Tokyo, March 14, 2007 - Fujitsu Limited today announced the development of the MHW2040AC model 2.5'' hard disk drive (HDD) for use in automotive and various equipment that must operate in harsh environments, ranging from cold climate regions to deserts. The new model will be available on global basis at the end of March, 2007.

After Intel, Samsung, Seagate and Sandisk there is a new competitor in the Solid State Disk Business: Super Talent. In April they will start selling 1.8" (up to 32GB), 2.5" (up to 64GB) and even 3.5" models (max. 128GB). The prices are still not known but all versions will have a SATA interface.

MILPITAS, CALIFORNIA, MARCH 13, 2007 - SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today broadened its solid state drive (SSD) product line for the portable computer market with the introduction of a 32-gigabyte (GB)1, 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) interface model, compatible with most mainstream notebook designs. Coming just two months after SanDisk introduced a 1.8-inch SSD for ultraportable notebooks, the 2.5-inch SSD is now available to PC manufacturers as a drop-in replacement for hard disk drives.

Although Blu-ray and HD DVD look set to battle it out for high definition sales, DVD still has some life left in it as New Media Enterprises (NME) has developed a disk capable of holding 20GB of data. This new version of DVD continues to use red lasers to read data, and is known as Versatile Multilayer Disk (VMD), with 5GB of data being stored on each layer. It is exactly the same thickness as DVD, but by using a "modified 2P process" NME has managed to produce disks with more than two layers on a single side, with production costs comparable to standard DVDs. Although the only VMDs at the moment are 4 layer, NME is already planning versions as large as 48GB, and believes the technology will be capable of reaching the 200GB barrier. NME has already managed to sign deals in 12 regions around the globe, and is planning to give consumers a third (less expensive) option in the HD market.

Seagate announced that it has begun shipping its Momentus 7200.2 2.5" hard drive with a 3 GB/s SATA interface. The Momentus 7200.2 with a platter rotation speed of 7200 rpm and perpendicular recording technology has been shipping for some time with a 1.5 GB/s SATA port and now promises twice the available bandwidth. The capacity remains at a maximum of 160GB; 80GB, 100GB and 120GB versions are available as well.

Samsung has started shipping hybrid hard drives with 128 or 256MB flash memory to OEMs. The drive is available in 80, 120 or 160GB with 5400RPM and SATA interface. It should be available to retail shortly. These drives will become mandatory for Vista certification in June 2007, so expect all the major companies to feature such hard drives in their notebooks soon.

Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of SATA technology, today announced the availability of the Serial ATA Revision 2.6 specification. This updated specification combines the previously published SATA Revision 2.5 material with new feature definitions and enhancements that will enable developers to integrate the technology into new applications.

Tokyo, March 6, 2007 - Fujitsu Limited today announced the development of the new MHW2 BJ series of world's first 7,200 rpm 2.5" hard disk drives (HDDs) with a serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s interface. Featuring the world's highest storage capacity of 160 GB for a 7,200 rpm 2.5" HDD, the new series is targeted primarily at high-performance notebook PCs. The new series will be available on global basis at the end of May, 2007.In addition to achieving the world's leading storage capacity, MHW2160BJ is capable of data transmission speeds at up to 300 MB/s, the fastest rate in the industry. The series also features best-in-class acoustic noise level of 2.5 bels at idle, and low-power consumption, operating at 2.3 watts or less when reading or writing data.

As the use of notebook PCs becomes even more popular, there is demand for high reliability notebook PC HDDs that offer high-speed and high-capacity performance on par with those used in desktops. The MHW2 BJ series meets this demand with a speed of 7,200 rpm, the highest of any serial ATA 2.5" HDD. These HDDs boast the high quality Fujitsu customers come to expect, and they can be easily incorporated into high-performance notebook PCs and flat panel desktop PCs, both of which are expected to gain popularity. They are also RoHS compliant.

A group of researchers at Keio University in Japan has developed a new technology which uses bacterial DNA as a medium for long-term data storage. Although it's not incredible in terms of data capacity, the technology works by creating artificial DNA carrying information, which is then inserted into the bacterial genome sequence. After this, the DNA will multiply, reproducing the data. This can therefore act as a long-term method of storage because the DNA will be passed down from generation to generation - possibly for thousands of years (current storage methods will only last a few centuries). So far the researchers have only managed to encode "e= mc2 1905!", but there is potential for the future.

"Get rich, or die trying" - this time, there is no risk involved. The Birmingham Veterans Administration Medical Center, Alabama, in co-operation with the FBI, is looking for a lost hard drive, that went missing some time this week. The reward is set at a hefty $25 000 - the equation information = money literally applies in this case. The HDD was used as a backup disk for patients' information, and apparently, there were at least 500 000 medical records on the device. The reward is also being offered for the identification of anyone responsible for the loss of the Iomega external hard drive.

Anyone with information is asked to call the VA Medical Center at 933-8101, ext. 4401; the FBI at 326-6166; the VA OIG hot line at 1-800-488-8244; or the VA Medical Center Police at 933-8101, ext. 6444.

Traxdata has joined the Blu-ray side of the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray war. And what better way to do it than by introducing a rewritable Blu-ray disk? The disk can hold 25GB of data, and can play 1080p HD at an impressive bitrate of 40Mb/s. It also features a hard-coating technology that should make it more resistant to things like fingernails that tend to scratch disks. It can be re-wrote at speeds of 2x.

