Storage > Flash MemoryEssentials

SanDisk has announced its 16GB microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro (M2) memory cards for use in mobile phones and other portable devices.

Intel has started shipping new solid-state flash drives designed for servers, workstations and storage devices. Intel announced the move Wednesday with Sun, which pledged to deliver storage products using Intel's flash technology.

IBM has claimed a major breakthrough in flash storage, with a research project that's delivering data transfer speeds of more than 1 million input/output operations per second, two and a half times faster than the industry's fastest disk storage.

Record companies are scrambling to find new ways to distribute music in the face of declining music sales. The latest is slotMusic, a microSD card containing music in MP3 format without DRM (digital rights management), playable on pocket devices such as mobile phones.

The popularity of low-cost PCs around the world is driving "explosive growth" for SSDs (small capacity solid state drives), Samsung said Wednesday as it announced three new models of the device.

Solid-state drives are fast becoming popular replacements for hard drives, especially in laptops, but experts caution that SSDs aren't as secure as commonly thought.

Intel, STMicroelectronics and investment firm Francisco Partners LP Monday closed a deal to create an independent flash memory chip business.

Corsair claims its new 16GB high-performance "GT" Flash Voyager is the fastest USB flash drive made. Although this is a bold claim, my tests showed it's not marketing hype. But there are caveats, so read on.

Stec this week unveiled its first 1-inch solid-state drive, which is designed to enhance the performance and add capacity to ultra-mobile PCs, blade servers and small portable devices. The 32GB Mach4 NAND memory drive costs US$45 and will be in production by the end of May.

Despite what its backers say are considerable performance advantages over traditional hard-disk drives, solid-state drive technology is still too costly and unreliable for use in large corporate data centers, according to users at Computerworld's Storage Networking World Conference in the US this week.