Seagate Technology has released what it claims to be the world's fastest hard drive: the new Savvio 15K. Featuring a read seek time of just 2.9ms, this beats both Seagate's Cheetah (3.5ms) and Western Digital's raptor (4.6ms), with a spin speed of 15,000 rpm. Using a 2.5" form factor, this drive is not only quicker than Seagate's next best offering, but it's smaller, uses 30% less power and is supposed to be more reliable. Both 36GB and 73GB variants are available now, with HP already shipping systems featuring these drives.

Single and double layered HD DVD's can reach 15 and 30GB, respectively. While most experts claim this is more than enough for a 1080p movie along with a ton of goodies, Blu-ray fans have been claiming that the HD DVD is no match for the Blu-ray in terms of space. Toshiba is going to enjoy debunking that theory. They sent a three layered HD DVD to the standards overseer, in hope to get this thing patented. If they succeed in making triple-layered HD DVD's a standard, then HD DVD will officially be able to hold more data than a Blu-ray (double layer Blu-ray holds 50GB). The only problem with the triple-layer HD DVD is that it is currently not compatible with any players...but, then again, neither was Blu-ray.

Taipei, Taiwan ~ PQI, the leader in industrial storage solutions has just released two new products to start the new year. PQI's Turbo SATA DOM and Turbo SATA Solid State Disk (SSD) 2.5" 64GB both are PQI patented. The application of SATA technology and specially designed clip-on connector on SATA DOMs provide stability and prevent connectors detaching unexpectedly. The implementation of SATA interface on industrial storage is a world's first. Another breakthrough is the maximum capacity of 64GB on Turbo SATA SSD 2.5" drives. If you are looking for fast and large capacity industrial solutions, PQI's got them!

Hitachi is showing off their new flagship hard drive. It has a capacity of 1000GB or 1TB. The retail packaging mentions a few interesting numbers. You can store 250,000 songs, 358 movies, 1000 hours of video, 333.300 photos or 500 games.

The Matrox DualHead2Go is already available using traditional VGA connectors. The just announced DualHead2Go features digital outputs.It also enables support for high-resolution panels, offering a stretched desktop of up to 3840x1200 (or dual 1920x1200) across two displays. Available in Q1 2007, DualHead2Go Digital Edition has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of US$229.

LG Electronics (LG), a leader in consumer electronics and mobile communications, today introduced Super Multi optical storage drives featuring enhanced flexibility for the next-generation DVD formats and security features at the 2007 International CES (Booth #8214, Central Hall, Las Vegas Convention Center).

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced the industry's first terabyte (TB) hard drive. Delivering superior performance and reliability, as well as capacity, Hitachi's 1TB hard drive meets the needs of consumers who want to create, share and store their digital information, and lots of it. Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 will begin shipping to retail customers in the first quarter of 2007 at a suggested retail price of $399 (USD), or 40 cents per gigabyte (GB). This new consumer-friendly price makes ultra-high storage capacity more affordable and accessible than ever before.

For now 300 terabyte storage devices may sound like science fiction, but again Seagate discovered plans to release 1TB hard disk drive products within 6 months. The 1TB hard disk drive will be based on perpendicular recording technology. The 1TB Barracuda from Seagate Technology is expected to hit the market sometime in the first half of this calendar year. No additional information available.

Seagate announced a while ago that they would use heat-assisted recording technology once perpendicular recording reached it's limits. And as development of heat-assisted recording technology continues, Seagate has discovered that they can store much more data on a drive than they initially thought. Seagate claims that they can stick 50 terabytes in a square inch of data, meaning a standard 3.5" drive can hold a whopping 300 terabytes of data. That's equivalent to 6,144 50GB Blu-ray disks, the entire PlayStation 1, 2, and 3 library with room to spare, or the Library of Congress.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is today announcing availability of a new 1.8-inch hard drive with up to 80 gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity and an unmatched combination of features geared to the needs of consumer handheld devices. The Travelstar C3K80 is Hitachi's second-generation perpendicular magnetic recording hard drive, which is based on the industry-leading reliability established first on Hitachi's 2.5-inch Travelstar 5K160.

