Enterprise Storage
Cisco oo Take Spinnaker NAS for a Spin?
According to reports, about nine months ago, Cisco Systems considered incorporating NAS technology from Spinnaker Networks into its MDS 9000 series of Fibre Channel switches. But the company has since backed off this idea, according to a Byte and Switch report. Word that Cisco had been sizing up Spinnaker comes after a similar rumor about the networking giants dalliance with Network Appliance. In both cases, Cisco was supposedly looking to provide an optional NAS blade for the Andiamo Systems chassis-based switches that would provide file services in front of a Fibre Channel SAN.
Read the full story on:Byte and Switch
Personal Storage
“Pixie Dust” Technology Brings 80GB Drive to HP Notebook
Hitachis “pixie dust” technology will appear in HP Pavilion ze5300 series notebooks next month, the company said last week. The Hitachi Travelstar 80GB, 4,200-rpm drive included in the HP notebooks offers 80GB of storage with an 8MB cache. The Pixie Dust technology, acquired by Hitachi when it bought IBMs disk drive operations last year, sandwiches a three-atom-thick layer of the element ruthenium between two magnetic layers, resulting high data density.
Read the full press release on:Business Wire
Philips Predicts DVD+RW Burner Demand to Double This Year as Prices Drop
Demand for DVD+RW burners will double this year, according to Dr Frans Bos, Philips strategic alliance manager. Philips, a proponent of the DVD+RW standard, has attracted PC vendors, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to its side to vie against Pioneers DVD-RW standard. According to Bos, with support from Dell and HP, the price of DVD+RW burners will fall under $100. Both Dell and HP are offering DVD+RW burners in their sub-$1,000 PC systems, he added.
Read the full story on:DigiTimes
Storage Business
China Lands New Disk Drive Factory
The tide of electronics manufacturing continues to rise in China, as Maxtor last week announced that it will build a new facility in the Suzhou Industrial Park in Suzhou, China. Construction is scheduled to begin on the approximately 800,000 square feet plant in mid-March, and the facility is expected to be completed in the second half of 2004. Maxtor has agreed to invest up to $200 million in the China facility over the next five years. The China facility will focus on the manufacture of desktop hard drives.
Read the full story on:EBN