In the CES 2009, to be held in Las Vegas from January 8, MSI will once again capture the world's eyes with its prolific R&D and designs. In addition to introducing the whole new U-series models, MSI will launch the new All-In-One Wind NetOn models and MSI's first dual-core Atom All-In-One models. G-series notebooks, the first series surmounting 10000 points on 3Dmark, will also be exhibited. With such a strong cast, MSI will successfully become the focus on the international stage once again.

Following the popular MSI Wind Netbooks, U100 and U90, MSI will introduce some more portable netbook in CES, including MSI U115 Hybrid, and will also announce that MSI U120 is "WiMAX Ready". Moreover the first netbook capable of running SSD/HDD simultaneously, and MSI X-Slim Series X320, the 13" super portable notebook of just about 1.3 kg.

A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in high performance memory products, announced today that it is launching XPG Dual SSD 3.5" RAID Enclosure to expand its portfolio of SSD solutions.

The A-DATA XPG Dual SSD 3.5" RAID Enclosure is a complete RAID solution through the use of two 2.5" SATA SSDs and/or HDDs mounted on one standard 3.5" form factor drive cage. This multifunctional RAID enclosure can be used as two separate drives, as a redundant drive to protect against drive failure, combined to become one high-performance drive or combined to become one large drive. By utilizing the hardware DIP switch on the back of the unit or included software utility, all these different RAID configurations and more can be set in an instant. Connection via SATA or USB enables easy direct access.

Advanced Media, Inc., is a manufacturer and marketer of the Ridata brand of electronic storage products, and digital accessories. The company is pleased to announce Ridata 233x Lightning Series CompactFlash cards plus a SATA Converter RAID 1. Compatible Ridata CF cards range in capacity from 512MB to 32GB. The adapter allows a CF card to function as a Solid State Drive (SSD). In the case of a hard drive failure, the CF card via the converter appears as an ordinary hard drive to any OS and can be configured as a boot device.

"Many of our portable device customers would like to try an SSD without the bigger price tag. Our industrial customers face the problem of waiting for long hard disk drive (HDD) rebuilds that may cause over heating issues. By using our CF card and SATA converter, users can hot swap the HDD with the card and converter saving storage rebuild time with low temperatures and high transfer speeds," commented Harvey Liu, president of Advanced Media, Inc.

MSI today announces U115 Hybrid. The very first notebook computer in the world that is capable of operating both SSD and HDD hard drives simultaneously, combining all the features of SSD and HDD in the U115 Hybrid for your enjoyment.

With MSI Exclusive Hybrid Storage Technology, in the "ECO on" mode, the battery life of U115 Hybrid is super long. This amazing battery life can escalate the mobility and the productiveness of the U115 Hybrid, which can also make your daily lives much more convenient.

A DRAM major is incomplete without a product lineup that includes solid-state drives (SSDs). Kingston is looking to fill the void in its lineup with SSDs. The company looks to update is lineup as early as by January 2009. Due to time constraints and to play safe with intellectual property terms, the company looks to source its products from manufacturing sources, with a monthly shipment goal of 10,000 units, according to a DigiTimes report.

Kingston co-founder David Sun stated that Kingston does not intend to cover the manufacturing part at this stage, as SSD technology involves numerous intellectual property (IP) items. Therefore, Kingston will enter the market follow the same path as for NAND flash products (memory cards and flash drives), by securing supply for its SSD products with Intel, Sun indicated.

Intel is expanding its award-winning Intel X25-M and X18-M SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) family by announcing the production release of a 160 gigabyte (GB) capacity drive in a 2.5-inch form factor. The product is shipping now, and a 1.8-inch 160GB version will begin shipping next month. There's one more thing worth mentioning for these multi-level cell-based drives - their read and write speeds - and they are sustained read of 250MB/sec and 80MB/sec write. Get more information and product details here.

Toshiba Corporation today announced the expansion of their line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives (SSD) with the industry's first 2.5-inch 512-gigabyte (GB) SSD and a broad family of fast read/write SSDs based on 43 nanometer (nm) Multi-Level Cell NAND. The new drives provide a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebook computers, gaming and home entertainment systems, and will be showcased at International CES 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8 to 11, 2009.

Micron Technology today announced it has worked with Sun Microsystems to develop a new single-level cell (SLC) enterprise NAND technology that dramatically extends the lifespan of flash-based storage for enterprise applications. The result of the collaboration has yielded production devices capable of achieving one million write cycles, a milestone that will help prepare the industry for new uses in solid state storage set to come from Sun, Micron and others. The new technology delivers the highest write/erase cycling capability of any NAND technology available on the market.

Patriot Memory, a global provider of premium quality memory module and flash memory solutions, today announced their 256GB Warp SSD v3. Patriot's newest Warp version boasts read and write speeds up to 240MB/sec and 160MB/s, respectively.

