disk drives

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Flash drives: your mileage WILL vary

Flash is an alien technology for disk users. I've noted before that flash drives can have really terrible write performance, but until I ran into it myself I had no idea how bad flash write performance could be.Last month I wrote see Five things you never knew about flash drivesFlash...

Tags: Solid State Disk, Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-07-30

Sorry about your broken RAID 5

You didn't know?I'm sorry I was the one to tell you that RAID 5 is broken today and will be well and truly broken in 2009 (see Why RAID 5 stops working in 2009), but somebody had to do it. The good news is that the industry is ahead of...

Tags: RAID, Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-07-24

Why RAID 5 stops working in 2009

The storage version of Y2k? No, it's a function of capacity growth and RAID 5's limitations. If you are thinking about SATA RAID for home or business use, or using RAID today, you need to know why.RAID 5 protects against a single disk failure. You can recover all your data...

Tags: RAID, Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-07-18

Disk drive life depends on . . . luck

What is the primary determinant of drive life? I've read the latest research and talked to insiders. There are so many variables that the best answer is just . . . luck. Why is that? Is there anything you can do?Many variables - and some that aren'tThe recent Carnegie Mellon...

Tags: Infrastructure, Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-07-05

Death of a disk

It even happens to storage bloggersThings are quiet today at Mojo manor. My external 160 GB disk died. It passed quietly. No grinding noises. No SMART warning. No real warning at all, but for the last couple of months I'd been feeling a little anxious about that drive. Call me...

Tags: Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-06-27

Blu-ray vs HD DVD: game over

Blu-ray wonThe sturm und drang over the Blu-ray vs HD DVD battle has come to naught. After a bit of jostling Blu-ray has taken an unassailable lead over HD DVD. Blockbuster's Matthew Smith, SVP of merchandising, says "The consumers are sending us a message. I can't ignore what I'm seeing."...

Tags: Marketing, Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-06-20

How to REALLY erase a hard drive - Update

A new version of HDerase.exe has been releasedGo direct to UCSD's Center for Magnetic Recording Research website to download version 3.2.HDerase.exe accesses an ATA disk drive's internal Secure Erase commands to wipe a disk clean. Merely deleting a file doesn't delete your data: the data is still on the disk...

Tags: Disk drives, Security

Blog posts 2007-06-15

The five weirdest things about flash drives

Flash drives only look like disks. In fact, nothing works the way you'd think. Flash is really different from magnetic recording, and those differences have a big impact on flash drive performance. How well vendors manage flash oddities has a huge impact on performance and even drive lifespan.The five...

Tags: Solid State Disk, Software, Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-06-11

WD's surprising little drive

IIRC, it was just 15 years ago that Maxtor shipped the first 1 GB, 3.5" drive. The usual things happened: database admins all swore it was "too big," techies said it cost too much, and regular users wondered if they could ever fill it up.DBA's still kvetch about disk size...

Tags: Disk drives

Blog posts 2007-06-07

Intel's latest memory problem

Intel can't seem to catch a break. First their highly-touted FB-DIMMs deliver nothing beyond cost and heat. Now their highly-touted Robson technology is getting beat up.HP: are they or aren't they?In HP says no to Intel's Turbo Memory, David Meyer reports from London thatSteve Doddridge, senior notebook technology consultant for...

Tags: Disk drives, Solid State Disk

Blog posts 2007-06-06

Additional Resources

The Office (2.0): No paper? No problem.

I think I may have been the only person at this week's Office 2.0 conference using - gasp! - a pen and paper. There was no program "book" when I registered - the agenda was online only. And none of the exhibitors handed out press releases on paper - though...

