Tag: 2.5\” storage

Samsung hits it for 16Tb on a solid-state drive

15/08/2015 Current and Future Trends, Storage Technology No Comments

Article

Wow, Samsung’s New 16 Terabyte SSD Is the World’s Largest Hard Drive | Gizmodo

My Comments

Samsung has released a solid-state storage device with the world’s largest capacity for a fixed-storage device.

This is in the form of a 2.5” 16Tb solid-state drive that is based around 256Gb NAND flash-memory dies rather than the usual 128Gb dies. At the moment, this drive, which has an asking price of approximately US$5000 to US$7000 will end up in enterprise and datacenter applications.

But it shows what a high-capacity solid-state drive in the order of 16Tb could be about. For example, it could be feasible for manufacturers to offer desktop and laptop computers with a solid-state drive that excels on performance, power consumption / battery runtime and storage capacity. It would also appeal to a situation where we will end up keeping a lot of data such as a 4K UHDTV movie collection or RAW “digital-negative” image files.

Other application classes I see this benefiting include digital cameras, camcorders and audio recorders where the goal is to see a compact device that can be used to acquire a lot of material for a long time without running out of battery power.

QNAP launches a 4-disk slimline NAS

03/12/2014 Current and Future Trends, Network-attached storage, UPnP AV / DLNA media-server hardware No Comments

QNAP logo courtesy of QNAPArticle

QNAP Adds Four Bay Skinny NAS | SmallNetBuilder

My Comments

QNAP 2-disk NAS

QNAP to release a 4-bay 2.5″ NAS which will be as big as this NAS

A trend that is showing up with QNAP and some other NAS vendors is to release NAS units that implement 2.5” hard disks or solid-state drives rather than the regular 3.5” variety.

Here, QNAP’s latest 4-disk 2.5” variety known as the TS-451S is able to have the same footprint as a 2-disk unit that uses 3.5” disks. It may be about being able to implement a disk cluster that has some hard disks and solid-state drives or simply being able to gain more shelf space. It is very similar to an earlier Thecus NAS that could run 2 of the 2.5” disks, effectively being a “pocket rocket”.

But let’s not forget that this unit will run QNAP’s QTS 4.1 standard operating system with the ability to download extra function-specific apps. It could become a direction for the likes of WD and Seagate to offer 2.5” hard disks and solid-state drives pitched at these units and allow for the highly-compact units to court a huge range of applications where space is at a premium, including in-vehicle or portable use.

QNAP Intros the First 2.5-inch SATA, 8-bay, Intel Atom-based NAS – QNAP Press Release

22/06/2009 Hard disk storage No Comments

QNAP Intros the First 2.5-inch SATA, 8-bay, Intel Atom-based SS-839 Pro Turbo NAS. ( Press Release ) – Quality Network Appliance Provider

HEXUS.Net article, EHomeUpgrade article

My comments on this 2.5” hard-disk NAS

Initially, the use of a 2.5” hard disk in a NAS would have been simply considered as a “toy” but there are more “business-class” multi-disk NAS units like this one come on the scene that use these disks. This QNAP unit – the SS-839 Pro – impressed me because of the fact that there is a NAS fit for the business or “muscle-NAS” market that give respect to this low-power small form factor.

It also can hold 8 of the disks in the same footprint as a typical 5-bay “muscle NAS”, with support for sophisticated RAID and “business server” functionalities available in this class of device. Another benefit that I also like is the ability to have less power consumption than a NAS of this class and can provide for more expandability as one’s data needs grow.

Once the 1 Tb 2.5” hard disk comes on the scene, this will certainly wipe the 3.5” form factor off the map as far as hard disks are concerned and make that size only for certain removeable media.

A-DATA launches XPG Dual SSD RAID enclosure – Engadget

02/01/2009 Computer building and repair No Comments

 

A-DATA launches XPG Dual SSD RAID enclosure – Engadget

My Comments

This enclosure could be useful for two applications where size is important.

One would be to create an SSD + hard disk hybrid disk array for a computer’s main secondary storage. This could allow for an SSD that is small enough for the operating environment (operating system, main applications, etc) and any so-called “work files”  (virtual memory, print queue, hibernate image, system registry, etc)while a 2.5” hard disk can work as a data store.

Another application for this cage would be to set up a 2.5” dual-hard-disk RAID array that can fit inside a 3.5” drive bay. This unit would also please anyone who is building a custom Windows Home Server or Linux network storage system.

The main issue with these enclosures, like MiniITX motherboards, is that they need to be available to the computer hobbyist market. This means having them for general sale through electronics and computer retailers and for sale at computer fairs. This is more so in Melbourne, Australia where the Sunday computer fair is becoming part of the hobbyist computer scene.