Developages - Development and Technology Blog

SanDisk today announced ExtremeFFS, a technology the company claims will be able to boost the speed of solid-state drives significantly. According to SanDisk, the new technology avoids tying the location of data to physical space by altering its position on the drive to the place where it will be most efficient.

SanDisk hasn′t announced any release dates or products that will carry the technology, but it expect products to begin shipping next year. According to Ars Technica, SanDisk predicts next year’s drives will be as much as six times faster than standard notebook hard drives.

Original post by Brian Heater

Western Digital today announced the release of the WD TV. The $129 box plays a number of video, photo, and audio formats including 1080p HD video, various MPEG formats, MP3, OGG-Vorbis, MKV with subtitle support, JPEG, TIFF, and more.

The device essentially works as a hub between any USB portable hard drive (the company recommends the WD My Passport, naturally). Component Video or HDMI-equipped HDTVs, no networking required.

The WD TV also includes a remote, which lets users flip through the device’s animated menu.

Original post by Brian Heater

I fired up my desktop machine a few nights ago only to hear loud clicks and clanks coming from the system drive. Never a good sign–I could not resuscitate it. Through some amazing bit of cosmic luck I’d recently backed up my photos. My email is already archived on Gmail. That’s most of what I care about so I ordered a new über-drive to start from scratch.

As XP loaded on my machine I soon noticed it was only reporting 137 Gb of my 620 Gb drive. That addressing limitation is a “built-in feature” of the original Windows XP. Though later service packs fixed this shortcoming my disk was an original. I pondered for a few seconds before I found Paul Thurott’s SuperSite for Windows and his detailed instructions for “Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (S̢)“

Yes–SP2 has been replaced by SP3, but the concepts and directions worked perfectly. More on that directly, first a little explanation of “slipstreaming.”

“You can copy the installation directory from your XP CD-ROM to the hard drive, slipstream the XP SP2 files into that installation directory, and then write it back to a recordable CD, giving you a bootable copy of the XP setup disk that includes SP2 right out of the box (so to speak).”

In my case installing directly to a post-Service Pack 3 state saved lots of time beacuse,

“SP3 includes all previously released Windows XP updates, including security updates, hotfixes, and select out-of-band releases. - Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 site“

There are many, many steps in the slipstream process, but I think Thurott’s instructions are so detailed and well illustrated anyone (really–anyone) can do it. Just read carefully.

Unfortunately, installing once is never enough. An internal multi-format memory card reader plugged into a USB port was seen by my BIOS and assigned drive letters before Windows could install. My system drive was relegated I:! That should work. Sometimes it doesn’t. For example Adobe’s latest version of Flash won’t install without a C: drive–which they admit.

“This is a know bug. Was fixed in Flash Player 9, then must have gotten unfixed in the player 10 code branch.” - BWolfe

Thanks Adobe. That’s 45 minutes I’ll never have back.

As you might expect my reinstalled XP boots quicker and runs faster than it did before the crash. That made this whole experience nearly worthwhile. Being a promiscuous downloader it probably won’t last!

Original post by Geoff Fox

Need a safe place to store and share files on a network in your small business, home office, or multi-PC home? Check out the Synology Disk Station DS209+, a two-bay network attached storage (NAS) box with a long list of features. Buy this unit for a about $450-$500 street, then slap in two SATA drives of up to 1.5TB each, and configure it for maxium storage or more likely for RAID 1 disk mirroring, where your data remains safe even if one drive goes south since there’s the same data on both drives. The unit has multiple energy-saving features such as a multi-speed fan, suspend modes, and it draws no more than 32 watts, Synology says.

To justify the price, since you can buy two-bay and even four-bay NAS devices for less, including from Synology, you’ll want to make use of the features: the ability to host up to 30 websites, automated data backup, support for up to 256 concurrent connections (more suitable for large orphange than large home uses, perhaps). USB jacks allow for adding external drives or a printer than can be accessed by all. The Disk Station Manager 2.0 software is easier to use than version 1 but still demands a bit more user expertise than, say, the consumer-focused HP MediaSmart server’s software.

