By Paul Travis, December 19, 2008, 11:15 AM
Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC), the world second-largest maker of hard drives, says demand for its products has weakened significantly and that its revenue for the second quarter ending Dec. 26 will be below expectations. As a result, the company says it will lay off 2,500 workers, or 5 percent of its workforce, cut executive pay, and shut down some of its factories during the holidays.
The latest InformationWeek Analytics report profiles new technologies that can protect the business without breaking the bank
By Howard Marks, InformationWeek, December 22, 2008 12:45 PM
Disasters happen, and when they do, IT had better be prepared, since businesses depend on information and the technology that manages it. For midsize companies, however, planning and equipping for disasters has been problematic. Where large enterprises have an array of specialized disaster-recovery systems from which to choose, and small businesses often can make do with ad hoc measures, midsize companies frequently have been caught in the middle–not able to afford big-bucks systems, yet needing more than just sending tapes off-site.
Samsung Electronics has unveiled a 256GB SSD solid-state drive (SSD) less than 10mm thick.
Samsung said its 256GB SSD is 2.4 times faster than traditional hard drives and production will start this year.
The new SSD “represents a bold step in the shift to notebooks with significantly improved performance and larger storage capacities”, the company said in a statement.
Longer battery life is one of the principal benefits of using solid-state drives, as well as faster boot times and reduced weight allowing notebook makers to slim down their laptops. In addition, the lack of moving parts makes an SSDs more rugged.
The UK storage industry is split on the impact that the current economic downturn will have on IT’s purse-strings, according to a new survey from Hitachi Data Systems.
Solid-state disk (SSD) drive architecture can play a big role in how fast a computer boots up and performs. But how big a role the SSDs play - and how much faster an operating system is - depends as much on the operating system as on the drive. Although none of the mainstream operating systems now in use have been optimised to work better with SSDs, some do natively work more efficiently than others, according to storage experts.
This is the 5th annual edition of this popular guide. Pageviews of this SSD Guide increased 59% in November 2008 compared to the year ago period. Incoming searches to the mouse site which included the word “SSD” were more than 2x the level of a year ago, and occurred 2x as often as the #2 search term this month - which was “drive”. You can still see the earlier editions of this SSD guide here (2006 SSD Guide, 2005 SSD Guide, 2004 SSD Guide, 2003 SSD Guide). STORAGEsearch.com is the leading publication covering the SSD market and we have regular contact with most vendors, including many in stealth mode.
Who are the top 10 most important SSD manufacturers - the companies which you absolutely have to look at if you’ve got got any new projects involving SSDs?
A decade ago there was an easy answer. “All of them!”
It wasn’t till 1999 that our online SSD directory tipped over the 10 companies mark.
Today (October 2008) there are over 86 active listed SSD oems. Another 4 or so I know in stealth mode, another 10 I’m checking out as imminent maybes and I expect the total number of SSD oems to go north of 100 in 2008. The new storage gold rush is chasing an opportunity for storage systems companies that could eventually be worth 5 to 10 billion dollars a year.
Editor:- if the flash SSD market reaches the levels of penetration predicted by many analysts - then in a handful of years nearly half of all new notebook PCs will use flash SSDs instead of hard disk drives.
What happens when those SSDs inevitably fail - and there’s no backup?
Most consumers don’t do regular backups - and most small businesses don’t either.
When hard drives fail, get submerged in water or get damaged in fires - the solution of last resort - is to call a data recovery company.