Tags: Document, Microsoft PowerPoint, Appirio, SlideRocket, Digital Signatures, Collaboration, Productivity, Groupware, Fax, Microsoft Office, Security, Enterprise Software, Software, Office Suites, Sam Diaz

Blog posts 2008-09-05

From Chapter Two: The appliance computing culture

From Chapter Two: The appliance computing cultureOverbroadYou wrote:[The appliance computing culture’s interactive] applications model drives almost everything, from processor and OS evolution to appropriate management structure - and even the conflicts with traditional business systems experts whose internal model of “automatic data processing” is broadly unrelated to the needs and...

Tags: Mainframes, Operating systems, Processors, business systems expert, appliance computing culture, mainframe, best practice, Windows PC

Discussion threads 2008-09-05

Microsoft exec rebuts hypervisor security claims

Microsoft security strategist Steve Riley has answered claims that the company's hypervisor software could be maliciously replaced on PCs without administrators knowing. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA--Senior Microsoft security strategist Steve Riley has used the vendor's TechEd conference in Sydney to rebut claims by a Polish researcher that Microsoft's hypervisor software could...

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Virtualization, Hardware, Liam Tung ZDNet Australia, rootkit, hypervisor, Joanna Rutkowska, security

News items 2008-09-05

Super Fdisk Bootable CD (iso)

Super Fdisk Bootable CD is a FREE driven disk partition manager of DOS version. With Super Fdisk, you can quickly and easily create, delete, format partitions on IDE/ATA/SATA/SCSI hard disk drives without destroying data underDOS system. Super Fdisk can be installed on Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003 and Super Fdisk is easy to...

Tags: Disk, PTDD, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software

Software downloads 2008-09-05

Best way to sell drugs is to talk to your doctor

Best way to sell drugs is to talk to your doctorit all depends...Having many physician friends, I know of only a few who are eager beavers when it came to prescribing new medicines. I don't even think they listen to the drug reps half the time due to time...

Tags: patient

Discussion threads 2008-09-04

Ten key differences between Linux and Windows

Ten key differences between Linux and WindowsRe: Shouldn't this be titledNot everything; for example 1) hardware support - not all closed source OS has the same level of hardware support. 2) Command line vs no command line : Many closed source OS has fully functional command line support.3) Multilayered run...

Tags: Operating systems, UNIX, OPEN SOURCE, Linux, Microsoft Windows, hardware

Discussion threads 2008-09-04

Ten key differences between Linux and Windows

Before debating the relative merits and shortcomings of Linux and Windows, it helps to understand the real distinctions between them. Before debating the relative merits and shortcomings of Linux and Windows, it helps to understand the real distinctions between them. Here are the key differences distilled into one list....

Tags: Linux, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, UNIX, Open Source, Software, Jack Wallen. TechRepublic, Jack Wallen. ZDNet.co.uk, Windows, Microsoft, GNU Public License

News items 2008-09-04

Sony announces three all-in-one desktops

At a home theater show this week Sony announced three new all-in-one desktops along with a slew A/V receivers, LCD TVs and projectors, and Blu-ray players. All three AIOs offer Blu-ray drives, and the higher-end models offer rewritable BD drives. The entry-level VAIO JS series has a...

Tags: Sony Corp., Hard Drive, Sony Vaio, Memory, Intel Core 2 Duo, VAIO LV Series, Desktops, Processors, Hardware, Semiconductors, Components, John Morris

Blog posts 2008-09-04

TiVo HD XL (150 HD hours)

When TiVo discontinued its high-end cable-ready high-def DVR, the TiVo Series3, it was really just making room for a new product in the line: the TiVo HD XL. The new TiVo is a near twin to the existing TiVo HD, but for three changes: it's got a much larger...

Tags: DVR, Digital video, Network technology, TV & Home Theater, TVs, cable, TiVo Inc.

Product reviews 2008-09-04

TCG Backup Manager (exe)

Online backup and recovery eliminates the obstacles inherent with tape backup by automating the backup process, replacing tapes with more reliable disk media, and using your Internet connection to securely move your encrypted business-critical server data to a safe, remote location. Backup multiple computers on the same account, simply install...

Tags: Backups

Software downloads 2008-09-04