For rock-solid network storage, Synology represents one of the lesser known brands as well as one of the better values. The sweet spot of the Synology lineup may be the Synology C𔗏e, a four-bay device that supports RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5 and now sells for less than $400. (There’s also a big-brother CS407 with a faster processor for about $100 more.) With RAID 5, four drives effectively provide two copies of your data while retaining three-quarters of the drives’ standalone storage capacity. In other words, if you buy the box and add four 1-TB drives, with RAID 5 you’ll spend about $800 and get 3 TB of storage that isn’t compromised if (when) a hard drive fails. The DS209+ uses the same high-performance processor as on Synology’s top-of-the-line RAID 6 DS508, which has five drive bays and can survive the loss of two drives.

Original post by Bill Howard

Vavolo, known for making weird USB flash drives like the USB Fortune Cookie and the USB Chocolate Doughnut, pointed us to its latest USB goodie: the Black Forest Cake USB Flash Drive, part of the “Cake Royale″ Series.

This sugary flash drive offers 1GB of memory and is both USB 2.0 and 1.0 compliant. And no, you can’t eat it folks!

Not the chocolate type? There’s always the French Mille-Feuille Drive, the Fruit Plate Cake Drive, or the Strawberry Torte Drive. Depending on capacity, these drives range in price from $30 to $50.

Original post by Jen the Weird Hunter

SanDisk announced an update to the Cruzer Enterprise USB flash drive on Tuesday, enhancing it via a partnership with McAfee. Now, the USB drives include the McAfee Scan Engine, which prevents the drive from even connecting to PCs which have been infected with malware.

SanDisk’s drives already store files in an encrypted partition, a security feature designed to protect them in case the drive is lost or stolen. SanDisk did not announce new pricing for the drives, which currently sell for just under $88 for a 1-Gbyte drive, on up to just over $216 for a 4-Gbyte model.

Original post by Mark Hachman

I’m probably (read: certainly) being a bit of a cynic here, but, for all of the wonderful aspects of Web 2.0, it already seems a bit too easy to stick stuff up on the Web for the whole world to see.

Of course I′m not decrying the democratization of speech on the Web, just commenting on the fact that it’s a bit too easy to stick something up on the Internet before you have time to give it a second thought. That’s why things like Google’s Mail Goggles and YouTube’s Read Aloud Comment features are handy–they afford users the opportunity to think twice before sending off something they might later regret.

Eye-Fi has carved out a niche for itself doing the exact opposite. The company’s wireless SD card has added software functionality that lets users upload images directly to Flickr and Twitter. Owners of the card can also use it to create an RSS feed of images.

Add to that the existing geotracking ability, and you have one smart SD card–unfortunately, it’s not quite clever enough to let you know when you should hold off on releasing that picture into the ether.

Original post by Brian Heater

Toshiba said Friday that it will be shipping a 256-Gbyte solid-state disc drive for ultramobile PCs during the fourth quarter, plus two additional flash modules.

The drives are sampling now, and will be displayed at the CEATEC show in Tokyo beginning Sept. 30.

The SSDs fit within a 2.5-inch form factor, but also feature a SATA 3-Mbit interface. Performance-wise, read speeds are about 120 Mbytes/s, with 70 Mbytes/s write speeds. That’s well below Intel′s rated 250 Mbytes/s for its own SSDs. And assuming Toshiba can manufacture these for about Intel’s goal of $8 per gigabyte puts them at the hefty sum of $2,056. Toshiba didn’t announce prices, however.

Earlier in the week, Toshiba’s vice president of marketing of its storage division pooh-poohed the impact of SSDs in announcing its own 250-Gbyte, 1.8-inch magnetic hard drives, claiming that an SSD will always cost several times more than a hard drive. He’s right, of course, but the timing is still a bit odd.

Toshiba also announced 16- and 32-Gbyte flash modules.

Original post by Mark Hachman

Last month, I featured 10 Gadgets that Look Good Enough to Eat on PCMag.com, including the Croissant Wrist Rest and the Hamburger Phone. Well, there’s another tasty gadget that I need to add to that list: the USB Cabbage Flash Drive ($28) from USB Brando.

