The OCZ Deneva 2 mSATA SSDs are touted as being faster, more efficient, smaller, and lighter as well as more reliable, longer-lasting, and secure. They are much lighter than traditional SSDs, weighing about 10 times less than a standard SSD and 15 times less than a conventional 2.5-inch hard drive. Their ultra thin profile allows them to fit into dimensions less than 21mm thick.

The Deneva 2 mSATA SSD series also includes SATA 3.0 and 120GB versions, but those have not been Intel certified for ultrabooks yet. The models certified are the D2CSTEMS1A10-0030 and D2CSTEMS1A10-0060. The series boasts max read speeds of up to 280MB/s, max write speeds of up to 260MB/s, and up to 32,000 4K random write iOPS.

[via TheVerge]

The VIA VL701 is the first fully-integrated 5V switching regulator allowing it to achieve the highest power efficiency possible while offering data transfer rates of up to ten times that of USB 2.0 solutions. The device allowed VIA to be the first company to achieve USB-IF Bus-Power certification using a traditional HDD rather than a SSD. The adapter allows the end-user to connect any SATA HDD, SSD, or optical drive to their computer via a USB 3.0 port and get power directly from the port.

The VL701 will mean that we have more devices that can be used with a USB 3.0 port soon. “The VL701 is an advanced, highly-integrated USB 3.0 to SATA Bridge that lets users experience the benefits of USB 3.0 using hard drives, optical drives, and even SSDs,” said David Hsu, Associate Vice President, VIA Labs, Inc. “The low power aspect is compelling for both end-users and manufacturers by enabling lower operating temperatures and longer battery life without sacrificing performance.” The VL701 is shipping now.

[via VIA]

The Pulsar XT.2 is SLC NAND-based and is available in 100GB, 200GB, and 400GB capacities. It features native SAS 6Gb/s interface. According to Seagate: “The Pulsar XT.2 is the fastest drive in the Seagate portfolio, with sustainable random reads at 48K and writes at 22K IOPS and sequential reads at 360MB/s and writes at 300MB/s.”

The Pulsar XT.2 is currently shipping to OEMs, and both of the SSDs will be available beginning in Q2 2011.
[via Xbit Laboratories]

The enterprise-class Vertex 3 Pro features the premium SF-2500 SSD SATA III processor, and can implement MLC (Multi-Level Cell) SSD storage for server farms and IT infrastructures. The Pro edition will come in 100GB, 200GB and 400GB models.

The new SSDs will be showcased at next week’s CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany. They will begin shipping immediately following the event.

CEO quote: “The new Vertex 3 solid state drive series builds on the success of our previous two generations of products and delivers exceptional performance by utilizing fast synchronous mode 2Xnm MLC NAND flash technology,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. “These storage solutions feature both the highest sequential speeds available with a SATA 6GBps SSD and the highest IOPS of any current 2.5 inch SSD on the market today, allowing us to once again set the benchmark for industry leading SSD performance and reliability.”

Check out the full press release, complete with much more corporate happiness here.

The new 3TB hard drive is the world’s largest capacity SATA hard drive to date. It is also the latest edition to WD’s Caviar Green lineage of SATA hard drives. As the title suggests, you can get the new hard drive at a maximum capacity of 3TB, which is equal to about 3,000GB. WD managed to wrangle up the ridiculous amount of space by placing 750GB of storage per-patter, along with Advanced Format (AF) technology.

The eco-friendly factor comes in the fact that WD’s Caviar Green line-up of drives feature WD GreenPower Technology, which use lower operating temperatures by reducing power consumption. And, while the press release (which you can read below) focuses mainly on the larger 3TB drive, WD is also throwing in a new 2.5TB hard drive as well. You can pick both of them up right now through authorized resellers in the United States. The 2.5TB drive will cost you $189.00, while the 3TB model will run you $239.00.

Press Release

WD® Now Shipping the World’s Largest Capacity SATA Hard Drives

WD Caviar® Green™ 3 TB Hard Drives Support the Continuing Demand for Increased Capacity in External Storage and Advanced PC Applications

LAKE FOREST, Calif., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC) today announced that the company is shipping the world’s largest capacity SATA hard drive. As the latest addition to its WD Caviar® Green™ family of SATA hard drives (photo), the new hard drives deliver up to a massive 3 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity on a single drive. WD is leading the industry in capacity for SATA hard drives by utilizing 750 GB-per-platter areal density and Advanced Format (AF) technology.

