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Maria Dumitrescu

CRN 10256

Chapter 3

July 5, 2010

                                           Storage Devices and Manufacturers

Toshiba is a powerful company in the industry of computer manufacturing, with

manufacturing and development locations spread out worldwide, in Japan, China, Europe,

United States, Thailand, and the Philippines. Toshiba’s Storage Device Division (SDD) offers a

multitude of external hard drives, enterprise hard drives, PC and notebook hard drives, as well

as other specialty products, such as hard drives for the automotive industry, or hard drives for

consumer electronics. Toshiba is the leader in the manufacture of small form factor disk drives

(HDD), delivering the 2.5-Inch HDD in 1985, and the first company to manufacture the 1.8-

Inch HDD. The company is also one of the pioneers of PMR, perpendicular magnetic recording

that, unlike the previously used longitudinal recording, enables the bits to be closer together,

resulting in a better performance. Among Toshiba’s external hard drives, the newly developed

Canvio External Hard Drive can pack up to 1TB of storage capacity, weighs approximately 6

ounces, and features many backup functions. Enterprise Hard Disk Drives come in a variety

of sizes. Both of the 3.5-Inch and the 2.5-Inch categories can hold up to 600 GB, use PMR,

and come mostly with SAS interface, although Fibre Channel, and SCSI are also available for

network storage. PC and Notebook Hard Drives come in 2.5-Inch and 1.8-Inch, and a variety of

interfaces.

An interesting product in my opinion is the MKxx59GSM Series Hard Disk Drive that

can hold 750 GB and 1TB. While a 2.5-Inch size, its storage capacity fits the standards for the

bigger size category of 3.5-Inch hard drives. Although the Rotational Speed of 5,400 RPM and

the Average Seek Time of 12 ms could be improved, the device can support many applications

because of its high storage capacity. It also features a low power consumption technology,

and the Advanced Sector Format Technology, meant to improve the device’s error correcting

feature. The interface used by this product is SATA, which is faster and more efficient than the

previously uses parallel ATA.

LG is another manufacturer that successfully produces storage devices. With 114

locations worlwide, LG prides itself to have manufactured at one time the highest speed bluray

drive, called the BD300 that had since been discontinued. The company manufactures an

array of products, like mobiles, display products, innovative appliances, as well as digital media

products. According to the company’s website, LG has won numerous awards and had been the

first in many areas, including the development of a Blu Ray Player that Supports the World’s

First inernet VoD, in 2008.

One of my favorite optical media products is the CH10LS20 Super Multi Blue Rewriter.

Priced at $170.00, it is an internal rewriter that uses the SATA interface. Like most Blu Ray

devices, it is downward-compatible, being able to support most discs, including Blu-ray, DC-R,

CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW. It also supports dual layer discs and has a large buffer

memory of 4 MB. The CH10LS20 also features the innovative LightScribe Label Creation

that the consumer can use to label discs, and it can be used with Windows 7, Windows Vista,

and Windows XP to listen, view, and burn all types of discs. Overall, it is a reasonably priced

product that can be used for many tasks at a reasonably fast speed.

One of the biggest company specialized in flash memory storage technology is SanDisk.

With more than 240,000 retail stores worldwide, the company provides an array of exciting

products suitable for cameras, phones, and computers. Some of the flash cards formats developed

by the company are CompactFlash, SD, miniSD, microSD, MultiMediaCard, as well as USB

flash drives. Consumer products include memory cards for digital cameras, DSLR cards,

camcorder cards, gaming cards, mobile memory and notebook cards, as well as computing

products, music and video players, and solid state drives.

SanDisk features two types of USB flash drives: the Core Module and the Clear Case

UFD. I believe that the second product appears to be the better of the two although they are

equally attractive from a technological point of view and both can hold up to 16GB. The

difference comes in the design and functionality, the Clear Case also featuring a clear silicone

case that protects and insulates, as well as a key ring hole to provide for easier portability. The

product has a variety of uses, including the transfer and backup of data. It is USB 2.0 compatible

and therefore can be used with most computers today.

 

Bibliography

Essay

Linux

Ram

Storage