Toshiba-Made MacBook Air SSD Hardware Now Available to All.

If you were wanting to get your hands on some of the Toshiba-made SSD hardware that found its way into the latest MacBook Airs, you’re in luck. Toshiba has announced that their Blade X-gale SSDs are now available for the masses. Offering up speeds of 220MB/s read and 180MB/s write, the X-gale hardware will certainly add some pep to your computer’s step. Though not the fastest SSD on the market, they are certainly faster than your standard platter-based drives.

The X-gale SSD drives will come in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities. Pricing is not yet available.

Seagate ushers in 3TB hard drives with new external offering.

The limits of platter-based hard drives have yet again reached a new hight today, with Seagate finally releasing a 3TB external hard drive. Speed isn’t the object here. Sso ripping that external apart and slapping it in your desktop while novel, probably won’t satisfy any speed itches you have needing to be scratched. Then again, it’s 3TB in a tiny (relatively) footprint. And the race to the top continues.

Hit up Seagate’s site and squander away $250 for the privilege. Press Release inside.

Seagate retrying “hybrid” hard drives?

Remember 2008? The year that saw the birth of the iPhone 3G, citizen journalism begin to take off, and of course, the launch of Android on the G1. But one thing that many have forgotten was that 2008 was also the year in which Seagate was touting their upcoming “Hybrid hard drive technology”.

Essentially, it was a small bit of SLC memory stuffed onboard your standard platter-based hard drive with the intentions of increasing data throughput while also decreasing load times and high costs — as has been associated with SSD’s thus far…

Cold, hard, metal rammed up your arse: The Hard Drive Platter Wallet.

There’s dedicated and then there’s dedicated. If the idea of a wallet constructed out of two hard drive platters sounds enticing, you very well may be one of the most hardcore gadget lovers of all time. Honestly you’d have to be pretty hard core to strut around all day with solid chunks of steel in your pocket ready to jab your rear end every time you sat down.

From the pictures, it definitely is something that would make quite the conversation piece when you whipped it out to pay for dinner after a night out on the town. Of course, the chunks of ass flesh and dried blood from your humbled rear end won’t do much to empress the company.

Perhaps it’s best to leave this one at home or in a larger pocket/bag no? Think of your ass, it already takes enough of your daily beatings. Are routine stabbings really something you want to add to it?

Dvice > Gizmodo >

Seagate introduces “world’s first” 6Gbps 3.5″, SATA3 hard drive

In a world full of slow, SATA1/2 hard drives, SATA3 hard drives look to bring a new meaning to the word fast. If speed is your number one concern, look no further than Seagate’s 3.5″, SATA3 hard drive. This particular drive’s claim to fame is that it is the claimed world’s first 3.5″ internal hard drive to ship with 6Gbps SATA3 specs meaning accessing your data will be leaps and bounds faster. If you were to question how fast and I were to give you an answer, it would be along the lines of an entire CD’s worth (~800MB) in one single second. That’s quite a bit of 1′s and 0′s to move around. Other honorable mentions include a 64MB cache and 7,200 RPM rotation speed. Just in case you were wondering, the drive is constructed using four individual platters which equals out to roughly 368Gb per square inch. But what good is all of this new found speed if you don’t have (A) the controller or (B) a motherboard that supports said controller/hard drive?

Thankfully ASUS and Gigabyte have your back on the motherboard front and the controller is also available for your consumption. Older systems can be retrofitted via an adapter to allow the faster SATA3 speeds to grace their aging relics and this new spec is backwards compatible with older 3Gbps and 1.5Gbps hardware meaning you don’t have to go “all the way in” just to get 6Gbps speeds. *sigh of relief* Those looking for the next gen in hard drive speeds can find the Barracuda XT 2TB 6Gbps for $299.

Cnet

Seagate to be first to market with 2.5″ 1TB portable hard drives?

Hey you. The one that takes 3-400 pictures of every family event, sunrise, and other not so important occurrence on planet earth. I know you’re probably running out of hard drive space or already on your 2nd or 3rd. Instead of actually deleting the bad, redundant, or downright useless pictures, Seagate will soon feed your addiction. Already stealing the thunder from Toshiba’s 640GB 2.5″ hard drive announcement” Mobile techies and digital media lovers who need the top-of-the-line when it comes to mobile data storage and capacity will soon have a new friend in seagate. According to several British retailers of whom have already started listing pages for new drives, Seagate will be announcing and soon releasing the worlds’ first 2.5″ 1TB hard drives.

Now, before you get to excited you should know they’re 5400 RPM hard drives with a rather meager 8 MB cache meaning they aren’t going to be the quickest drives when burdened with the task of filling 1TB’s worth of space with countless 1′s and 0′s. Also unknown at this time is the drives height. Some may see this as unimportant. However, if you plan on using these drives in laptops, drive height is a big unanswered question. If it’s a 9.5mm or smaller design, laptop hard drive space can finally claim to have reached the herald 1TB mark. However, any bigger than 9.5mm and these new boundary busting drives will be relegated to external hard drive cases. Hey, I’m not complaining either way. Though a 1 TB single drive laptop sounds wicked doesn’t it?

Source: Notebook Review, Fudzilla

2.5″ Hard Drives get more crowded thanks to Toshiba

That 500GB 2.5″ drive just not cuttin’ it for ya? No worries. Toshiba has your back. Where many manufacturers have stopped, Toshiba has pressed on, to bring you, the customer, the most storage space for your buck and square inches. The story? Toshiba’s line of 2.5″ hard drives just received a pleasent storage bump. Surpassing the current industry limit of 500GB, Toshiba is venturing closer to a herald 1 TB 2.5″ hard drive with the alphabet soup 640GB MK6465GSX hard drive. Whipping your precious 1′s and 0′s around at an average 5400 RPM’s means a drive of this size and speed won’t blow your mind away with any super crazy fast read/write times. But what it will do is allow you to cram an ever larger amount of data into your space limited bag, pocket, or workspace. As an added bonus, said drives can be opted for purchase in 4 exciting cases colored: (Vivid White, Liquid Blue, Komodo Green and Rocket Red). Princing for these miniature giants is unknown if you want the external form in one of those four eye busting colors. However, if you just want the guts, $179 will be the cover charge.

Source: Engadget, Hot Hardware