WD Caviar Green drives are an eco-friendly storage solution with WD GreenPower Technology™, which reduces power consumption by enabling lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and decreases acoustical noise for quiet operation. The WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives are designed for use as secondary external storage and next-generation PC storage in 64-bit-based systems.

Drives with capacities in excess of 2.19 TB currently present barriers for PC hardware, firmware and software. To satisfy the new set of requirements of which users must be aware to successfully integrate larger capacity drives, WD is bundling its WD Caviar Green 2.5 and 3 TB hard drives with an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), which will enable the operating system to use a known driver with correct support for large capacity drives. For more information on solving the 2.19 TB drive barrier, please see the WD information sheet at http://products.wdc.com/largecapacitydrives.

“WD remains a leader of hard drive capacity and low power innovation. With our WD Caviar Green drives, we enable energy-conscious customers to build systems with the highest capacities that deliver the optimal balance of system performance, ensured reliability and energy conservation,” said Jim Morris, executive vice president and general manager of WD’s client systems storage group. “Customers will be able to take advantage of this breakthrough capacity point now for secondary external storage in legacy 32-bit systems that run on Microsoft® Vista® or Windows® 7 platforms.”
Price and Availability

WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB hard drives (model number WD25EZRSDTL) and 3 TB hard drives (model number WD30EZRSDTL) are available now in the U.S. at select resellers and distributors. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB hard drive is $189.00 USD and the 3 TB hard drive is $239.00 USD. WD Caviar Green hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty. More information about WD Caviar Green hard drives may be found on the company’s website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=866.

The chip can be configured in many ways according to the marker and has lots of features. Those features include automatic fan control, automatic standby timer, write protection, one touch backup, safe power down, and Blu-ray drive support.

The chip needs only a single voltage (3.3V) and a single 30MHz clock source to operate. The controller features USB Stream Protocol support and uses a 6x6mm 48-pin QFN package.

The difference between the two is that the HDD adapter is a direct replacement for a 2.5-inch SATA HDD allowing it to be installed inside most notebooks and desktop computers with optional mounting brackets. The SATA CFast adapter comes in two varieties.

The SATA unit can be had in the form of a PCI bracket that connects via a cable to your SATA ports on the mainboard of a desktop. You can also get a version of the SATA adapter that slips into the front of your PC case in a 3.5-inch drive bay. The benefit of either of these adapters is that Addonics claims read/write speeds of up to 600MB/s with its CFast media. The CFast cards are available in 8GB and 32GB and can be used as bootable drives. The 8GB CFast card is $98, the SATA CFast adapter is $23.95, and the CFast HDD adapter is $18.95.

The USB 3.0 to SATA controller is called the VIA VL700 and is a highly integrated single chip solution that lets users connect SATA HDDs, SSDs, and optical drives to the PC via USB 3.0 ports. The controller is capable of data transfer rates of up to 5Gbps.

The device is compatible with SATA 3Gbps and 1.5Gbps transfer rates and NCQ. The controller also supports data transfer from DVD and Blu-ray drives attached to USB 3.0 ports.

The kit is priced at $19.99 and includes a cable that has a SATA connector on one end and a USB connector on the other. You plug your new SSD or HDD into the cable and connect it to your computer USB port. The kit ships with software for Mac and PCs that will allow you to move all your data, files and your OS to a new drive.

The software for the PC is Apricorn’s EZ Gig II Cloning and Imaging software. The Mac software is ShirtPocket’s SuperDuper. Once all of the data is transferred all the user needs to do is swap the two drives out.

The adapter is aimed at Mac pro users who want to add storage capability to their machines with support for RAID 0 with performance as high as 540MB/sec. The device promises up to 250MB/sec of performance per channel. The host adapter can be added into a 5-bay SeriTek/5PM port-multiplication enclosure to allow up to 20 drives to be connected.

The host adapter is compatible with all Mac Pro models and the PowerMac G5 from late 2005. The device requires a PCI-Express slot with 4x bandwidth. Supported drives include SATA I 1.5Gb/sec and SATA II 3Gb/sec. The host adapter is available now for $199.95.