You can store 4GB of data on this fiber-licious USB 2.0 drive, and it supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. It’s the perfect gift for next St. Patrick’s Day!

Original post by Jen the Weird Hunter

Eye-Fi today announced several updates to its service including compatibility with Apple’s MobileMe, faster uploads, and the ability to add new features to any Eye-Fi card in their line. All Eye-Fi users can take advantage of the faster upload times via a software download.

Originally, only the Eye-Fi Explore had geotagging capabilities and hotspot access, but now owners of the Eye-Fi Share and Home cards can use these features. Currently, Eye-Fi Home cards can only upload images to your hard drives, but for an annual fee of $9.99, you can add the ability to upload to photo sharing sites. Users of both cards can add geotagging for $14.99/year and hotspot access for the same price. New users would do best to buy the Eye-Fi Explore card which includes free geotagging and one free year of hotspot access.

The company also plans to expand their distribution to Canada and Japan by the end of the year.

Original post by Blogging Molly

In what has quickly become reminiscent of the whole Microsoft-Yahoo merger debacle, Samsung and SanDisk are now locked in a process that could see Samsung acquire SanDisk for about $5.8 billion. The problem, of course, is that SanDisk wants no part of it, at least for now.

Samsung decided to make its bid public last night, sending this letter to SanDisk and its board of directors:

The full text of the letter follows:

September 17, 2008

Board of Directors
SanDisk Corporation
601 McCarthy Boulevard
Milpitas, CA 95035

Attention:

Dr. Eli Harari, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Irwin Federman, Vice Chairman and Lead Independent Director

Dear Eli and Irwin:

We are in receipt of your letter dated September 15, 2008 and are deeply disappointed that after four months of discussions and meetings - in Seoul and San Francisco - about a possible business combination, SanDisk Corporation (”SanDisk″) continues to cling to unrealistic expectations on both its standalone market value and an appropriate merger price. Under our proposal, which we are reiterating here, we remain prepared to acquire all of the outstanding shares of SanDisk for $26 per share in cash. As you know, our proposal is not subject to any financing contingency and the entire purchase price will be funded with our cash on hand and available financing.

This offer is full and fair and we believe that, given an opportunity, your shareholders would agree. It constitutes a very substantial premium to SanDisk’s share price and would deliver to your shareholders an immediate cash premium of 93% over SanDisk’s closing share price on September 4, 2008, the day before news reports indicated that we were in discussions about a business combination. Furthermore, it is a premium of 80% over your closing share price on September 15, 2008, and a 66% and 164% premium to your 30-day weighted average price and enterprise value as of September 4, 2008, respectively.

Despite the significant premium we propose to SanDisk′s current stock price, your letter states that our proposed price does not “reflect the intrinsic value of SanDisk′s business″ and references the 52-week high. The world has changed dramatically in the past 52 weeks as can be seen from SanDisk′s own disappointing results. Consumer spending and the overall economic situation have been getting worse. It will take the NAND flash market quite a bit of time to recover. Notwithstanding the current market conditions, to stay competitive, SanDisk will need to fund critical investment and development over the next several months - cost cutting alone will not suffice. Our offer insulates your shareholders from the risk of market conditions that have severely deteriorated and are expected to remain challenging. As highlighted above, we strongly believe that there is significant execution risk of achieving any stand-alone plan.

While it has been and remains our strong preference to continue to work with you to reach a binding merger agreement in a cooperative and expeditious fashion, we have become increasingly concerned that the lack of progress is not serving the interests of either company’s shareholders. For this reason, and the fact that speculation has grown since the early September news reports, we feel compelled to clarify our intentions publicly.

Compelling Business Logic

Our many meetings and conversations over the last several months have served to confirm for us that a combined Samsung-SanDisk would have a superior global brand, an unparalleled technology platform and the scale and resources to drive convergence in the marketplace. With SanDisk’s innovative culture and technology leadership and Samsung’s scale, leadership in manufacturing and execution, and strong systems and consumer electronics segment knowledge, the combined company would be well positioned to accelerate the adoption of flash memory technology in new markets. We can also establish the platforms and capabilities necessary to position flash as the preferred vehicle for delivery and storage of a wide variety of content, such as film, in a way that would not be possible for either of our companies alone.

