Hitachi achieves industry-leading areal densities via Perpendicular Recording. That probably does not mean a lot to you! Seagate, Hitachi and Toshiba have all worked on this technology for some time, and cross-own the patents on it, according to Rob Pait, Seagate's director of consumer storage marketing.

It basically means they have found a way to pack approximately 10 times the hard drive capacity on to the same size disk. I know what you are thinking… wow that’s great but my computer is still the size of the waste bin so why would I be interested. The target hard drives will be used in MP3 music players, mobile phones, cars, handheld computers, personal video recorders (PVRs).

Heat is the hard drive killer. Users tend to increase case cooling at the expense of noisy fans and annoying hums. Western Digital have announced an enhancement to their WD Caviar® family of hard drives, which have significantly lower opertaing temperatures. Their next-generation desktop-class drives also offer customers quiet operation, higher performance and larger capacity. Rotating at 7,200 RPM in capacities up to 320 GB, and offering either the EIDE or Serial ATA interfaces, the new WD Caviar products are available now in the distribution

Apex Technology are pleased to provide the new facility to recover data for Apple Mac users. Whether you own a Mac G3, G4, G5 or you lost your data on CD DVD USB or Firewire device, we have the equipment to bring your data back. All your hard work for Graphics, Images, Photographs and Multimedia video files need not be lost forever. We recover from HFS and HFS+ file systems and CD’s and DVD’s formatted in the Apple Mac Superdrive. We can return your data burnt to an Apple Mac formatted DVD+-R.

Fujitsu launches new external 2.5" HandyDrive. The attractive new HandyDrive from Fujitsu comes in capacity points of 40BG, 60GB, 80GB and 100GB and offers users the ability to transfer large amounts of data, for use as a temporary backup solution or for storing and running software applications. The drive is bus powered via the high speed USB 2.0 interface and is compatible with PC, Apple Mac and Notebooks.

Fujitsu Europe Ltd, suppliers of computer hard disk drives, announced its next generation MHU2100AT 2.5" 9.5mm mobile hard disk drive to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Fujitsu's new mobile hard disk drive offers up to 100GB of capacity and nearly a 30% increase in areal density allowing manufacturers to design next generation portable computing and consumer applications.

Toshiba is the pioneer of high capacity, small form factor HDD. The company's current 1.8-inch HDD, the storage device of choice for some of the hottest portable gadgets on the market, has allowed manufacturers to deliver unprecedented functionality to exciting new mobile entertainment products, including palmtops, ultraportable notebook PCs, handheld GPS units, and digital audio players and jukeboxes. With the new drive, only a quarter the size of a 1.8-inch drive, Toshiba achieves a hard drive with an initial capacity of 2 to 4 GB, and deliver enhanced data storage to smaller, lighter more efficient products. Toshiba expects the new hard drive to bring the functionality and versatility of HDD to a wide range of devices, including mobile phones, digital camcorders and external storage devices. Toshiba's HDD is inspiring manufacturers to develop new applications.

Hitachi launch the Deskstar 7k400 with 400GB capacity! That means 45 hours of HDTV broadcast, 400,000 x-rays, 40,000 typical library books, or 100,000 high-quality, MP3 recordings. DVD jukeboxes become a possibility. With 3 data platters and six read / write heads a new data recovery headache is born!

Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Hard Drive The new Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Hard Drive is the biggest small hard drive on the planet. Safely encased in its sleek palm-sized shell, it's as convenient as a USB thumb drive yet offers an incredible 5GB of storage for transporting or quickly backing up a huge amount of data, pictures, audio or video files. Seagate USB2.0 Portable External Hard Drive The Seagate Portable External Hard Drive offers fantastic news for consumers that need easy access to large data, video, digital music, presentations and multimedia files on-the-go and on-the-desktop. With a small, blazing fast 5,400-rpm hard drive inside, the Seagate Portable External Hard Drive delivers up to 100-Gbytes of storage - the highest capacity of any hard drive in its class - in a small, attractive footprint just bigger than an index card. This USB bus-powered external drive offers high shock resistance and low power consumption to conserve laptop battery life.

