Today’s news roundup covers a number of exciting product announcements: Toshiba has announced two new 2.5-inch HDDs for 24/7 rugged operating environments; LSI introduced its WarpDrive PCI-e SSD for enterprise servers; finally, OCZ has introduced updated versions of its Vertex and Colossus SSDs with Indilinx controllers.
Toshiba Intros Hard Drives for Rugged Environments
Toshiba has introduced two new 2.5-inch hard drives designed for rugged 24-hour continuous operation. The two new drives — the 100GB SATA MK1060GSCX and the 80GB PATA MK8050GACY — are designed for use in industrial and other extreme environments.
The drives feature a "case temperature" range of -15 to +70 degrees Celsius, which the company claims is the widest range of any 24/7 operation hard drive on the market. Specifications include a 4,200RPM spindle speed, 12-16 msec access times, and a single platter.
The MK1060GSCX and MK8050GACY will begin volume production in December 2010.
LSI Intros WarpDrive PCI-e SSD Acceleration Card
LSI has introduced its plug-and-play WarpDrive SLP-300 I/O acceleration card for enterprise servers. The SLP-300 has up to 300GB of SLC flash memory and consumes just 25 watts of power.
The low-profile card plugs into a standard PCI-e x8 2.0 server slot. It is claimed to sustain up to 1,400MB/s of throughput with up to 240,000 4k read IOPS and 200,000 4k write IOPS with an access latency of less than 50 microseconds.
The SLP-300 is designed to easily integrate into an existing SAS infrastructure. It is bootable and has no external power requirement.
The LSI WarpDrive SLP-300 is available now for a hefty $11,500.
OCZ Intros Updated Vertex Plus and Colossus Plus SSDs
OCZ has announced updates to its first-generation Vertex and Colossus SSD series. The drives feature Indilinx controllers and affordable price points.
The company has updated the drives with new firmware, designed to make the performance more competitive. Compared to the first-gen drives, the new Plus editions offer improved 4KB random write IOPS and ‘excellent’ uncompressed data performance. The Colossus Plus features an internal RAID 0 design for up to a claimed 20,000 4KB random write IOPS.
The 2.5-inch Vertex Plus series is available in 32/64/128GB capacities for $74.99/$114.99/$194.99; the Colossus Plus will be offered with up to a 1TB (1024GB) capacity in a 3.5-inch form factor; pricing has not been announced. OCZ has not announced specific availability information.