As we have seen in recent months, markets have become more turbulent and global economic trends are negative. At the same time the competitive environment remains challenging. To survive and compete in these times we will each need to leverage our resources and rely upon a strong balance sheet to fund critical investment and development through good times and bad. Separately investing in necessary state of the art facilities will be a significant tax on your business in the near term. In addition, reliance on IP and enforcing it is a costly and uncertain business for both our companies. Faced with these challenges, now is the time to merge.

SanDisk’s Management and Employees

SanDisk is widely recognized for the quality of its people and its culture of innovation. For our part, that is a key reason we are attracted to your company and a significant portion of the transaction value to us is represented by the talented management and employees that we hope would continue to work for the company going forward. Our intention is to operate SanDisk as a separate subsidiary company inside of Samsung and to maintain the environment that has contributed to your success. We have a long term commitment to the space, financial stability and a strong desire to grow the SanDisk platform, thereby creating significant new opportunities for SanDisk employees. We do not plan to cut jobs - rather, we want to work with you to find the best way to structure incentives to retain and motivate your key talent following the transaction.

Process and Deal Certainty

At our July 22 meeting in San Francisco you proposed a process in which Samsung would forego customary due diligence, not only until all transaction terms including price are finalized and documented, but also until we had completed negotiation and execution of a replacement IP licensing agreement and a new supply agreement, neither of which would ever come into effect if an acquisition transaction were finalized. You have also requested as a condition to moving forward that we provide you with some form of assurances as to regulatory approval.

Although there had been a lack of progress over 14 months of IP discussions, we dedicated significant time and energy to follow the path you outlined in order to reach an agreement. Unfortunately, the process you outlined in July has resulted in no meaningful progress toward a transaction in the intervening eight weeks. Despite our substantial efforts on the IP front, you have agreed to schedule only two meetings since July and during those meetings you have been unwilling to engage with us on any productive proposals that adequately recognize the changed market dynamics in your markets and the decline in value of your patent portfolio in the period since the IP license was last renewed.

As to the regulatory process, we have repeatedly expressed our confidence that this transaction will receive all necessary governmental approvals and we remain willing to immediately engage your experts to discuss the regulatory process. You have yet to even identify to us who is acting as your counsel on these issues. Having dedicated significant time and resources in evaluating this combination with our external counsel, we do not foresee any issues that could not be resolved. We again extend the invitation for your advisory team to engage with our counsel, subject to customary protective provisions, to share our respective views on this topic.

Confirmatory Due Diligence

Although we have completed extensive preliminary due diligence based on publicly available information, our proposal is of course subject to confirmatory due diligence and the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement. Key due diligence topics that underlie the value in our offer include your relationship with Toshiba, forecasted operating plans, R&D projects, technology roadmaps, key employees and pending litigation.

Again, it continues to be our strong preference to work together with the SanDisk Board to reach a mutually agreeable transaction. We have drafted and are prepared to send to you a due diligence request list and a draft merger agreement. We again urge you to engage with us promptly in a productive discussion about our proposal.

Sincerely,

Yoon-Woo Lee
Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Original post by Mark Hachman

Well, that didn’t take long: After four months, Samsung’s fellow Flash memory manufacturer, SanDisk, has gone from zero to hostile. Responding to SanDisk’s “unrealistic expectations,” the company has opted to play hardball, with a $26/a share hostile bid.

SanDisk’s board has once again rejected Samsung’s bid, thanks to all of that undervaluing on Samsung’s part.

Perhaps Toshiba or Seagate will up the ante.

Original post by Brian Heater

Half a terabyte of storage just got more portable with the introduction of Western Digital’s My Passport Portable USB drive with 500GB capacity. Considering WD has recent rolled out 400 to 500GB hard drives for notebook computers recently, I guess this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. The 500GB external hard drive tips the scale at less than seven ounces and can probably slip in most bags you have except tiniest ones.

