Latest Compact Storage Devices Make Plenty of News at CES

by Chris Preimesberger

Corsair Performance 3 Series solid-state drives combine the latest Marvell controller and supercharged synchronous NAND to eliminate bottlenecks and provide the serious 6G-bps SATA III bandwidth for high-end video and graphics.

Seagate announced several new additions to the FreeAgent GoFlex line of external hard drives, offering four new models designed with Mac users in mind. These portable and desktop drives feature Mac-friendly formatting, FireWire and USB interfaces that are compatible with Apple Time Machine backup.

These whopping 128GB SD cards may mean that some people will never have to delete photos or old e-mail files again. Lexar’s new range of professional SDXC memory cards feature 133X speeds (20MB per second). These guys are a bit pricey, however; the 64GB card costs $400 and the 128GB is $700.

These new solid-state drives from rising new storage company OCZ are designed for gamers and enterprise systems. The Vertex 3 SSD series and the Z-Drive R3 SSD are both based on the latest SandForce SF-2000 controllers; the Vertex 3 comes in two versions, with the Vertex 3 Pro for consumers and Vertex 3 EX for the enterprise. The consumer-grade Vertex 3 Pro SSD features multilevel cell NAND technology, while the enterprise Vertex 3 EX features single-level cell NAND flash memory. Both versions are capable of performances of up to 80,000 I/Os per second.

This 2.5-inch, 750GB SATA hard drive is for high-performance laptops and portable storage devices. WD’s Scorpio Black drives, which are speedier than most current HHDs at 7,200 rpm, include 16MB of solid-state cache. They are designed primarily for professional-grade laptops to handle video creation and storage, animation and heavy graphics.

Intel demonstrated its tiny 310 series solid-state drive at the Storage Visions show Jan. 5 in Las Vegas. The 310 unit, shown at the lower right in this slide, is capable of performing as well as the Intel X25 SSD drive and is designed for use in tablets, notebooks and embedded applications.

CloudStor looks and operates just like a hard drive inside a computer, accessible via a drive letter on Windows PCs and as a device through Finder on Macs. With Pogoplug apps for mobile devices, plus Twitter and Facebook integration, users have a wide variety of options to access and share their data.

Azio, which also makes other peripherals that include wireless keyboards, has introduced a lightweight aluminum-cased external storage drive enclosure with a SATA interface and USB 3.0 connectivity. It takes up only a small footprint on a desktop at 2 by 6 by 8 inches. The drive supports Windows 2K/XP/Vista/Win7 or Mac OS 10.4 (or greater). It can take any capacity 3.5-inch SATA drive and goes for about $40.

SanDisk 32GB and 64GB modular solid-state drives were selected by Asus as the SSDs of choice for its new Eee Slate EP121 tablet computers introduced at the CES.

Verbatim introduced two brand-new portable hard drives that combine high style with high speed. The company is showcasing its Titan XS SuperSpeed USB 3.0, its smallest portable hard drive, as well as its Store ‘n’ Go SuperSpeed USB 3.0/FW 800, its first USB 3.0 device created specifically for Macs.

Verbatim also is demonstrating its Netbook USB Drive, 64GB Secure Digital Extended Capacity (SDXC) memory card, ultra-slim and speedy USB 3.0 external SSD, and high-capacity Store ‘n’ Go 3.0 Flash Drive.

Toshiba America Electronic Components came out Jan. 6 with some new secure digital memory cards to go with some new solid-state SATA drives. The removable SD memory cards-which hold up to 64GB of content-are for cameras and video cameras designed to work optimally with a new high-speed SD bus interface, the UHS-I (Speed ModeSDR104).

Maxell’s new Guardian USB Backup Drive features 256-bit AES hardware encryption and anodized aluminum housing to protect the device even if it is lost or stolen, exceeding the government’s standard level of data protection.

The San Diego-based consumer division of EMC unveiled several new products at CES. They include Web-enabled updates to its network storage drives to provide what it calls a “personal” cloud, a new iPhone/iPod Touch dock, and a pair of television-connected machines that run the popular Boxee software.