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Samsung Costume hard drive concept appeals to the ladies

Not that Samsung is actually looking to pump this out into beauty salons worldwide, but there stands at least a mild chance that sophisticated females shopping for new compacts would also spring for some storage. Joongoo Lee’s Costume is a sleek, deliberately styled 2.5-inch external hard drive that looks entirely at home mixed in with various makeup components. Additionally, the bundled dock is equally sexy, though we can only hope there’s a USB 2.0 port somewhere on this thing. Though this is just a concept, we wouldn’t put it past Samsung to turn into a reality — after all, it did just produce pink and blue BlackJack IIs. Your soft side is showing, Sammy.

[Via PCLaunches]

Power Pack 1 and HP’s add-ons make Windows Home Server a real grouch

If you’ve experienced some shockingly slow results from your Windows Home Server-based unit, we’ve one question for you: do you have Power Pack 1 and the HP add-ons installed? If so, you may not be alone in your frustrations. Apparently a number of users have seen dramatic slowdowns that have rendered their WHS devices nearly unusable. It seems that all the “bloatware” really takes a toll, as the hard drives are constantly pounded and console menus take ages (minutes, to be more precise) to appear. According to Within Windows, the only real solutions are to install more RAM and / or tweak your pagefile configurations afterwards. Anyone else raging mad about the performance issues? What are you going to do about it?

[Thanks, Bryant]

Infineon CEO wants to sell flagging Qimonda unit… badly

Little known tidbit for those not keenly watching the happenings at Infineon: the firm was forced to write down the value of its Qimonda stake by €1 billion ($1.57 billion) in April. Not surprisingly, Infineon’s head honcho is about ready to rid the company of the flagging unit, making quite a few direct statements in a Germany daily saying as much. For starters, CEO Peter Bauer stated that “a complete sale is possible as is a sale of a minority stake,” and he continued by affirming that it was already “speaking to financial investors and other companies in the industry.” Just in case you had any doubts whatsoever that this cat was serious, he proclaimed that “[the firm] was working with utmost urgency on the question how to close the chapter on Qimonda as quickly as possible.” Unrequited love at its finest.

Kingston sprinkles 16GB models into DataTraveler line, launches DT101

Nothing too fancy from Kingston Technology today, just a couple of more capacious flash drives and an all new one for good measure. For starters, the DataTraveler 400 with MigoSync software and the DT100 are both now available in roomy 16GB flavors. Meanwhile, the DT101 arrives on the scene with security software, capacities up to 8GB and in cyan, pink and yellow hues. Each of the newcomers should be available now, with the 16GB DT400 demanding $196, the 16GB DT100 costing $85 and the DT101 line ranging from $14 to $44.

[Via BIOS Magazine]

Buffalo’s Blu-ray burner hits 8x, BDA says wha?

For what it’s worth, Buffalo just announced the world’s fastest Blu-ray recorder capable of burning through your data at an 8x clip. The only problem is that BDA-approved media maxes out at 6x, assuming you can even find it. Available in Japan starting next month, the external USB 2.0 and eSATA BR-816SU2 and internal SATA BR-816FBS models hit that 8x recording speed on single-layer BD-R media only — 2x for dual-layer BD-R, BD-RE, and LTH BD-R. CDs and DVDs are supported too naturally, with a max 16x burn to DVD±R or 48x/24x for CD-R/RW. Each drive comes bundled with Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 7 suite and are priced at ¥46,700 (about $435) for the external drive or ¥41,000 (about $380) for the internal optical spinner.

[Via BIOS and CDRinf]

Texas Memory breaks records, budgets with blisteringly fast RamSan-440 storage device

Texas Memory has been around longer than most of you readers have been alive (or so we’re told by our resident omniscient overlord), but it’s been quite awhile since it was talked about freely in the same breath as WD, Fujitsu, Samsung, et al. Now, however, the company is making the rounds once more thanks to its “record setting” RamSan-440, which provides between 256GB and 512GB of RAM-based SSD storage, 600,000 IOPS, 4,500MB/sec random sustained external throughput and latency under 15-microseconds. The entire rig arrives in a 90-pound 4U rack-mount enclosure and claims to be “the first SSD to use RAIDed NAND flash memory modules for data backup.” Chances are, you were already bracing to hear a pretty ludicrous figure when it comes to pricing, but $150,000 for the 256GB edition and $275,000 for the 512GB iteration? Please — we’ll take a Lightning GT, thanks.

[Via DailyTech]

Western Digital intros 2.5-inch 10,000RPM VelociRaptor HDD

Western Digital has been flaunting its VelociRaptor for some time now, but the drive you’ve been slamming into towers is now available for low-power, high-performance blade server applications. The 2.5-inch, 10,000RPM enterprise SATA drive (WD3000BLFS) is specially designed to fit snugly within 1U and 2U rack servers, and aside from consuming 35% less power than the previous Raptor drive, this one is available with up to 300GB of capacity. You’ll also find 16MB of cache and a 1.4 million mean time before failure rating, though you won’t be able to procure one until later this month for an undisclosed price.

Hitachi promotional video highlights Tera Era, effects of hallucinogens

We’re not too sure how the advertising director that green lit Hitachi’s bizarro perpendicular recording video is still on staff, but sure enough, he / she has been cut loose again as evidenced by the latest spot. We knew the outfit was pushing this whole “Dawn of the Tera Era” slogan with the introduction of its Deskstar 7K1000.B, but this is just taking things entirely too far. Fair warning: the video hosted after the jump contains cartoon scenes that could easily be used by D.A.R.E. officials looking to keep kids from trying drugs, but somehow we get the impression its just a plug for having lots of (Hitachi-branded) storage space. Hmmph.

[Thanks, Frederick]

Super Talent makes MasterDrive MX SSDs slightly faster

With the prices of SSDs sinking daily, Super Talent is hoping to grab a few eyes by offering faster drives at comparably low price points. According to a data sheet posted up on the firm’s website, its MasterDrive MX line of SSDs now features a maximum read rate of 120MB/sec, while write speeds range between 60MB/sec (15GB and 30GB) and 80MB/sec (60GB and 120GB). Reportedly, the drives used to boast write speeds of 40MB/sec. A minor boost, sure, but a welcome increase all the same.

[Via DailyTech]

SanDisk CEO says Vista “not optimized” for SSDs

SSDs have been quite the hot topic of late, with conflicting power usage reports and free-falling (almost) prices being the two angles most commonly yapped about. Now, however, we have a completely different reason to mention ‘em in passing, as SanDisk’s dutiful CEO let loose some questionable comments during its Q2 2008 earnings call. Noting that Windows Vista would present unique challenges for SSD manufacturers, he stated that “as soon as you get into Vista applications, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk.” Furthermore, he proclaimed that the “next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls,” and finished things up by asserting that “SSD performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs.” It seems all those statements were just used to deflect blame for it being behind schedule, but we’re a bit curious about how it intends on defending said statements with real-world numbers. Hmm?

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