WD’s My Passport drives are bus-powered, slashing the need for an AC adapter. It’s also installed with synchronization software so users can sync their files between hard drives and protects files using 128-bit encryption. Made to withstand bumps and shocks, the 500GB My Passport version will be available in cherry red, Westminster blue, titanium, and bronze with a $219.99 suggested list price.

Check out the WD 500GB My Passport Essential and My Passport Elite External hard drives.

Original post by Mariella Moon

Dell is teaming up with Sonic Solutions to offer an external drive that allows users to download movies from CinemaNow and burn them to DVDs.

Users can purchase the $120 burner starting Monday as a stand-alone product on the Dell Web site or add it as a bundle when purchasing certain Inspiron, Studio, and XPS laptops. A bundle option for select consumer desktops is expected soon.

Sonic Solutions, which acquired Roxio in 2004, joined forces with Pioneer in October 2007 to create a legal, recordable DVD standard known as Qflix. It allows consumers to burn copyright-protected movies to DVD, but users must purchase Qflix-enabled equipment, like software, burners, and DVDs.

The following month, Sonic partnered with CinemaNow to let Qflix users purchase and burn CinemaNow content. Monday’s Dell announcement expands on that arrangement.

The Dell Qflix DVD burner comes with software downloads for Roxio Venue and CinemaNow, a USB cable and two Qflix-enabled, recordable DVDs. Users must use Qflix-enabled DVDs to burn CinemaNow content; additional DVDs will be available from qflix.com/getitnow in the next few days, according to a spokesman.

“The cost will be comparable to premium media″ or about $1 per disc, he said.

At this point, only 100 CinemaNow movies are available through this offer, but that number will be “ramping up to thousands by year’s end,” the spokesman said. Movies will cost about $10.

Adding Roxio Media Creator, which retails for about $100, will allow the Qflix drive to also burn photos, audio, and personal video, according to Sonic.

Get the rest of this story on pcmag.com.

Original post by Chloe Albanesius

As I remember it was the great philosopher Roberto Duran who once exclaimed, “No mas. No mas.” Is it time to follow Roberto’s advice or are we still in need of additional flash storage? No need to answer just yet because ready-or-not here comes SanDisk doubling CF capacity to 32GB with their Extreme III CompactFlash.

I was all set to explain how 32 GB is much too much free space to carry in your pocket until I thought back to my first hard drive–40Mb. That’s not a typo! And that 40Mb was on a system which replaced a computer with no hard drive, just a floppy. It seemed like a lot of room at the time just as the 32GB CompactFlash does now. Don’t be fooled. Build it and they will come. Though SanDisk was thinking pros when they designed the Extreme III it’s mere availability will undoubtedly affect what comes down the pipe for home shooters. I suppose this is living proof you can never have enough closet space.

If CompactFlash means still photography to you, it’s time to think outside the box. CompactFlash and its pocket size format siblings are now robust enough to replace videotape in high end applications. 32 GB means over 80 minutes of 100 Mbps, 10-bit, 4:2:2 HD video. Until now that was primarily a job for tape whose use brought all the problems associated with mechanical transports. SanDisk touts their temperature specs (minus 13&#176F to 185&#176F) because it’s a simple way of pounding home, “We’re not tape.” Trading tape for a card means camcorders are simpler, more climate tolerant and (the real deal maker) the video is randomly accessible at every step of the process!

As nice as 32GB is this would be a Pyrrhic victory for SanDisk without fast transfer speeds. Imagine sitting through a 32GB transfer at the original CF spec 1x or 150KB/s This new Extreme III CompactFlash has a 30MB/s (200x) read and write speed. That is not SanDisk’s fastest CF. They already have smaller, more expensive CompactFlash units burning at 45MB/s. It’s just the first time this much speed has been paired with this much storage.

Breakthrough technology doesn’t come cheap… well it doesn’t come cheap yet. This 32GB CF, scheduled to go on sale in October, lists at $299. Be prepared to need more archive space too!

Original post by Geoff Fox