Each of the Toshiba mSATA SSDs boasts up to 180MBps sequential read speeds and up to 70MBps sequential write speeds; they also have clever power management tech which reduces consumption to less than half of read power levels when in idle, standby or sleep modes.  Toshiba have also released the same modules but in more traditional half-slim SATA II format, which are a little larger (but can at least be used with a desktop SATA II interface, unlike mSATA).

To be honest, while there are size benefits to the new interface – though not huge ones, if you look at the two modules pictured above – we’re not sure whether we’d actually prefer to keep desktop/mobile compatibility instead.  Still, time and tides wait for no man, least of all us, so mSATA is likely here to stay.

[via Gizmodo]

That’s useful, as right now there’s limited choice for motherboards with 6.0Gbps SATA interfaces.  Currently you’re looking at a clutch of models from ASUS and Gigabyte, whom Seagate are seemingly promoting alongside the Barracuda XT.  After all, what good is all that performance if you’re not going to take advantage of it.

The drive also has 64MB of cache, and uses four platters in order to squeeze all those bytes inside.  Official pricing is expected to come in somewhere around $299.

Press Release:

Seagate Ships World’s Fastest Desktop Hard Drive; First Drive to Feature Serial ATA 6Gbit/Second Technology

Seagate Teams With Technology Leaders to Bring SATA 6Gbit/s Complete Solutions to Market

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. – September 21, 2009 -

Seagate Barracuda XT, the world’s fastest desktop hard drive featuring the blazing fast Serial ATA 6Gb/s interface. Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) today began global shipments of the world’s fastest, largest-capacity mainstream desktop hard drive – Barracuda® XT, a 7200RPM product featuring 2TB of storage capacity and a blazing fast Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/second interface. The 3.5-inch desktop drive, the industry’s first to feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface, meets the capacity demands of gaming, digital video-environments and other storage-hungry desktop computing applications while delivering the highest performance in its class.
The introduction of the Barracuda XT drive marks the shift to the next generation of desktop computing speed as Seagate doubles the storage bandwidth of current computers.

“Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office,” said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate. “Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200RPM desktop hard drive to combine 2TB of storage capacity with the fastest Serial ATA interface to date.”

The Barracuda XT product, a four-platter drive featuring an areal density of 368 Gigabits per square inch, delivers the highest performance – burst speeds of up to 6 Gigabits per second – for all PC applications, maintains backward compatibility with the SATA 3Gb/second and SATA 1.5Gb/second interfaces, and uses the same cables and connectors as previous SATA generations to ease integration. The hard drive’s SATA 6Gb/s interface enables system builders using SATA 6Gb/s drive controllers to build high-performance desktop PCs, full-tilt gaming rigs, and home and small business servers, and its 64MB cache optimizes burst performance and data transfer speeds.

“Marvell is pleased to be announcing the industry’s first commercially available SATA 6Gb/s solution and working with Seagate to introduce this technology,” said Dr. Alan J. Armstrong, vice president of Marketing, Business Storage Group at Marvell. “Marvell has been working with a broad group of partners and customers to bring this solution to market. As early adopters of Marvell’s SATA 6Gb/s technology, both ASUS and GIGABYTE offer motherboards to complement SATA 6Gb/s hard drives.”

The Serial ATA 6Gb/s Solution: Barracuda XT Drives and Motherboards from ASUS and GIGABYTE

With Barracuda XT drives and SATA 6Gb/s motherboards from ASUS and Gigabyte, computer makers can build the highest-performance PCs, workstations and entry-level servers. ASUS was first to market with a SATA 6Gb/s motherboard; the company’s P7P55D Premium began shipping in August. The new GIGABYTE P55 series GA-P55-Extreme motherboards are also now shipping .

“At ASUS, we are once again at the forefront of innovation by being the first to launch a native SATA 6Gb/s interface on a motherboard,” said Joe Hsieh, corporate vice president & general manager, Motherboard Business Unit & Desktop Business Unit, ASUS. “An expansion bridge integrated into the P7P55D Premium helps achieve real SATA 6Gb/s throughput to support bandwidth-hungry applications. The ASUS solution eliminates transmission bottlenecks in current technology and ensures users truly enjoy faster data speeds and double the storage bandwidth. For other P7P55D Series models, ASUS also provides an expansion card to achieve the same results.”