LaCie announces a boost in capacity of its Mobile Hard Drive Designed by FA Porsche to 100GB with improved 7200rpm speeds and dual FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces for use on both Mac and PCs. This ultra portable drive weighs less than a deck of cards and is just as small for easy transport. “The LaCie Mobile Hard Drive is designed for ultimate portability with drive speed options to fit any need,” says Olivier Mirloup, LaCie Senior Product Manager. “My 100GB LaCie Mobile Hard Drive is enough to completely back up my internal laptop drive, archive my personal song collection, view all my family photo albums, store and play several MPEG movies, and easily access client presentations while traveling.” Versatile Storage Solution LaCie's Mobile Hard Drive can be used to back up important files while on the road, share information with clients and friends, and simply shuttle data from one location to another. No driver or software installation is required for those running Mac OS X and Windows XP/2000, offering true plug-and-play convenience. LaCie Mobile Hard Drives are bus-powered for people using standard FireWire or USB-equipped computers, meaning no extra AC adapter to carry on the road*.

Sony announced an innovative digital imaging storage solution to its “photo storage” range of PC recording media. Offering 40GB capacity, the HARD DISK PHOTO STORAGE drive (HDPS-M1) is the next logical step in the portable storage with the ability to store up to 26,000 high resolution digital photos(1) and other data on the go.

Yet another iPod killer? May be this time Sony can make an impact on the portable audio/video player arena. Sony, a company that used to be the leader in the home audio/video player, have been playing catch-up in the portable digital multimedia arena. Sony HMP-A1 is equipped with a large 3.5" LCD, 20GB hard drive. It supports MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV, AVi(DV) and DVR-MS. It can play all your MP3 tunes as well as any WAV files and display various picture format such as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG and BMP.

Fujitsu launch MAT3 series hard disk drive. It is the industry's first 75Gb/sq.in. 4-platter hard drive design to deliver 300GB of storage capacity in a 10K RPM 3.5" form factor. It adds to Fujitsu hard disk enterprise range.

Maxtor launch OneTouch™ II hard drive, the next generation of Maxtor hard drive family that allows consumers to easily back up family photos, MP3 music collections, and other data with a simple touch of a button. No high tech knowledge is required to set up the new drive, giving consumers no excuse to not backup their computers. The Maxtor OneTouch II hard drive comes with a 7200RPM 300GB or 250GB hard drive with a 16MB buffer. Both feature a combo FireWire®/USB 2.0 interface for easy connection to a Mac or PC.

A re-examination of the patent granted to Microsoft for its FAT file format has led to a prelimary rejection by the US Patent Office. This is a preliminary rejection for a patent previously granted to Microsoft for a Windows file format. Microsoft is already trying to license the technology to flash drive makers and manufacturers of devices, such as digital cameras, that use FAT. It is unclear how a final ruling could affect that effort, because the patent being re-examined is one of four that Microsoft licences as part of its FAT file format program. Microsoft said its licensing of the FAT technology has continued despite the patent challenge and that the company has signed new licensees beyond Lexar, its first, although Microsoft did not name those companies. A Lexar representative was not immediately available for comment.

Maxtor, a worldwide leader in hard disk drives announced that it is shipping its new Maxtor SATA Ultra16™ Hard Drive Kits. As the only retail hard drive featuring a 16MB buffer and offering 7200RPM performance. Maxtor 250GB and 300GB SATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits are available through major distribution and retail channels. Manufacturer's suggested retail prices are $239.95 and $279.95 respectively. Parallel ATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits will be available in Q4 2006.

3rd September 2006 Hitachi's disk drive unit unveiled a 1.8-inch hard disk drive to satisfy consumers' needs for smaller hard drives to power MP3 players and personal digital assistants ( pda's ). Anh Phan, of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, said Hitachi has forsaken notebook-based connectors for Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) connectors in its new Travelstar C4K60 series. While standard notebook connectors typically feature 50 pins with a cable width of 48 millimeters, the ZIF connectors use a 22-mm flex cable and 40-pin configurations. They are optimized for consumer electronics devices and help Hitachi, which competes with Seagate and Toshiba in the hard drive market.

