DigitMemo.com

Google prepares to roll out its latest free service — where will the giant stop?

While Google has its critics, the company seems to be one tech firm that is constantly in tune with what the consumer wants.  In terms of service, Google generally doesn’t waste time and effort cutting back or restricting its service, rather it simply strives to give the customer more. 

Now Google is preparing to quietly launch a new service, which both legitimizes previously existing internet software and improves upon it.  The service gives users free online storage space and many are dubbing it GDisk for short.  In the past applications exploit GMail’s very high amount of free storage space and allowed you to store files on it like a hard drive (GMail currently features over 5 GB of storage).  Google’s Picasa photo service also has allowed users to store up to 1 GB of pictures and other files.

Click for more on Google to Offer Free Online Storage »

Seagate Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 external HDDs get hit with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus

The hard disk drive (HDD) market is a relatively boring one. Sure, there are capacity increases in the mobile and desktops sectors every once in a while, but spindle speeds have stayed relatively the same — HDDs don’t exactly have the same sex appeal as quad-core processors or high-end graphics cards.

Seagate, however, is making news these days not for how fast or capacious their new drives are; but for what’s included on them from the factory. Seagate is warning customers that a small batch of its 500GB Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 external drives shipped with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus. The company blames a Chinese sub-contract manufacturer for the problem.

Click for more on Seagate Serves External HDDs with a Side of Virus »

Flash memory evolution is having a positive effect on hard drive prices.

The average price of notebook hard drives tumbled to $53 in the third quarter of 2007, from $86 in the same period during the previous year, according to a survey by a market research firm. Desktop hard drive prices fell to $51 in the third quarter of 2007, compared to $52.75 the previous year.

Overall, about 134 million hard drives shipped in the third quarter of 2007, compared to 114 million the same period a year earlier, a 21% year-on-year increase, iSuppli found.

Click for more on Hard drive prices drop as PC demand rises »

It’s the era of the terabyte. Which drive offers better performance and value?

That era really launched back in May when Hitachi delivered its 7K1000 terabyte hard drive. However, the 7K1000 was a five platter, ten head device, while Western Digital and Seagate ship four platter, four head devices. That’s right: The Western Digital WD10EACS and Seagate 7200.1 offer a cool 250GB per platter. That’s a lot of bits in a small area. Seagate’s take on a terabyte drive is a more traditional design, while Western Digital plays the green card. Which drive offers better performance and value?

Click for more on Terabyte Hard Drives Show Stellar Performance »

Seagate is to build automatic encryption into all its enterprise hard drives, the company announced at Storage Expo 2007 in London.

All enterprise drives will be fitted with Seagate’s Full Disk Encryption (FDE) as standard.

(TCG) is designing a security protocol for the drives, and the IEEE 1619.3 Key Management Subcommittee is setting up a management standard to ensure interoperability.

Click for more on Seagate adds encryption to all drives »

2x Reduction of Nanometer Recording Technology Shows Promise for 1TB Notebook and 4TB Desktop PCs in 2011

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) announced today they have developed the world’s smallest read-head technology for hard disk drives, which is expected to quadruple current storage capacity limits to four terabytes (TB) on a desktop hard drive and one TB on a notebook hard drive.

Click for more on Hitachi: 4TB by 2011 »

NotebookReview.com have put together a very useful guide on the pros and cons of Solid State Drive storage

I thought I would put this guide together to help the NotebookReview.com community as SSDs (Solid State Drives) are coming upon us so quickly and the interest seems to be going through the roof. Since my first article ‘Comparing SSD Performance to Mechanical SSD Performance in a Dell Laptop’ and consequently, my follow up to that ‘Showdown at Big Sky — Sandisk 32GB SSD Vs. Seagate 160GB 7200RPM HD’, the interest in the SSD has become overwhelming with respect to messages I’ve received from people, questions and advise given.

Instead of continuing to answer all of those questions individually, this guide is an attempt to answer basic questions about SSD that people have.

Click for more on An Introductory Guide to SSD Storage »

Gadgets from powerful laptops to iPods owe their existence to the discovery.

France’s Albert Fert and Germany’s Peter Gruenberg won the 2007 Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for a breakthrough in nanotechnology that lets huge amounts of data be squeezed into ever-smaller spaces.

The 10-million Swedish crown ($1.54 million) prize, awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, recognized the pair for revealing a physical effect called giant magnetoresistance.

Nobel prize winner Albert Fert of France poses in an office at the CNRS (Scientific Research National Center) in Paris, October 9,2007.

Click for more on Hard disk pioneers win physics Nobel »

Tests show some clear benefits–but other results were inconclusive.

When they were introduced a couple of years ago, hybrid hard drives seemed enticing. Pairing a standard hard drive with a flash component sounded like a good way to deliver on the theoretical performance boosts that flash can offer while still providing the long-standing price, capacity, and performance benefits of hard disks.

We looked at Seagate’s Momentus 5400 PSD drive, announced today, and Samsung’s SpinPoint MH80 drive, released this summer. Both models are 2.5-inch, 160GB notebook drives with 256MB of nonvolatile flash memory cache on board. The hard-drive industry concentrated on introducing the new technology in laptop drives because notebooks would be more likely to reap the benefits that hybrid tech promises, including faster boot time and power savings.

Click for more on Tested: New Hybrid Hard Drives From Samsung and Seagate »

Matsushita, the world’s largest consumer electronics maker, plans to offer the world’s first DVD recorders that can store full high-definition programs on conventional DVD discs next month.

The new device is expected to be a boon for the backer of the Blu-ray format; Blu-ray uses discs several times more expensive than standard DVD media. While the DVD discs won’t have the capacity of a Blu-ray disc, the content will be of similar visual quality.

Click for more on HD Recorder Can Use Standard DVDs »