", a new solid state drive series based on the SandForce SF-2281 processor. This series will be Mushkin's first utilizing the SATA Revision 3.0 protocol, providing 6 gigabits per second of bandwidth. The Chronos Series is comprised of two types of products: "Chronos" and "Chronos Deluxe". Chronos Deluxe SSDs utilize high-speed NAND flash memory and are ideal for enthusiasts or those in audio/video production who require the greatest possible bandwidth. Chronos SSDs offer asynchronous flash memory and provide users with eye-opening SSD speed and functionality at a value-oriented price.

"This new series of SSDs is the latest in Mushkin's long history of solid state storage products. This is an area in which we have made great strides and our Chronos SSD line will continue this tradition. Users who are ready for SATA 6 Gb/s now, or are planning to upgrade down the road, will not find a better drive in terms of performance and price." - Brian Flood, Mushkin director of product development.

Super Talent is readying a new USB 3.0 flash drive, the RC8. This is essentially a SandForce-driven SSD on a stick. It uses a SF-1222 controller, coupled with 25 nm MLC NAND flash memory over 8-channels. It is available in capacities of 25 GB, 50 GB, and 100 GB. When plugged into a USB 3.0 port, the drive can offer read and write speeds of over 200 MB/s. It is backwards-compatible with USB 2.0, where its transfer rates are restricted to around 40 MB/s. Expect the 50 GB variant to be priced around US $110.