Western Digital Corp., today announced it is now shipping its 250 GB WD Scorpio 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives. The drives employ perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to achieve the highest capacity available in a small form factor drive and have WD proprietary features that make the drive quiet, use less power and run at cool operating temperatures.

Fujitsu Limited today announced the development of a new series of 2.5" hard disk drives with a storage capacity of 250 GB, among the industry's highest capacity HDDs in its class. Fujitsu's new MHY2 BH series of HDDs meets that demand and, through perpendicular magnetic recording, delivers 250 GB of storage capacity in a slender 9.5mm-thin form factor. The new series has idle acoustic noise level of 2.4 bels, and low power consumption, operating at 1.9 watts or less when reading or writing data. All MHY2 BH hard drives spin at 5,400 rpm and have 8MB of data buffer. Available with PATA or SATA (1.5Gb/s) interface, sales of the new MHY2 BH series will begin during the second quarter of 2007.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) is today announcing volume shipment of the industry's highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive with new optional data encryption technology. With double the capacity and a 22-percent performance improvement over its predecessor, the 200-gigabyte (GB), 7200 RPM Travelstar 7K200 reigns supreme as the leader in this elite notebook hard drive segment. Now, with optional hard-drive level "Bulk Data Encryption" technology from Hitachi, the Travelstar 7K200 offers even greater cachet to notebook users by helping to guard against data loss and piracy.

The company called MICRODIA is one of the first to produce and sell a 16GB SDHC card. The new lineup will be available in 4GB, 8GB and an insane 16GB inside an SD card package. These are currently quite expensive, as it will sell for around 2,600€ (3,500$, 1,800£) and will be available in Japan at the end of the month.

Lexar Media, Inc., world wide known for digital media technologies recently announced it's high-capacity, removable solid state drive (SSD) series. It's currently shipping in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities for the ExpressCard, the successor of the CardBus PC card slot. While the CardBus is widely spread it's drawback is it's connection to the rest of the system using a PCI-bound interface controller. The ExpressCard slots nowadays built into modern notebooks because it is connected utilizing a PCIe x1 or USB 2.0 connection and thus makes it far superior in terms of bandwidth, it's roughly 2.5 times faster. Devices like this SSD card then won't get limited by insufficient bandwidth, Lexar say the maximum speed is around 250MB/s. A disadvantage which I don't want to keep quiet about is the incompatibility of ExpressCard to the CardBus standard.

Samsung Electronics, announced today that it has become the first to begin mass producing 16 gigabit (Gb) NAND flash, the highest capacity memory chip now available. The company said it will fabricate the devices in 51 nanometers (nm), the finest process technology to be used in memory mass production to date.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today announced that it has met its commitment to begin shipping the world's first one-terabyte hard drive (HDD) to retail customers within the first quarter of 2007. The Deskstar 7K1000 began shipping to retailers and e-tailers in March 2007 with inventories reaching critical mass in April 2007. Announced at CES 2007, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive is built using a 5-platter design to deliver 1TB of storage capacity. The drive is available with Serial-ATA 3.0Gb/s interface and 32MB of data buffer. At a suggested retail price of $399 (USD), the Deskstar 7K1000 is now ready to meet the needs of high-performance, gaming and media center PCs as well as external storage devices.

Samsung has launched the latest addition to its wide range of hard drives with the new SpinPoint N2 Series of 1.8" drives, ranging from 30GB to 120GB. Spinning at a rate of 4,200 RPM with 2-8MB caches, these drives are aimed mostly at ultra-portable laptops, ultra-mobile PCs and portable media players where a compact size is more important than overall performance. This means they could soon be finding their way into 120GB iPods and Zunes, a nice boost for hardcore music fans with enormous collections of songs. Samsung also commented on the pricing of Solid State Drives (SSDs) which are being viewed as the replacement for spinning hard drives within the next few years, particularly portable computers. Samsung's market research has suggested that by 2010 1.8" SSD drives could have come down in price to costing just 3x more per gigabyte than their spinning equivalents - still quite a considerable gap, but an improvement nonetheless.

Hitachi GST today announced three new hard drive models targeting the enterprise market, including the 15K RPM Ultrastar 15K300, 7200 RPM Ultrastar A7K1000, and the company's first small form factor (SFF) hard drive, the 10K RPM Ultrastar C10K147. The new 15K300 Ultrastar is a 3.5-inch Ultra320 SCSI 15K RPM 300GB hard drive with 16MB data buffer. The drive comes with Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) as well as Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) and is also available with 3Gb/s SAS and 4Gb/s FCAL interfaces. Optimized for the power, performance requirements of servers the Ultrastar C10K147 is a 2.5-inch 3Gb/s SAS interface 10K RPM HDD with up to 147GB capacity and 16MB data buffer. The third Ultrastar A7K1000 hard drive offers 1TB of space for lower duty cycle enterprise environments. The Ultrastar 15K300 is available now with production quantities available in the first week of May 2007. The Ultrastar C10K147 and Ultrastar A7K1000 will be delivered in the second quarter of 2007. Additionat information is available at Hitachi GST.