“GIGABYTE has worked closely with our partners Seagate and Marvell in making the highly anticipated SATA 6Gb/s technology a reality,” said Tony Liao, associate vice president of Marketing at GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. “As the leader in motherboard innovation, GIGABYTE is always excited to bring the very latest technologies to market, and with the release of the world’s first SATA 6Gb/s hard drive from Seagate, our customers’ expectations will be blown away with double-the-bandwidth performance for lightning-fast data transfer and storage.”

Despite the diminuative scale, the data transfer speeds are still fair.  The Elecom SSDs manage 75MB/s read rates and 30MB/s write-rates, and of course there’s no noise and cooling requirements are minimal.

An auxiliary power cable – which gets its juice from a molex pass-through – is also supplied in case the Vcc pin from the SATA port isn’t sufficient to power the nanoSSD.  No word on pricing, but pre-orders should apparently already have started in Japan.

[via Akihabara]

There’s also a SATA 6 Gb/s interface, Firewire, optical and coaxial digital audio outputs and the usual 5.1 analog surround sound connectors.  ASUS also throw in dual ethernet (likely to be gigabit) and a couple of PS/2 ports for you legacy keyboard lovers out there.

The USB 3.0 ports – which use the NEC µPD720200 host controller - are blue, whereas the standard USB 2.0 ports are black; of course, they’re also backward compatible, so you don’t miss out on any connectivity.  No news on release date or pricing for the ASUS P6X58 Premium, nor benchmarking, but we’d expect it to be – as the “premium” name suggests – an expensive ‘board.

[via Everything USB]

Both traditional hard-drives and solid-state storage are presenting problems.  One user found his Western Digital Scorpio Blue HDD now suffers intermittent data errors and that the whole machine freezes randomly.  Meanwhile another user who has upgraded to an Intel X25-M SSD found his drive no longer works at all following the firmware update.  Some have found that re-installing the original SATA 1.5Gbps drive supplied by Apple restores the machine to working order, while others have had no luck.

Apple distanced themselves from aftermarket upgrades when they first released the firmware, warning users that they had “not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks” and that “their use is unsupported.”  That seems to mean they won’t fix the issue under warranty: many who have contacted Apple Stores or technical support regarding the firmware issues have been told that “Apple is not responsible for maintaining compatibility with third-party aftermarket hardware with their firmware updates.”  However there is also talk that Apple Store “Geniuses” can roll back the firmware if there was a problem during the upgrade itself, though not otherwise.

[via Register Hardware]

In that way, users would no longer have to choose between the speed of SSD and the low price of traditional hard-drives, but instead have both.  The mini-PCIe card weighs up to 8.5g and boasts 200MB/s read rates and 100MB/s write rates.

It also supports full-drive encryption and the usual shock-resistance of an SSD.  Samsung are currently sampling the SATA mini-card SSD to its hardware partners, while pushing for standardization on its mechanical form-factor and pin-layout.  That’s expected to be completed by Q3 2009; there’s no word on when we could see the drives reach the market.

Press Release:

Samsung Develops Solid State Drive with SATA Mini-card Design

Seoul (Korea Newswire) June 23, 2009 11:17 AM — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it is now sampling a SATA-interface mini-card solid state drive (SSD) with some of its customers, for use in the expanding netbook marketplace. The Samsung SATA mini-card SSD expands the use of SSDs from not only being a primary storage medium, but also as a complementary drive to boost the performance of PCs with dual drive capabilities.

Samsung’s new mini-card form factor, with a highly robust interface, makes an already rugged SSD even less susceptible to damage from jarring, jostling and dropping.

“The market is beginning to embrace a smaller SSD for the nascent netbook sector,” said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. “The cost-efficiency and reliability of lower-density, highly compact Samsung SSDs are perfectly suited as the storage medium for the rapidly growing netbook marketplace,” he added.