"Our new 256GB Warp SSD v3 now gives the consumer the fastest data-transfer rates plus all the storage space large enough to quench their multimedia thirst," says Meng Jay, Flash Product Manager for Patriot Memory. "It wasn't long ago that SSD's maxed out at 64GB with read speeds of 130MB/s, now with the Warp v3 we literally 'Warp' into capacities that most consumers demand and speeds far faster than current conventional hard drives.

Buffalo recently released the LinkStation Mini line-up of NAS devices that fit SSD drives as storage media. Designed specially to ensure maximum transfer speeds, zero noise levels and high reliability for the customer, the LS-WSS240GL/R1 weights in just half a kilo and offers 240GB of storage space. The SSD NAS device measures 40 (W) x 82 (H) x 135 (D) mm and connects through a Gigabit Ethernet or a USB 2.0/1.1 port. General availability of the cube is expected later this month, with retail cost for the 240GB version around $1,146.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced a new line of UltraDrive solid state drives (SSDs) that are twice as fast as the world's speediest SATA hard drives and are offered in capacities up to 256GB.

UltraDrive LE SSDs are designed expressly for enterprise servers and data centers where exceptional performance, reliability and endurance are paramount. The UltraDrive LE supports very high transaction speeds (IOPS), and supports sequential read/write speeds of 230/170 MB per second. While outperforming 10,000 RPM hard drives, the UltraDrive LE uses substantially less power and generates less heat. Based on SLC NAND Flash, the UltraDrive LE is offered in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities.

OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the OCZ Vertex SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, a premium offering for enthusiasts demanding the latest technology in this fast-developing sector of the storage market. The latest high-performance and cost-efficient SSD, OCZ has gained momentum in pioneering flash storage technology while maintaining a price point that is truly within the reach of a wide range of consumers.

Intel Corporation and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced plans to jointly develop and deliver Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel (FC) enterprise-class solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers, workstations and storage systems.
The combination of a leading Enterprise drive supplier with a NAND technology and manufacturing leader will produce world-class solutions in terms of reliability, performance and system compatibility. The two companies will work together exclusively to deliver enterprise SSDs with SAS and FC interfaces, with the first products expected to be available in early 2010.

PhotoFast is readying two new additions to its solid state drive lineup, with the G-Monster V2 series SSDs. These drives brandish high-performance and capacities by standards of SSDs. The two drives, models PF25S128GSSDV2 and PF25S256GSSDV2 come with capacities of 128 GB and 256 GB respectively. The drives offer read speeds up to 230 MB/s and 160 MB/s writes. They use the standard SATA II interface. The drives support all major operating systems, and sport durability in the form of a high MTBF of 2.5 million hours. The company is expected to start shipping these SSDs by the end of this year.

Buffalo has released an Intel-made solid-state drive (SSD), model SHD-NSMR 80G. The 2.5 inch, 80 GB drive is built on the multi-level cell (MLC) design, with rated sequential read speeds of up to 253 MB/s, with random read speeds of 241.7 MB/s. The drive uses standard SATA II interface. It measures 100 × 70 × 10mm (width × height × depth), and weighs 88g.

The drive bundles a decent set of related software by Acronis: MigrateEasy data migration software, TrueImage LE data backup software, DiskDirector LE partition management software, and DriveCleanser data secure-deletion software. The drive is now out in Japan and costs 103,950 JPY (about $1,090).

Yes, the title says it right. I just saw a YouTube video taken from Micron' headquarters, where the company's Joe Jeddeloh demonstrates the rough power of solid state technology. During the footage he demonstrates a prototype of comething called Washington solid state drive mounted on a PCI-E card that delivers read speeds of over 1GB/sec. Now we all know that these drives won't come in a month time, but they show how good the SSD technology really is. Maybe, this experiment also gives a hint how desperately we need a new SATA standard, current SATA 3Gbps drives no matter conventional or SSD can output only 300MB/s in theory. Back to the video, there two SSD PCI-E cards are running on a 2GHz eight-core Xeon system. Benchmarks of this configuration show output of 200,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second). Although, you can't actually read these numbers because of the video's low resolution, Jeddeloh says that one PCI-E drive can read at around 800MB/sec, while a pair of cards can read at 1GB/sec. Micron claims that there's nothing special about the flash memory the drives use, in fact these are ordinary SLC (single level cell) drives. They're only "managed correctly." At the end of the video, Jeddeloh also shows a single 8x PCI-E card that features two SSDs on a single board, that he claims also offer "at least" 1GB/sec of bandwidth. Micron plans "wide availability of the product in 2010, but that its going to be targeted at enterprise customers first." For now this is only a quick look in the future. Watch the video over at Micron's Advanced Storage Blog.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it is now mass producing 25 and 50 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives (SSDs) for performance-optimized server applications such as video on demand, web serving and on-line transaction processing.
Designed specifically for the enterprise market, the new Samsung single-level-cell (SLC) SSDs have about twice the random write performance of its standard 32GB and 64GB SLC SSDs.

