Archive for: hard drive
The rumor we reported yesterday concerning Seagate acquiring an apparently money bleeding hard drive business from Samsung is in fact true. Today, both companies will officially announce the joint venture in which we’ll see Seagate taking over all hard disk technology and operations from Samsung. The deal will reportedly cost Seagate $1.375 billion — %50 cash and %50 stock — and also secure Seagate a more solid path in the SSD market moving forward as they will be supplied with Samsung flash memory. The deal is expected to close in late 2011.
Now that the details are out, it’s reassuring to see Samsung still maintaining their SSD ambitions as that’s where the future as at. Not to mention, Samsung’s consumer line of SSDs are actually very good. Here’s to hoping Seagate can continue providing the top-tier performance Samsung HDDs (or at least adopt the technology) have come to be known for.
If new reports from the Wall Street Journal have any shred of truth, the global hard drive scene is about to see another acquisition. This time, it is Samsung who is reportedly up for sale with fellow hard drive manufacturer, Seagate, said to be eying the purchase.
According to the WSJ’s source, Samsung is losing money on their hard drive ventures and is considering deals at ~$1.5 billion (USD), although is open to offerings lower than ~$1 billion (USD).
We’re slightly surprised seeing as how Samsung-made hard drives and SSDs are some of the best in the market for reliability and performance. How will those figures change when the technology is acquired? We’ll have to wait and see…
Hardware giant, Western Digital, is about to get a bit more muscle in the fight against competing hard drive manufacturer, Seagate. Today, March 7th, 2011, WD announced that they were purchasing Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for ~$4.3 billion USD. In total, $3.5 billion in cash as well as $750 million worth of shares will trade hands. According to Western Digital CEO, John Coyne, scale is the sole source behind the purchase, citing the need for more size and R&D spending to combat rival Seagate. The CEO also hopes to offer a greater selection of products for consumers under the WD brand, further increasing the company’s own value.
- February 21, 2011 5:20 pm
As February rolls into March, the PC enthusiast sector is primed and ready for a slew of new hardware, with the most exciting being a slew of next gen SSDs from leading manufacturers. While OCZ’s Vertex 3 Pro may be the speed demon according to early previews, Intel in particular has something very interesting lurking within their new 510 series as well.
If you know anything about Intel’s current line of SSDs, you know that compared to other higher end SSDs, performance isn’t exactly mind blowing — the average read speeds of ~170MB/s and writes at just south of ~100MB/s don’t exactly “scream”. But Intel’s next gen 510 series of high-end/enthusiast SSDs look to change that, boasting speeds of 430/315 MB/s read/write respectively. That’s quite a bit faster than the current C300 series of SSDs by Crucial (fastest SATA III SSD available at the moment) which tip the scales at 355/145 MB/s.
But before you go lunging for the wallet, take a gander at prices first:
Not exactly cheap, though pretty close to current gen pricing. Looks like the fastest 120GB SSD you can by will still sit squarely at ~$300. For those looking for a price break, there’s always next year. According to VR-Zone’s sources, we’re looking at a March 1st release date. Will you be partaking?
As we impatiently wait for new SATA III 6.0 Gbps SSDs to hit the market, Plextor drops a gem on our laps. The MS2 line of solid state drives have a little something for everyone and come in 64GB, 128 GB, and 256GB capacities. Speeds for the 64GB drive comes in at 370MB/110MB per second read/write while the 128GB drive tops out at 420MB/210MB per second read/write. Finally, the top end 240GB drive rockets through the 1′s and 0′s at 480MB/s read and 330MB/s write. Orchestrating the entire show is made possible by the Marvell’s 88SS9174 controller (same as Crucial C300) and is supposedly the world’s most advanced — Plextor’s words exactly. Trim and wear leveling are included out of the box.
Shipping date and release price are not available at the time of writing.
Update
Plextor SATA III SSDs are available now for $180/$330/$700 in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities respectively.
The SSD market is quickly heating up here at CES 2011. First it was Micron with their 415/260 read/write Real SSD C400. Corsair quickly followed with their slightly faster 480/260 Performance 3 Series. And now, OCZ is offering their own next generation Vertex Pro 3 SSD which is faster still. Corsair boasts 550 MB/s reads and 525 MB/s writes thanks to its SandForce SF-2582 SATA III/6Gbps compliant controller. PC Hardware review site AnandTech ran their own tests on the Vertex Pro 3 and garned read/write results of 492/518 MB/s respectively.
The greatest thing with the new Vertex 3 Pro of course is that the speed mentioned above is from a single, non-raided drive. On top of that, the drives could run even faster with a few tweaks to the controller itself.
There’s no mention of pricing quite yet. But we expect to clear such things up later today once we hit the show floor. Check back soon.
- December 13, 2010 6:56 pm
Seeing as how “World’s first 1TB 2.5″ drive” and “World’s first 1TB SSD” were already taken, Seagate had to get crafty, and get crafty they did. With that said, we here at Gadgetsteria are pleased to announce the “World’s first 1TB Enterprise 2.5″ Hard Drive”, brought to you by Seagate.
This new enterprise-grade, traditional hard drive line will make up Seagate’s “Constellation.2″ line, and come in three capacities: 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. Besides the aforementioned size and capacity specifications, other notable mentions include the 6Gbps bandwidth (SATA 3), 1.4 million hours MTBF, and T10 protection. On top of that, the new line of Constellation.2 drives feature hardware-based encryption in a further attempt to woo enterprise users.
For now, pricing on the drives remains unlisted, with a release date slated to drop before 2010 rolls out. Though given their enterprise roots, we’d wager they’ll cost a fair amount more than the typical consumer affair.
Today, Corsair took the wraps off of their latest range of high performance SSDs. Dubbed the “F90″ and “F180″, the two drives feature capacities of 90GB and 180GB. Read/write speeds are rated at 285MB/s and 275MB/s respectively, while random 4K writes are claimed to top 50,000 IOPs. PC enthusiasts will be pleased to know that these new drives make use of the latest Corsair SF-1200 controller which has already proven to be very quick.
Combined with the previously released 40GB and 240GB Force Series SSDs, Corsair now has spread of options for any budget or need. Speaking of which, the new 90GB F-Series SSD has a price tag of $189 while the 180GB retails for $399. On that note, the 180GB drive seems a bit high to us. But you know how it goes — you get what you pay for. And as we’ve seen thus far (Google benchmarks), Corsair has already proven to back up their prices with heaping amounts of performance.
Anyone hold off on the 40GB or 240GB drives for something a bit more “middle of the road”?
- November 29, 2010 12:31 pm
Over the last few years, Playboy has been in the news various times. Though unlike the older glory days, the news was usually grim in nature, telling mostly of money problems and slowly declining subscriber figures. It seems the digital age and instant gratification are hitting the subscription-based, x-rated magazine fairly hard. Many have criticized the publications slow reactions to the digital age. And for the most part, those criticisms were pretty spot on. But it it appears that Playboy may finally be catching on (or at the very least throwing one last hail marry).
In cooperation with Bondi Digital, Playboy will be releasing a 250GB Seagate-made hard drive stuffed full with every magazine published since 1953. In that light, the $300 asking price doesn’t seem all that bad, now does it? How much longer do you think they’ll be around…?