Featuring a mini-PCI Express (PCIe) form factor with a SATA 3.0Gb/s interface, the highly cost-efficient mini-card SSD is nearly 80 percent smaller than the conventional 2.5-inch hard disk drive, making it ideal for the tighter constraints of most netbooks. In addition, it can be used in printers and various handheld terminals including ruggedized mobile devices.

Moreover, the SATA mini-card SSD form factor can be used in a combination comprised of the SSD as main memory and HDD as supporting storage space. This new approach is expected to increase the adoption of SSDs in a broader range of applications.

Samsung is working to standardize the new mechanical form factor and its pin layout specifications at JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council). With possible revisions by OEM manufacturers, standardization could be expected as early as the third quarter of this year.

Available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB densities, the new SSD drive will be produced using 40-nanometer-class process technology. The SATA mini-card SSD provides strong performance levels with a sequential read rate of 200MB/s (megabytes per second) and writes data sequentially at 100MB/s.

Samsung’s mini-card SSD is only 30 millimeters (mm) wide and 51mm high. The drive weighs up to 8.5g and measures up to 3.75 millimeters thick. Also offering a high degree of energy efficiency, the new drive consumes 0.3 watts of power.

Samsung’s new netbook-targeted SSD is available with optional full disk encryption to thwart theft or any unwanted access to a netbook or other device.

About Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2008 consolidated sales of US$96 billion. Employing approximately 164,600 people in 179 offices in 61 countries, the company consists of four main business units: Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business, and Telecommunication Business. Recognized as one of the fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones and TFT-LCDs. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com .

According to users, only those who had ordered the factory-fit SSD option had the faster SATA-II enabled.  Those with traditional hard-drives would not have noticed issues with the reduced transfer rate, but had they chosen to upgrade to an SSD at a later date the 1.5 Gbps interface could have presented a bottleneck.

The update itself, “MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7″, is a 3.35MB download and requires that the user is running Mac OS X 10.5.7.  The company has made no comment on why it chose to limit the new notebooks to the older SATA version.

[via MacRumors; Thanks Alex09!]

The move has the most impact on those who upgraded to the SSD option in their new MacBook Pro.  Regular hard-drives, which the notebooks are both fitted with as standard, will prove unaffected, as the read/write speeds of the drive are slower than SATA.  However SSDs, which can manage higher sustained read rates, are clocking in with lower speeds compared to previous-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Any impact on real-world performance, however, is unknown.  Transferring files to external drives would be limited by the USB/Firewire connection rather than the choice of SATA or SATA-II.  It’s possible that a new firmware update could “unlock” the faster connectivity, but so far Apple have not publicly commented.

[via Register Hardware]

Equipped with a 7,200RPM SATA drive, it has an eSATA interface and can transfer information at speeds of up to 300MB/sec. It also has a USB 2.0 port making for 480mbps transfer speeds in that fashion.

The Aegis Desktop comes in in an aluminum housing and works with Windows 2000 and up and Mac OS 9.2 and up. There are several variations available including a 500GB model, a 1TB model and the 1.5TB model. These cost $119, $144 and $229, respectively.

This drive has a 128MB cache. Plus, the 220MB/sec read speed and 200MB/sec write speed is faster than what’s typically offered. These drives are cased in aluminum and demand very little power, requiring just 2W while in use.

The Summit-series is available in several different capacity sizes including 60GB, 120GB and 250GB. These sizing options are pretty standard for OCZ, as evidenced by other drives in their line up. We don’t know pricing at the moment, but you can get the OCZ Summit SSD today.

It works with a 3.5 SATA hard drive, but can also work as an iPod dock, since it has a Dock Connector mounted to the top. This is an easy way to directly connect your media. And the built-in Ethernet makes it easy to share your files with others over a network.

You even view YouTube clips and Picasa images on the hub, if you’d like. The included remote allows you to control the media stored on the drive or on connected Apple devices. Supported formats include MP3, WMA, AAC, AC3, DTS, DivX, RMVB, WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and XViD. Inputs include RCA, USB and outputs are TCA, optical audio and HDMI. You can get the Media Cowboy MC35ULI in Japan next month for the equivalent of $255.