Expanding its lineup of consumer-friendly, easy-to-use external hard drives that has made it the leading consumer external storage brand worldwide, Western Digital Corp. today introduced the My Book World Edition family of shared storage appliances. This new family of shared storage appliances allows consumers and home office workers to securely access their digital content, such as photos, home videos and documents, and share it with family and friends from anywhere in the world as if that content were stored local to the user. The terabyte (TB) My Book World Edition II model is equipped with a dual-drive configuration and RAID capability.

One common argument in the world of computing is that high temperatures make hard drives more likely to fail, and the same is said for high usage levels. However, when conducting internal research, search giant Google suggests that this is only true for hard drives in their first months of operation or once they are over five years old. According to Google, there are so many other variables that the biggest factor in the lifetime of hard drives is actually the model itself rather than the conditions. In fact, Google saw a trend suggesting that drives are more likely to fail at lower temperatures or extremely high temperatures, and generally speaking, hard drives failed less as temperature increased (until these extremes were reached). As for high usage, the research showed that hard drives only seem to be affected by high usage in the first months or after it is five years old, and other than that the rate of failure was the same as drives in low-usage environments.

LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Feb. 5, 2007 - As consumers increasingly rely on digital media to secure their important documents and valuable personal content, they often fear that changes in technology may render their data inaccessible. Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC), the leading consumer external storage brand worldwide, today announced that its new My Book Premium ES Edition external hard drive incorporates eSATA (external Serial ATA) and USB 2.0. eSATA is a new technology that transfers data between the external device and the computer at higher rates than ever before and USB 2.0 is today's most common method of connecting external devices to personal computers.

Seagate Technology today formally introduced the Digital Audio Video Experience (D.A.V.E.) technology - the project previously code-named "Crickett" - at the DEMO 07 Conference. The DAVE platform can deliver 10-20 GB of wireless storage to mobile phones, PCs, and other wireless-enabled devices. The DAVE reference design is about the size of a centimeter-thick credit card, with dimensions of 3.5 x 4.7 x .47 inches (61 x 89 x 12 mm) and weighing only 2.5 ounces (70 grams). It has rechargeable lithium ion battery which delivers up to 10 hours of media-streaming performance and up to 14 days of standby power. Using Bluetooth 2.0 or WiFi 802.11b and 802.11g connections, DAVE stays into your pocket while establishing connection to your mobile device anywhere up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) between the devices. The DAVE mobile storage platform is expected to be available to leading cell phone manufacturers and telco service providers for products in the second calendar quarter of 2007.

The engineers at Fujitsu have managed a breakthrough which would allow the company to produce hard drives with 1Tb of data per square inch. This figure is almost seven times the density of the latest perpendicular recording drives. The technology behind this is referred to by Fujitsu as "patterned media" - it uses anodised aluminium to create a pattern of holes, each holding a portion of magnetic material used to store a single bit of data, with the aluminium oxide around each hole magnetically insulating it. Fujitsu is continuing to work on this technology, aiming for 4Tb per square inch by 2010.

Lite-On is about to ship next month what it claims to be the world's first 20x DVD writer with SATA interface. The LH-20A1S can handle all the major DVD and CD recordable and rewriteable formats, including dual-layer media. The drive comes with 1.5Gbps SATA interface, compatible with boards that support both that and the 3Gbps SATA II specification. Lite-on said the LH-20A1S will ship mid-February for around £32.

Samsung Electronics Ltd., has introduced the world's first 1.8-inch hard drive with a 60GB per disk capacity and a super-slim form factor that is just 5-millimeters tall. Samsung's sleek new 1.8-inch N-series features 20GB, 30GB, 40GB and 60GB per disk capacities - the largest one-disk storage capacity offered by any drive on the market today. The new slim hard drive spins at 4200 rpm and according to Samsung is "among the quietest on the market today". The power consumption of the drive is rated at 0.3 watts in idle mode. Samsung's 1.8-inch N-series is currently shipping.

Plextor LLC, today announced it would not exit the optical drive market despite earlier reports of its parent company, Shinano Kenshi. Although Shinano Kenshi Co., Ltd., announced on January 19, 2007 plans to perform a corporate reorganization, Plextor optical drives will continue to be available in North and South American markets.

This announcement by Shinano Kenshi will have no material affect on the operations of Plextor LLC, as we already completed a corporate reorganization in North and South America last year. Our business will continue as usual,

said Toru Nakazawa, President of Plextor LLC, USA.

Shinanokenshi (the parent company of Plextor) has decided to exit the market for consumer CD and DVD products. The Plextor brand name will remain for industry use products and digital playback units for the visually impaired. Shinanokenshi has announced that their optical drive operations will be reduced to 10% of its peak capacity. These actions will also lead to reduced workforce at Shinanokenshi. Shinanokenshi cites increased competition from Taiwanese and Korean manufacturers, increased pricing competition and slumping profit margins as reasons for exiting the ODD (Optical Disk Drive) business. Plextor has informed that there will be no more shipments of the latest PX-755A and PX-760A DVD burners. The drives should still be available in some retail stores, but once they sell out, they're gone.

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.