Had my first USB thumb drive (sometimes called USB flash drives, or USB key drives) die on me today. They’re a great way to move stuff from A to B, and to keep an extra back-up in your pocket, but don’t rely on them too much. I’ve had several over the years (they first started… Read More »
Small is beautiful. The Guinness World Records has certified Toshiba’s 0.85-inch hard disk drive as the smallest HDD in the world (it’s not actually out yet; expect to see it in September). Toshiba say it’s the first hard disk drive “to deliver multi-gigabyte data storage in a sub-one-inch form factor”. (The 0.85-inch measurement refers to… Read More »
Are we far away from terrabyte hard drives? Hitachi said today they have “the world’s highest capacity 3.5-inch ATA hard drive, the 400GB Deskstar 7K400”. The new drive has been designed for audio video The Deskstar 7K400 provides enough capacity to store the following: 400 hours of standard TV programming 45 hours of HDTV programming… Read More »
From the We Should Have Known This Dept comes news that CD-ROMs degrade in months, even at room temperature without sunlight. Dutch magazine PC Active tested data disks from 30 manufacturers that were recorded 20 months ago. Several data CDs developed serious errors, or became virtually unreadable, The Register reports. It’s perhaps too early… Read More »
Just when you thought hard drives couldn’t get any bigger…. they don’t. Interesting piece called Midlife crisis for the hard drive by CNET’s Ed Frauenheim says growth in hard drive capacity, after doubling annually during some periods, is beginning to slow “as engineers run into technological obstacles and many PC buyers feel they have more… Read More »