Judging by the model number, the VIA NSD7200 slots in under the NSD7800, a tower-format NAS with room for up to eight 3.5-inch SATA drives.  Going by the case similarities, we’re presuming the NSD7200 is similar to the VIA ARTiGO A2000 barebone storage server we reviewed back in February; that has room for two 3.5-inch SATA-II hard-drives, but has more connectivity options than the NSD7200.

Like the NSD7800 and ARTiGO A2000 the VIA NSD7200 probably uses a 1.5GHz C7-D processor with between 1GB and 2GB of RAM.  We’re expecting to hear full details from VIA soon, and will update when we know more.

Update: According to VIA, the NSD7200 is an OEM product and will go on sale under another brand(s).  It’s apparently available now, but VIA don’t have pricing for any of the third-parties.

The companies are hoping to provoke interest in the new SATA 6Gbps standard, which will begin showing up in hard-drives before the end of 2009.  It uses the same cables and connectors as previous 3Gbps and 1.5Gbps SATA, but introduces new power-efficiency technology among other things.

New drives will be backward compatible with motherboards that only support the existing SATA speeds, so we’re hoping to see them hit the market sooner rather than later.  No word from Seagate as to when a commercial version of the current prototype will be launched. 

Press Release:

Seagate and AMD Unveil World’s First Demonstration of Serial ATA 6Gigabit/Second Technology for High-Speed PC Applications

Seagate (Nasdaq: STX), teaming with microprocessor manufacturing leader Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) at the Everything Channel Xchange Conference in New Orleans this week, today unveiled the world’s first public demonstration of next-generation high-speed data transfer – Serial ATA 6Gigabit/second – for bandwidth-hungry desktop and laptop PC applications including gaming, streaming video and graphics multimedia.

The Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/second storage interface will deliver the highest performance – burst speeds of up to 6Gigabits per second – for all PC applications, maintain backward compatibility with the SATA 3Gb/second and SATA 1.5Gb/second interfaces, and use the same cables and connectors as previous SATA generations to ease integration. The third generation of the mainstream storage interface for desktop and notebook computers also enhances power efficiency and improves Native Command Queuing, a SATA feature, to increase overall system performance and data transfer speeds of mainstream PC applications but especially applications with heavily transactional workloads such as scientific modeling and forecasting, and engineering design and simulation.

“The increasing reliance of consumers and businesses worldwide on digital information is giving rise to gaming, digital video and audio, streaming video, graphics and other applications that require even more bandwidth, driving demand for PC interfaces that can carry even more digital content,” said Joan Motsinger, Seagate vice president of Personal Systems Marketing and Strategy. “The SATA 6Gb/second storage interface will meet this demand for higher-bandwidth PCs. Seagate has a long history of being first to market with new technologies such as Serial ATA, perpendicular recording and self-encrypting drives, and is pleased to be teaming with AMD to stage the world’s first public demonstration of SATA 6Gb/second storage.”

“AMD strives to deliver platform technology that our technology partners can use to create high- performance desktop and laptop PCs,” said Leslie Sobon, vice president of Product Marketing, AMD. “The new SATA 6Gb/second technology not only incorporates the best features of previous SATA generations but also includes new enhancements. This innovation enables AMD to continue to evolve its technology platforms and to develop low-cost designs that our technology partners can use to improve their own PC and laptop products.”

The Seagate and AMD demonstration features two Seagate SATA disk drives – one a shipping Barracuda(R) 7200.12 3Gb/second hard drive and the other a prototype Barracuda 6Gb/second drive – in a desktop PC to show the performance difference between the two generations. The PC is powered by an AMD prototype SATA 6Gb/second chipset. The Seagate SATA 3Gb/second drive runs at more than 2.5Gigabits per second and the SATA 6Gb/second drive at 5.5Gigabits per second, with the performance of each storage interface displayed on the PC monitor.

Serial ATA 6Gb/second – Blazing speed for next-generation personal computing

Serial ATA (SATA), the mainstream storage interface for desktop and notebook disk drives, is currently available in two speeds – 3Gb/second and 1.5Gb/second. SATA 6Gb/second was developed by the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) under the Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification.

In keeping with SATA-IO objectives for designing a low-cost interface for desktop and notebook PCs, SATA 6Gb/second maintains the low cost and low-power design requirements of previous SATA generations, and is designed to be backward compatible with SATA 3Gb/second connectors, cables and other hardware.