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2.5" Hard Drive Charts
Tom's Interactive 2.5" Hard Drive Charts compare notebook hard drives. Here you will find 2.5" UltraATA and Serial ATA hard drives manufactured by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. The charts include all popular capacities starting at 40 GB as well as listing hard drives running at 4,200, 5,400 or 7,200 RPM. 15 benchmarks help to determine application perforrmance and low-level performance, giving you all the throughput, access time, interface and I/O performance results. The 2.5" HDD Charts also include the Cost per Gigabyte calculation and our Price/Performance Index, which helps you to find the best bang for the buck. In addition, we measured power consumption of most the notebook hard drives, so you can see which models are energy efficient and which ones aren't.
Enterprise Hard Drive Charts
Tom's Interactive Enterprise Hard Drive Charts compare high-end server/workstation hard drives used in enterprise-class systems. The 15 benchmarks we used as a testing platform are the same as the ones featured in the other HDD Charts, but the interpretation of the data is different in the enterprise segment: Servers often depend on maximum I/O performance rather than on raw throughput. Of course, you can also check various other criteria: read and write throughput, sorted by average, minimum and maximum, access time, interface performance and four I/O benchmark patterns. You will find most of the popular enterprise hard drives made by Fujitsu, Hitachi and Seagate; all using either Ultra320 SCSI or SAS interfaces. Then there is the price/performance index which helps you select a particular drive, as it relates performance and capacity to cost of drive. If your company requires a large number of hard drives, this feature will enable you to make an informed and budget friendly decision.
3.5" Hard Drive Charts
Tom's Interactive 3.5" Hard Drive Charts compare low-level as well as application performance of more than 40 popular hard drive models. The charts include all popular 3.5" desktop drive manufacturers such as Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital. They list UltraATA and Serial ATA interfaces, 7,200 and 10,000 RPM drives, and capacities between 36 GB and 1000 GB. 15 individual benchmark categories analyze read and write throughput, interface performance, average access time, Windows startup performance and several I/O access patterns that are imperative for server and workstation scenarios. Two comparison features make our Hard Drive Charts unique on the Internet: The Cost per Gigabyte calculation and the Price/Performance Index, which relates performance, capacity and cost. Prices are updated daily using the latest price information provided by TG Stores.

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News

Flash drives may replace hard drives in notebooks - analyst
July 17, 2006 – 4:32 PM
Despite their lack in capacity and lofty price tags, Flash hard drives may become a serious threat for traditional hard drives in notebook computers. In-stat analyst Frank Dickson believes that solid state disk (SSD) storage may "dethrone the hard drive as the top laptop storage choice within 10 years."
Intel P965, Microsoft Vista to boost adoption of SATA optical drives
November 28, 2006 – 11:32 AM
Intel's P965 chipset and Microsoft's Vista operating system are expected to speed up adoption of SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) and displace ATAPI (ATA packet interface) as the mainstream interface standard for optical drives in the second half of 2007, according to optical disc drive (ODD) manufacturers in Taiwan.
Seagate to offer hybrid hard drives for Vista notebooks
June 7, 2006 – 8:03 AM
Seagate is accelerating the pace towards a perpendicular-only hard drive line-up. Within the next three quarters, the company will launch ten new hard drives ranging from pocket drives to high-end enterprise units. Among the announcements made today is also the firm's first hybrid hard drive, which combines flash memory with traditional hard drive storage technology. Extra: Image Gallery of all new drives
Google doubts hard drives fail because of excessive temperature, usage
February 16, 2007 – 5:04 PM
As a company with one of the world's largest IT infrastructures, Google has an opportunity to do more than just search the Internet. From time to time, the company publishes the results of internal research. The most recent project one is sure to spark interest in exploring how and under what circumstances hard drives work - or not.
Bacteria could help future drives hold terabytes of data
July 12, 2006 – 4:21 PM
A Harvard Medical School professor claims that proteins from murky marshes could form the basis for higher capacity storage devices. Professor Venkatesan Renugopalakrishnan says proteins from the membrane of a salt marsh bacterium can be genetically altered to store data at areal densities of up to 50 terabits per square inch.

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Articles

Solid State Disk Drives Are Here
August 13, 2007 – 6:46 AM
SanDisk's SSD5000 shows that flash-based drives really do offer superior performance, while consuming less power. Still, there are some drawbacks.
Smart Hard Drives: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and Western Digital WD740 Raptor
January 23, 2004 – 12:03 PM
The serial ATA interface is enhanced with a feature from SCSI: Native Command Queuing. Seagate's 7200.7 is the only native SATA interface commercially available, while Western Digital intends to accommodate the low-end server market with its new 74 GB Raptor.
Hard Drives Instead of Tapes? 70 TB Backup RAID at the University of Tübingen
April 25, 2003 – 1:01 PM in CeBIT
While backing up data may be a minor chore for many, backing up vast quantities of data is a major operation. At the very top of the food chain, you generally have complex tape systems operated with automated robots. However, Dr. Koch Computertechnik AG has developed a cheaper, yet very flexible solution for the University of Tübingen: 70 TB backup capacity on standard IDE hard drives.
New IDE Hard Drives at 20 GB per Platter: Fujitsu MPG3409 and Western Digital WD400
January 2, 2001 – 12:04 PM in Business
Both Fujitsu and WD are releasing their latest generation drives. Will they be able to beat the strong competition from the prestige brands IBM and Maxtor?
Backing Up with Tape Drives: Security Is What Counts
February 25, 2003 – 12:01 PM
Regular backups of company-critical data to tape drives safeguards firms' existence. We put ten drives to the test and show what costs can be expected.