Pioneer Japan announced today the release of its new DVR-A12J series of 18x DVD burners, featuring the LabelFlash disc labeling technology and 12x writing for DVD-RAM. The ATAPI drive will retail in Japan in the following days for 10,000 yen ($86). The Pioneer DVR-A12J series includes the DVR-A12J-W (White bezel), the DVR-A12J-BK (black bezel) and the DVR-A12-SV (silver bezel). The drives offer 18x DVD writing for DVD±R, 10x for DVD±R DL, 6x for DVD-RW, 8x for DVD+RW and 12x for DVD-RAM (non-cartridged Version 2.0, 2.1 & 2.2). Of course the drive also supports the CD format featuring 40x writing for CD-R and 32x for CD-RW media (Ultra-speed). Other technologies of the new drives include the "UltraDRA" (Dynamic Resonance Absorber), buffer under run protection, the "Precision recording technology", and the "PowerRead" function. Pioneer will not release the DVR-A12J series overseas, but a variation of the same drive dubbed DVR-112 (for OEMs) should be expected early 2007 in Europe and U.S..

Scientists at IBM, Macronix and Qimonda have been working together researching a possible replacement for flash memory, which is currently used in the majority of solid state media players and portable drives. Their work has lead to "phase-change" memory, a non-volatile storage method (meaning it does not require power to retain data) which benefits from faster transfer rates than standard flash memory whilst requiring smaller dimensions. Some of the technical details of how this phase-change storage works can be read at DailyTech.

Fujitsu announced that it will begin shipping monstrous 250 GB and 300 GB notebook hard drives in the first quarter of 2007. Fujitsu promises the new 2.5" flagship drive will offer about three times the capacity of any mainstream notebook today, almost twice of the space of Seagate's high-end 160 GB drive and 50% more than the currently largest notebook hard drives (200 GB). The company claims that this second generation PMR drive uses less power(1.6 watt) than any other PMR notebook drive available today, because it spins at 4200 rpm. The "MHX2300BT" also features Native Command Queuing and both SATA 2.5 and ATA-8 interfaces.

Maybe someone can remember how we told you that Microsoft Vista will boost the adoption of SATA optical drives very soon. Today Samsung is about to proof that with the introduction of its new WriteMaster SH-S183L: the first 18X Serial ATA DVD burner on the market today. With its SATA interface, the SH-S183L eliminates the need for Master/Slave jumper settings and provides thinner data cables, improving airflow and cable routing. The SH-S183L offers transfer rates of 150MB/s, 300MB/s and 600MB/s, making it one of the fastest drives on the market today. The drive also integrates Lightscribe technology, which enables users to print images onto the surface of a DVD. The SH-S183L is shipping nationwide with an Estimated Street Price of $89.99.

After three years of work, 20 of the largest DVD manufacturers in China demonstrated 80 EVD players today. EVD is intended as a low cost alternative to the relatively pricy Blu-ray and HD-DVD and uses more conventional data storage methods. By using advanced compression techniques the manufacturers intend to store high definition movies without requiring a large increase in capacity over a standard DVD.

Toshiba, manufacturer of a number of electrical goods, has announced a new 100GB hard drive only 1.8 inches in size. This enormous capacity gives it the largest storage of its class, with a low power consumption of 0.003 Watts per gigabyte. The drive manages to store an impressive 155.3 gigabits per square inch, spining at 4,200rpm with transfer speeds of up to 100MB/s. It is expected to begin shipping in the second half of 2007.

Teac released today the DV-W28SLC and DW-28EC series of Super-Multi DVD burners for notebooks, featuring Labelflash and Lightscribe disc labeling technologies. The DV-W28SLC series supports 8x writing for DVD+R/-R, 6x for DVD-RW, 8x for DVD+RW, 4x for DVD+R/-R DL, 5x for DVD-RAM and 24x for CD-R/RW. All the maximum writing speeds are achieved with the Z-CLV technology. Reading speeds include 8x CAV for DVD-ROM SL, 6x for DVD-ROM DL, 5x for DVD-RAM and 24x for CD-R/RW. The drive is equipped with a slot-in disc loading mechanism, and has a 2MB of cache buffer. Compared to the DV-W28SLC series, the Teac DV-W28EC series of ATAPI drives feature the same specifications but come in versions that support Lighscribe and Labelflash disc labeling technologies. In addition, the DV-W28EC series come with a typical disc tray.