A-DATA has just become the next memory manufacturer to announce solid state products branded under its name. A-DATA's brand new XPG 2.5-inch SSDs are available in 32GB/64GB/128GB/192GB capacities and use SATA 3Gbps high-speed interface and an extra built-in mini-USB 2.0 port for external operation. A-DATA claims the drives are guaranteed to achieve transfer rates of up to 170MB/s read and 100MB/s write. In addition, A-DATA's SSDs provide built-in ECC (Error Correction Code) that ensures highly reliable data transfer and increases the system integrity. The mean time between failure for these drives is estimated at 1,500,000 hours. For more information, please read the company's official press release here.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives for use in notebooks and desktop PCs. With the addition of the high-speed 256GB drive, Samsung now offers the most extensive line of SSDs in the industry with 8, 16, and 32GB SSDs for low-density designs and 64, 128 and 256GB alternatives for the higher densities.

In addition to the new LGA 775 processors, Intel is preparing price cuts for its solid state drives. Intel's super fast 2.5-inch 80GB multi-level cell (MLC) X25-M SSDs - and its 80GB 1.8-inch X18-M counterpart - will drop from $600 to $525 on November 30th. On the very same day Intel will also introduce its new single-level cell (SLC) high-performance 32GB X25-E SSD for $700. A month later on December 28th, the price of this drive will already be dropped to $575. In the first half of 2009, Intel will be migrating to higher density, releasing 160GB variants of the X25-M/X18-M MLC SSDs priced at $990, and 64GB versions of the high-performance X25-E SLC SSDs priced again at $990.

Still wasting your time waiting for files to load on your PC? Team Group has heard the prayers of users who wanted better solutions for mobile data storage and launched its next generation solid state drive (SSD). The innovative product incorporates SATAII high speed interface and external mini USB connectivity so as to combine the advantages of SSD (light weight, speed) and external hard disks (mobility, convenience) together. Team Group has successfully transformed SSD from a simple medium of storage into a high speed mobile storage device that is free from location restrictions. With the launch of the product, consumers will no longer have to put up with slow and bulky external hard disks! Team Group's 2.5" Combo SSD is perfect for efficiency oriented business users and gamers with demands for massive data transfer.

Yesterday, OCZ silently released new solid state drives, part of the company's Solid series line-up. There's still no sign of a press release, but the drives are already starting to appear at some etailers. These are not the Core V3 SSDs we covered here two days ago, but new budget solid state drives. The new value-minded SSDs come in a 2.5-inch form factor, have a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, one mini USB port and a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 1.5 million hours. The SSDs do claim 155MB/s read and 90MB/s write speeds and are shock resistant. OCZ's new Solid SSDs are available in 30GB (OCZSSD2-1SLD30G), 60GB (OCZSSD2-1SLD60G) and 120GB (OCZSSD2-1SLD120G) models, priced at $89, $159 and $299 respectively. All drives have a two year warranty.

Hard drive king Seagate officially confirmed today that it is investing as much as $100 million in a very own line-up of Solid State Drives. Seagate's CEO, Bill Watkins said:

We'd love to have an SSD range, that's why we're investing (as much as $100m), as there are a lot of things that we like about them. But there are also some problems.

The new line-up Seagate is building will try to overcome some of the problems current SSDs have. At present we're aware of SLC (single layer chip) and MLC (multiple layer chip) SSDs, and we know that the latter is cheaper but has reliability issues. Seagate will try to create a new technology that combines both single-layer cell (SLC) and multi-layer cell (MLC) tech, making better, faster and cheaper SSDs, the drives we all want.
Seagate's senior vice president of global marketing Pat King also revealed that the company is working on a network attached storage solution for the home. Unfortunately, that's all the information we have. Hopefully this new line-up will be a big step in the SSD industry.

SanDisk Corporation today unveiled an advanced flash file system for solid-state drives (SSDs) that yields dramatic improvement in performance and reliability for computing applications. Called ExtremeFFS, this next-generation patented flash management system - which has the potential to accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems - will ship in SanDisk products during 2009. Speaking in Los Angeles at WinHEC 2008, Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager for SanDisk's Solid-State Drive (SSD) Business Unit, presented ExtremeFFS along with two metrics - vRPM and LDE - that can help end-users evaluate SSDs. vRPM enables comparisons in performance between an SSD and a hard disk drive (HDD) or another SSD, and LDE calculates the lifespan of a solid-state drive.

During the DIY PC Expo 2008 in Japan, OCZ Technology unveiled that it will be updating its Core series of solid state drives. The third generation MLC (multi-level cell) NAND-based Core V3 models will bring higher read and write speeds that exceed 230MB/s read and 160MB/s write speeds, a lot more than the 170MB/s (read) and 98MB/s (write) offered by today's Core V2 SSDs. The new Core V3 SSDs will come in a 2.5-inch form factor, and will boast a SATA 3.0G Gbit/s interface. Most likely OCZ will release models that range from 32GB to 256GB in capacity. The rest of the details are still unknown.