The first one-inch hard disc drive with a capacity of 5GB marks Seagate's foray into handheld consumer electronics devices. Seagate says the ST1 can deliver up to 10 times the capacity of flash memory at a similar price. Hard Drives go mobile. As well as media players, the ST1 will be at the heart of an external hard drive with USB connection due for launch by Seagate in September.

Seagate Technology, a leading hard disc drive maker, today announced it has introduced a 5-year warranty, effective immediately, on every Seagate internal PC, notebook and enterprise hard drive shipped. Together with 12 new hard disks for every hard drive application, Seagate has further strengthened its category leadership in hard disks. This reverses a trend where many ATA hard disc drives had their warranties trimmed down to one-year.

Hard disk drives may the latest victim of political correctness. According to a US goverment internal memo, the standard designation used for connecting two disk drives to a single IDE port, which entails setting one drive as a 'master' and the second as a 'slave' drive, is an example of equipment labelling that may be "construed as offensive or defamatory in nature".

Antivirus company Norman Data Defense Systems has floated its former Ibas data recovery subsidiary so that it can concentrate on anti-virus sand security software. The vendor sells its Norman Virus Control and Sandbox line of products and resells anti-spam and spyware packages. (Norman Data Defense Systems Inc.)

All eyes have been on market-leader Seagate as Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Maxtor forged ahead with announcements of next-generation 10k and 15k RPM SCSI units. Their new line up of Cheetah & Barracuda drives is claimed to cover 95% of the hard disk market requirements. In particular Seagate looks to increase laptop / notebook hard drive market share, by increasing the Momentus family’s areal capacities to yield drives up to 100 GB as well as introduce as a 7200 RPM model. Its enough to make your head spin.

Seagate and Western Digital have each sued Cornice, a maker of tiny hard disk drives, alleging infringement of various patents related to disk drive technology. Cornice is one of a few companies making hard drives an inch in diametre or smaller. used in music players and digital cameras. Cornice filed counterclaims against Seagate, seeking a ruling that Seagate's patents are invalid, unenforceable, and not infringed upon by Cornice's products

Eight technology companies have come together at HP World 2006 to showcase Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA) interface technologies. Adaptec, Fujitsu Computer Products of America (FCPA), Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST), HP, Intel, LSI Logic Corporation, Maxtor Corporation and Seagate (NYSE: STX) are sponsoring the Serial (SAS) Experience Center and will demonstrate a number of live SAS and SATA-based product demonstrations throughout the week

The archival requirements for corporate governance acts such as Sarbanes-Oxley have meant that Hewlett Packard HP have developed new storage technology to cater for this market. (E-Commerce Times) The storage-grid architecture divides storage, indexing, search and retrieval tasks across a set of computing nodes, which HP calls storage "smart cells."

Eight technology companies have come together at HP World 2006 to showcase Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA) interface technologies. Adaptec, Fujitsu Computer Products of America (FCPA), Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST), HP, Intel, LSI Logic Corporation, Maxtor Corporation and Seagate (NYSE: STX) are sponsoring the Serial (SAS) Experience Center and will demonstrate a number of live SAS and SATA-based product demonstrations throughout the week.

New Maxtor Drives Give Power Users Unparalleled Performance for RAID or Streaming A/V Desktop Applications. Maxtor hard disk drives, today announced that it is shipping its new Maxtor® DiamondMax® 10 hard drives to OEMs. The drive provides 7200 RPM SATA drive, giving users quicker access to data and faster system performance, especially for multi-threaded, RAID and streaming A/V applications. Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 SATA drives are shipping today. DiamondMax 10 parallel ATA/133 drives are scheduled to begin shipping at the end of Q3 '04. DiamondMax 10 drives with a 16MB buffer are only offered on capacities of 250GB and above.

Recently our sources in London, tell us they are not the only ones suffering severe overheating during Britains August "heatwave". Corporate Dell Latitude laptop hard drives have not been handling the heat well, causing the hard drive not to be recognised in BIOS. As usual, it is not so much the inconvenience of the hard drive failing, but the data loss and man-years work that goes with it. Our hard drive data recovery team are on the case.

