Developages - Development and Technology Blog

paulkoan writes “I have been using ReiserFS for my file system across a few servers for some time now (follow the link below for details of my experience). I can’t foresee the future of ReiserFS, but if I’m going to have to migrate as support diminishes, I’d like to begin that process now. My criteria are: in-kernel support, shrinkable, and has good recovery when the file system is not closed properly. That shrinkable requirement precludes a lot of options. What’s a good replacement for ReiserFS?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

MojoKid writes “Solid State Drive technology is set to turn the storage industry on its ear — eventually. It’s just a matter of time. When you consider the intrinsic benefits of anything built on solid-state technology versus anything mechanical, it doesn’t take a degree in physics to understand the obvious advantages. However, as with any new technology, things take time to mature and the current batch of SSDs on the market do have some caveats and shortcomings, especially when it comes to write performance. This full performance review and showcase of four different Solid State Disks, two MLC-based and two SLC-based, gives a good perspective of where SSDs currently are strong and where they’re not. OCZ, Mtron and Super Talent drives are tested here but Intel’s much anticipated offering hasn’t arrived to market just yet.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

CHAMELEON_D_H writes “For some time, now I’ve been working on a short, geek/nerd oriented, animation. It’s nearing completion, and I’m starting to look for a method to share it with the anyone willing to spare a minute. There are dozens of video sharing and streaming sites out there, making my choice very difficult to make. Looking for the best possible video and audio quality, while still having vast OS and browser compatibility leaves me dumbfounded. Having a download link would be a great bonus. Youtube is the default and most common choice, but has mediocre video quality and resolution. DivX Web Player has astounding quality, but requires users to download DivX’s plugin and forces me to find hosting or purchase more bandwidth, as they no longer serve videos via stage6. Do Slashdotters have any experience with sharing or uploading videos? Problems you’ve encountered? What do your eyes say about different streaming video sites?”

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Original post by timothy

schliz writes “Samsung expects Sony’s Blu-ray technology to be superseded within five years, despite winning the high-definition format war in February.” Maybe that means five years from now will be the perfect time to stock up on cheap Blu-ray disks and equipment.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

USB Flash drives are so common these days that it can be hard to differentiate one from the other. After all, just how many 2GB Flash drives from different vendors are out there? And, in the end, they are just used for storing stuff so there’s not a whole lot of marketing potential to play with. So, one day, someone at PNY had a brain wave: “I know, we’ll put a movie on the stick to make it stand out from the crowd. Hmm, now which one? Deep Throat? Er, maybe not Kramer Vs Kramer? Too sad, possibility of customers killing themselves. Madonna’s Swept Away? Hahahahahahahahahahaha I know: Ghostbusters!”And that’s what they did. With the 25-year anniversary of the classic ghouls and ghosts comedy coming next year, PNY have teamed up with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to deliver the first full-length movie on a USB stick, ready to play on a PC or laptop. The 2GB USB stick can handle 12 hours of video, 33 hours of music and over 1,000 photos - all without deleting Bill Murray & Co, who are busy keeping New York safe from the Underworld. Available from Argos for £30.-Martin Lynch USB movies gadget

Original post by nafiz

We haven’t seen any stupid inventions for oooh… at least ten minutes… so thought it important to remind you that the crackpots are still out there and still manufacturing mindless tat. This one comes courtesy of whichever overpaid weirdo sits around the house all day picking up random objects and jamming USB drives into them. The latest monstrosity comes in the form of a teddy bear, whose only redeeming feature seems to be that you get to rip its head off to reveal the USB port before you plug it in. It’s only available in 1GB capacities, which just seems to add to the pointlessness factor, though it is USB 2.0 compatible AND backward compatible to USB1.1 (woop!). If for some reason you think this would make a hilarious gift for someone special, you can order it from the aptly named USB Geek from the link below for $17 (about £9). - Paul Lester [USBGeek] USB storage novelty

Original post by nafiz

kgagne writes “While solid state disk drives can vastly improve random read performance and are perfectly suited to most mobile devices, many operations are sequential in laptops and desktops and involve writes where SSDs most often lose to magnetic hard disk drives in performance. While introducing multi-channel flash memory controllers and interleaving the NAND flash chips increases performance, it will still be about two years before the cost versus benefit ratio will make sense to install SSD in your laptop or desktop PC, according to a Computerworld story. ‘I think you need to get to 128GB for around $200, and that’s going to happen around 2010. Also, the industry needs to effectively communicate why consumers or enterprise users should pay more for less storage,” says Joseph Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner Inc.’”

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Original post by timothy

AlHunt writes “I’ve been tasked with finding a way to bury digitally stored photographs in a small underground time capsule to be opened in 25 years. It looks like we’ll be using a steel vessel, welded closed. I’ve thought of CDs, DVDs, a hard drive, or a thumb drive — but they all have drawbacks, not the least of which is outdated technology 25 years from now. Maybe I’ll put a CD and a CD-ROM drive in the capsule and hope that the IDE interface is still around in 25 years? Ideas and feedback will be appreciated.”