Imation Corp. and TDK announced today that they have reached a definitive agreement under which Imation will acquire TDK brand world wide recording media business and use of the TDK brand name for recording media products, for $300 million in a combination of Imation common stock and cash with potential for payment of up to an additional $70 million based on future financial performance of the acquired business. TDK will retain its R&D, manufacturing and OEM business. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the transaction.

Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), today introduced the world's first 200GB 2.5-inch USB 2.0 portable external hard drive capable of storing up to 57,000 digital photos, 52,000 MP3 music files, 88 DVD videos or 23 high-definition videos. The 200GB portable external hard drive delivers the highest capacity of any backup solution in the compact 2.5-inch hard drive class. Available in 200GB, 160GB, 120GB and 100GB capacities with 8MB buffer, Toshiba's new personal storage line offers consumers convenient and simple options for preserving and transporting treasured digital files. The 200GB drive is available now at Toshibadirect.com for a suggested retail price of $229. The 160GB model is priced at $180, the 120GB version for $150 and the 100GB drive for $130.

Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) released in Europe the new GSA-H55N, the company's first 20x Multi DVD burner drive with Security Function. Showcased last month at CeBIT, the new drive features the SecurDisc technology, which enables secure data protection and content access control when writing data on CD and DVD formats. SecurDisc protects user data against unauthorized access through password protection, applies a digital signature to all data to allow recipients to verify data authenticity, while it also detects altered data through checksums to verify data integrity and readability. The ATAPI drive supports 20x writing on DVD±R. Other writing speeds include 12x for DVD-RAM, 10x for DVD±R DL, 8x for DVD+RW and 6x for DVD-RW. The new LG GSA-H55N retails in Europe now for 59 euro. A lightscribe version of the drive (LG GSA-H55L) will be also available at the same time.

Buffalo Japan is out with the DVSM-H55N/B, a DVD±RW drive burning DVD's at 20X. Available in black and white it records DVD±R DL at 10X, DVD+RW at 8X, DVD-RAM at 12X, CD-R at 48X and CD-RW at 32X. It comes with a generous software bundle for data back up, easy CD burning and data encryption. The drive goes on sale in Japan by late April for 8925 Yen ($ 75).

Seoul, Korea - April 11, 2007 : Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital consumer electronics and information technology, today announced its new 160GB hard drive using 2.5" disks. Capacity of the single-disk platform ranges between 60 and 160GB, while a dual-disk model is under development that will provide up to 250GB of storage space. Samsung has already shipped test samples of the SpinPoint M5 Series to OEM vendors and plans to begin mass production in mid-April.

The SpinPoint M5 series utilizes perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, and the disk drive design has been optimized to allow ultra-precision adjustment of the head parking ramp position for high-density recording.

Seoul, Korea - April 11, 2007 : Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital consumer electronics and information technology, today announced development of its 7200rpm premium 2.5" hard drive series, SpinPoint MP1. Samsung's SpinPoint MP1 Series provides the industry's highest storage density of 200 gigabyte (GB) at 7200rpm on a 2.5inch disk base with SATA interface. The MP1 series is designed for enterprise applications such as workstations, RAID (redundant array of independent drives) servers, and blade servers.

The SpinPoint MP1 Series utilize perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), a serial ATA 3.0 Gbps interface, and feature native command queuing (NCQ) for high performance. To protect the disk drive from vibration and shock, a rotary vibration controller (RVC) and an optional digital free-fall sensor (FFS) have been implemented.

Dell has begun offering 250 GB 2.5" hard drives with perpendicular magnetic recording technology in two portable computers. The first mobile computers to offer either single or dual 5400 rpm 250 GB drives are the Alienware Aurora m9700 notebook and Dell's fancy XPS M2010 portable computer. For the Alienware model, the high-capacity drive is offered as a $300 upgrade over the standard 80GB hard drive, while the extra 250GB of space in the XPS M2010 will cost $250 over the standard 80GB model. A two disc configuration of 500GB lists for $500, while the RAID option is priced at $525. The Alienware Aurora m9700 is available from about $1600 while the XPS 2010 price starts from $3000.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) has started to ship its 1TB hard disk drives (HDDs) introduced earlier this year commercially. Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721010KLA330 model features five 200GB platters and ten heads, has 7200rpm motor as well as 32MB data buffer. The manufacturer claims that the drive has 8.5ms read seek time, 9.2ms write seek time and 133.75MB/s maximum media transfer rate. Currently the company ships 1TB hard disk drive with Serial ATA-300 interface, but a model with Parallel ATA interface is also expected to be available. At present Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard disk drives with 1TB capacity are available in Japan for ¥51 500 - ¥55980 ($433 - $470). The recommended price of the 1TB drive from Hitachi for the U.S. is $399.