The Fujitsu storage channel team will showcase the latest in Small Form Factor (SFF) technology and innovative interface designs with the MHT2080BH, the industry's only 2.5" Serial ATA mobile hard disk drive, as well as their MAV series 2.5" Serial Attached SCSI 10K RPM enterprise hard disk drive. The company will also demonstrate its current line-up of award-winning 15K and 10K RPM enterprise hard disk drives and 2.5" mobile hard disk drives with capacities up to 100GB. Fujitsu will also demonstrate one of its external magneto-optical (MO) storage solutions - the DynaMO® 1300 Pocket drive. The Fujitsu DynaMO 1300 Pocket is an affordable, compact and lightweight drive that uses 3.5" removable disks for portable data backup and file storage.

We see an increasing number. MPG3 and MPF3 series! But good news is at hand for recovery. Don't buy drive numbers beginning with M? Back up that data NOW! See the data sheets below for vulnerable drive numbers.

Fujitsu Hard Disk Drive Data Sheet MPG3*** (pdf format)
Fujitsu Hard Disk Drive Data Sheet MPF3*** (pdf format)

The problems with this Hard Drive are currently expected to peak over 2006/2005 and so we would recommend having a good data backup procedure in place, or perhaps moving critical data to an alternative drive. If you decide you would like to donate your current Fujitsu to further this research, then please email or call us for collection.

Fujitsu hard disk drives, today announced 5% increase in its hard disk drive market presence in the second calendar quarter 2006. Fujitsu increased its mobile hard disk drive volume to 2.6M units. Following the introduction of the first small form factor (SFF) serial attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise hard disk drive prototype and the first 2.5" Serial ATA mobile hard drive in the first calendar quarter 2006, Fujitsu announced volume shipments of its next generation MHU2100AT 2.5" 9.5mm mobile hard disk drive to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) offering up to 100GB of capacity and nearly a 30% increase in areal density for portable computing and consumer applications.

Why do these hard disk drives fail? We shall be looking into this subject in greater detail. Over to you Darth..

So called as this describes its failure pattern, it often goes up in smoke!

Using Near Field Recording (NFR) technology, a new red laser recording scheme has been developed by Ritek and we could see a DVD that holds 100 gigabytes of data. Such a massive capacity surpasses the Blu-ray DVD disc which has a storage capacity of 27GB, and is equivalent to having over a 100 CD Disks on a single DVD. According to Ritek, this is all that is possible, due to the “optical diffraction limit”, of this technique. The near field recording process on the other hand, uses a red-laser to get around this limitation with a shorter wavelength, Ritek explained.

DeMechman asks: "As many on Slashdot may know, storage is one thing which you can never have enough of. Given the current situation with CD / DVD rot (Personally I can attest to a 10% attrition rate) hard drives in a RAID configuration seem to be a better and more economical solution. If you own more than fifty CD / DVD's, it can be a daunting task to find a file. I am wondering if anyone has found a hardware solution that can inexpensively be set up to handle 10 or more 250GB HDD's in a RAID configuration.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) plans to strengthen its market position in the PC and notebook hard drive markets. The company is also gearing up for the consumer electronics market this year.

Maxtor hard disk drives and consumer storage products, today announced that Maxtor® QuickView® consumer electronics (CE) 3.5" hard drives have been selected for Toshiba's new DVD video recorder. The DVD recorder features a Maxtor QuickView 250GB hard disk drive that allows users to enjoy up to 445 hours of digital recording. "The RD-XS43 features the Maxtor QuickView CE hard disk drive," said Hiroyuki Tokoro, technology executive of digital AV at Toshiba Corporation's Digital Media Network Company. "More and more customers are demanding DVD & HDD recorders because of the hard drive functionality. The high capacity and performance of Maxtor's QuickView hard drive coupled with Maxtor's MaxLabs® services, proved crucial in delivering the RD-XS43 successfully to market."

Losing track of secrets is getting to be a nasty habit at the United States' leading nuclear weapons lab. For the third time in just eight months, classified disks have been reported missing at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The latest misplacements triggered another round of bad publicity for an institution that has suffered through a series of scandals in recent years. It once again called into question the security at Los Alamos, a New Mexico facility that is responsible for the upkeep of thousands of the country's nuclear weapons.