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Original post by timothy

Hugh Pickens writes “Kevin Kelly has an interesting post about an archive designed with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years to serve future generations as a modern Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta disk contains analog ‘human-readable’ scans of scripts, text, and diagrams using nickel deposited on an etched silicon disk and includes 15,000 microetched pages of language documentation in 1,500 different languages, including versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language, and pronunciation guides. Produced by the Long Now Foundation, the plan is to replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world in nondescript locations so at least one will survive their 2,000-year lifespan. ‘This is one of the most fascinating objects on earth,’ says Oliver Wilke. ‘If we found one of these things 2,000 years ago, with all the languages of the time, it would be among our most priceless artifacts. I feel a high responsibility for preserving it for future generations.’”

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Original post by timothy

Mad Russian designer Art Lebedev has been a busy boy in recent months. After taking a lifetime to finally get his signature Optimus Maximus OLED keyboard from concept to product, these days you can’t slow him down. In recent months we’ve had the Optimus Pultius keypad and the decidedly odd Plastinkus mini digital DJ deck and, today, we have his folder-shaped Folderix USB Drives. You couldn’t really get a more literal storage metaphor than the ‘folder’ shape and the sleek, laser-etched aluminium shells come in blue, purple and yellow. These are 4GB Flash drives and they cost around £28 apiece. Get one while you’re saving for the £790 [*cough* *choke*] Optimus Maximus keyboard. Find the drives here.-Martin Lynch [Electronista] gadgets USB design

Original post by nafiz

MrKaos writes “Western digital seems to be preparing for the onslaught of SSD drives set to impact its market by developing a 20,000 rpm hard drive. Similar to the VelociRaptor line of drives, the new drives are speculated to be offering lower capacity as a tradeoff for faster seek and write times.” This report out of Taipei is the only word on the rumored WD 20K drive. It’s said to be a 2.5″ drive in a 3.5″ enclosure, for efficiency of cooling — the arrangement the Register enjoyed poking fun at when the 10K drive was upgraded last month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

coondoggie brings us this NetworkWorld article, which begins: “In the ever-growing desire to produce smaller, less costly, yet more powerful and faster computers and storage devices, researchers today said they are looking at a way to use self-growing fabrics that will let manufacturers build nano-sized high resolution semiconductors and arrays to answer that craving. Researchers at the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) at the University of Wisconsin — Madison have come up with a method that uses existing technology to combine the lithography techniques traditionally used to pattern microelectronics with novel self-assembling materials known as block copolymers, researchers said. When combined with a lithographically patterned surface, the block copolymers’ long molecular chains spontaneously assemble into the designated arrangements.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Soulskill

The next generation of Micron Solid State Drives (SSDs) are going to be super-fast compared to the already very fast SSDs out there. The company has announced that the new P200 RealSSD (servers) and RealSSD C200 (laptops) drives will offer read speeds of up to 250MB/sec. Write speed for the server-oriented P200, which uses single-level cell (SLC) NAND technology, is rated at ‘up to 250MB/sec’ too. Even so, the read/write speeds of 250MB/sec and 100MB/sec for the laptop C200 drives are blistering considering, for instance, that the 128GB SSDs recently announced by Samsung boast read/write speeds of 90MB/sec and 70MB/sec, respectively. The RealSSD C200 drives will be available in 2.5in and 1.8in form factors. The 2.5in C200 will be offered in densities of up to 256GB while the 1.8in will come in capacities ranging from 32GB to 128GB. Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron commented: “We are seeing SSD interest in a variety of applications where historically hard disk drives have reigned. For many, the most logical place is in notebook computers, but there is incredible value for SSDs in enterprise server systems. With our C200 [laptop] products, we are providing a balanced price to performance solution specifically designed for notebook applications by utilising MLC NAND technology and highly optimised NAND management algorithms.” The C200 drives are sampling now with mass production expected in Q4.-Martin Lynch news storage memory SSD

Original post by nafiz

Nintendo, the maker of the market-leading Wii videogame console, has reportedly co-signed for a patent on holographic storage and may be gearing up for development of this ultra high-capacity storage concept.

Nintendo signed the patent with Inphase Technologies, but bringing holographic storage to market won’t be easy. (Inphase has been at this a looong time.)

Nintendo, one of the world’s top three videogame console and handheld device makers, apparently is preparing to invest some big money into developing holographic storage.

A patent for holographic storage was recently co-signed by the Japanese entertainment hardware and software company, which is a clear indication that the console manufacturer is investigating new methods of data storage for future projects. (And that a leap in storage capacity!)

Holographic storage is a sector of the solid-state disk market with interesting potential, but development appears to have come to a plateau; only a couple of companies have been working on trying to bring it to market.

Inphase Technologies is by far the largest single developer of holographic storage, but it has recently suffered some setbacks and had been laying off staff, according to industry insiders.

Inphase and Nintendo filed jointly for the patent in March 2007. The patent describes the use of “miniature flexure-based scanners for angle multiplexing” as the key component in developing holographic storage. The patent was issued in February by the U.S. Patent Office.

Get more at eWeek.

Tags: holographic storage, inphase technologies, nintendo, wii

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: HDTV, Storage

Now here’s a rate of progress we could get used to. Nary a month after Pioneer trumpeted a 400GB Blu-ray Disc, out pops another press release from the firm boasting about a 500 gigger with a score of layers. Based on research at its Tokyo headquarters, specifications have been drafted for an incredibly capacious 500GB BD. Granted, this very company already had plans for a 500GB optical disc nearly four years ago, but there’s no time like the present to make this stuff a reality, right?

[Via TrustedReviews, thanks xdragon]

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Original post by Darren Murph