Western Digital Corp. today announced a new family of hard drives for audio and video recording products, one of today's fastest growing digital storage markets. Drawing on its expertise as a leading supplier to major consumer electronics and surveillance manufacturers worldwide, WD has designed its new 3.5-inch WD AV hard drives with technologies that provide the increased reliability, cooler and quieter operation and low power consumption required for these demanding environments. The WD AV drives in capacities ranging from 80 GB to 500 GB are available through the company's distribution network.

Addonics Technologies has announced a family of CF Hard Drive Adapters, which allow users to replace 2.5-inch IDE/SATA hard drives with one or two less power-hungry compact flash(CF) cards. The low power and shock resistant CF media can be used on any desktop PC or notebook. Once installed, the CF appears as an ordinary hard drive to the system BIOS and operating system and can also be configured as a boot device. No special device drivers are required. The adapters are compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris Operating Systems. The primary products in the Addonics CF adapter family include the IDE/CF Hard Drive Adapter and the SATA/CF Hard Drive Adapter. The IDE version comes with choice of single slot($24.99 MSRP) or dual slots($29.99 MSRP) to accommodate up to two CFs. The SATA version has a single CF slot and MSRP price of $35.99. The products will be available in April directly from Addonics.

Anyone hoping to plug in a 120GB hard drive into their Xbox is going to have to pay a figurative pretty penny for the privilege. To replace your 20GB Xbox360 hard drive with a 120GB version will cost the end user roughly $180 USD. Most people would argue that this is an absolutely ridiculous price, considering you can get a small enclosed external hard drive with the same capacity for less than $100 USD ($120 USD when it's not on sale). Microsoft said in a podcast exactly why they are making a 120GB hard drive a $180 attachment. Microsoft claims that everything in their hard drive is designed specifically for the Xbox 360. This means that you don't have to configure anything when you install this new hard drive, it's just plug-and-play. Microsoft has also put their Xbox360 hard drives through rigorous tests several times, a claim upon which other manufacturers aren't "able to deliver" according to Microsoft.

The DVD+RW Alliance industry group announced the release of the faster 12x/16x Double Layer DVD+R recording specifications on April 2nd. This new v1.2 standard covers burning speeds of up to 16x (around 21MB/s) which results in a writing time of only 9 minutes for a 8.5GB disc. It will take some time for the usual suspects like Plextor, Pioneer or LiteOn to come up with compatible drives. And let's not forget the media manufacturers who also need their time to improve their recordable discs.

Samsung Electronics, today announced its new SpinPoint S166 Series of ultra silent and high-speed hard disk drives. The new SpinPoint S Series of hard drives offer upgraded versions of Samsung's proprietary SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise. The new drives are fifteen percent quieter than other competing 80GB and 160GB models currently in the market. The S166 Series has a spin speed of 7,200rpm and provides an 8MB buffer. The Series features the SATA 3.0Gbps interface and includes Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The drives are also available with a PATA interface for customers who require this application. The 3.5" SpinPoint S166 hard drives are currently shipping in 80GB and 160GB capacities and will be available worldwide in April. Pricing and market availability information will be provided on a regional basis.

This week Lite-On IT Corporation and Royal Philips Electronics announced that the joint venture between the two companies will officially take shape on May 1 of this year. The joint venture between the two companies will focus on the manufacturing and marketing of optical storage drives. Under the new agreement between Lite-On and Philips, the new venture will be called Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions (PLDS). The European Commission has fully approved of the new venture as of April 2.

PLDS will be effective in Europe from 1st of May 2007. Lite-On IT BV, the European head office of Lite-On IT Corporation, will continue to provide the same service to its customers under the new flag of PLDS. The company will handle sales, marketing, service, finance and logistics of Optical Disc Drives (ODD). PLDS will continue to sell ODD under the brand names Lite-On and HP

Some people are worried that the superior technology in flash-based solid-state-drives (SSD's) might make a serious dent in the hard disk drive (HDD) market. However, according to market analysis firm TrendFocus, the hard drive industry is actually looking at a projected growth. Thanks to perpendicular recording technology, which reduces the cost to shove more data on a disk, the hard drive market is expected to grow an impressive $33 billion USD. The enormous growth projection is also due to the growing IT markets in India and China.

Iomega's new Power Pro Desktop Hard Drive, offers 2TB of space powered by four hot-swappable SATA hard drives with hardware-based RAID security features, giving users a cost-effective but powerful storage solution for the large data and image files created in today's business environment. The new Iomega Power Pro Desktop Hard Drive is Windows and Mac compatible, including the new Windows Vista operating system. The Power Pro has versatile performance with a choice of computer connections: FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0. RAID security options on the Power Pro Desktop Hard Drive include RAID 0/0+1/5 and RAID 5+ configurations. The Power Pro's four 500GB SATA drives are arrayed in a stylish tower, with each drive secured in a bay that can be locked. For ease-of-use and maintenance, the new Iomega Power Pro Desktop Hard Drive has an LCD panel that displays the current status for RAID level and available storage capacity, as well as fan and temperature condition. The Iomega Power Pro Desktop Hard Drive is expected to be available worldwide on April 10 for $1,699.95.