The engineers over at Toshiba have announced the first 250GB 1.8″ hard drives:

IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 24, 2007– Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), the industry pioneer in small form factor hard disk drives (HDDs), today announced expansion of its market-leading 1.8-inch lineup with the MKxx29GSG series which include three new high-capacity, high performance Serial ATA HDDs for mobile PC applications, including the industry’s first 250GB 1.8-inch HDD.

You can read the entire press release here.

These 1.8″ drives are the size that are inside iPods that have a hard drive, and are also used in the new digital video cameras that use a hard drive rather than tapes or DVDs.  These 1.8″ form factor hard drives are also being used in the ultra-portable notebook segment.

We have performed data recovery on many of these smaller Toshiba hard drives, both from Apple iPods and cameras from Sony, JVC and Panasonic.  If you need your music or irreplaceable movies recovered from one of these hard drives, give us a call; we are happy to work with you to get your data recovered as quickly as possible.  You can speak to an experienced Sector Logics data recovery engineer any time at 1-866-804-1914, or visit www.sectorlogics.com for more information.

We have moved into our new facilities and are up and running!

Denver, CO (PRWEB) March 17th, 2008 — Today, Sector Logics Data Recovery announced the opening of their new hard drive data recovery facility at 7220 West Jefferson Avenue in Lakewood, Colorado. “We are excited to move into the new facility and remain in the Denver area,” said Gary Johnson, President of Sector Logics. “Both our clients and employees will benefit from the upgrades to the offices and laboratories.”

You can read our full press release here.

We have already made some enhancements in how we process recovery jobs, and we have shortened our turnaround times quite a bit by streamlining our in-house tracking system.  Going forward, we will be continuing to upgrade our systems and tools to provide even faster service while still retaining our great service and low prices.

If you need hard drive data recovery, please do not hesitate to give us a call; we are always happy to speak with our clients, and we try to answer any questions you may have as fully as we can.

Hard drive manufacturer Fujitsu announced they are releasing new 2.5″ hard drives with 320GB of capacity and a 7200RPM spindle speed.  From Fujitsu’s press release:

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., a leading supplier of innovative computer products including hard disk drives, peripherals and biometric security solutions, today announced the release of its 2.5-inch 320GB 7200RPM SATA hard disk drive (HDD), its second-generation high capacity 7200RPM SATA drive. By doubling storage capacity, increasing data throughput, and keeping power consumption low, Fujitsu has created a 2.5-inch HDD that rivals the performance of traditional 3.5-inch form factor desktop HDDs.

You can see the rest of the press release here.

These new 7200RPM drives will give a nice performance boost over the current crop of 5400RPM models, and are a good choice for anyone running disk-intensive programs on their laptop.  The higher speed will also make the operating system respond quicker, and Vista users should see a nice increase in responsiveness compared to a 5400RPM hard drive.

Hard drive manufacturer Hitachi announced today they are releasing new 320GB capacity TravelStar hard drives usable in both laptops and high density server applications.

Bolstering Hitachi’s position as the segment and technology leader in 2.5-inch hard drives, the company today announced volume shipment of new 5,400 RPM notebook hard drives with a maximum available capacity of 320GB. Designed to support the multi-tasking needs of consumers and commercial users balancing mobile computing and movies, music, photos and games on-the-go, the Travelstar™ 5K320 delivers the right capacity and performance options to meet the needs of IT and consumer electronics manufacturers. 

You can read the full press release here (Under “Press Releases” at the bottom of the page).

These new 320GB drives look like the next affordable size upgrade for laptops, after the 250GB drives.  The newly announced 500GB drives are still a few months away, and will likely command a premium price into 2009.  However, if you are trying to get the best performance from a new laptop drive, the available 7200RPM models are currently only available in smaller capacities.

The folks over at Anandtech have posted some early test results of the new Caviar SE16 320GB hard drive from Western Digital.  This latest revision gets 320GB onto a single platter, rather than the pair of 160GB platters in the older model.

Western Digital has been quiet on the performance front the past several months as they have placed an emphasis on their GreenPower family of products that we recently reviewed.  However, they have been busily working on a new line-up of Caviar SE16 drives that feature their new 320GB per-platter technology. 

You can read the rest of their review here.

The Anandtech review does mention that you need to be careful when ordering these drives, since the part number is the same as the older model with two platters, but they provide some information on how to track down the right one.

If you need yet more storage for your laptop, Fujitsu is bringing out a 500GB 2.5″ hard drive in May 2008:

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., a leading supplier of innovative computer products including hard disk drives, peripherals and biometric security solutions, today announced the release of its 2.5” 500GB¹ 4200RPM SATA hard disk drive (HDD), the fourth-generation high capacity 4200RPM SATA drive. The MHZ2 BT series was designed in response to the growing need for HDDs in the 2.5” form factor that can support high volume storage for products such as desktop PCs, notebooks, digital video recorders (DVR), and external hard drives.

You can read the entire press release from Fujitsu here.

Although this is only a 4200RPM drive, the SATA II interface will help transfer rates.  Will we see a 1TB 2.5″ drive soon?  Maybe in 2009…

Today’s announcement by Toshiba that they will phase out production of HD-DVD players effectively puts an end to the competition between the two hi-definition formats:

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. “While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

 Now that it appears the Blu-ray format will capture the market, hopefully the prices on the burners and media will quickly come down.  From a data backup perspective, Blu-ray is a better choice than HD-DVD, since the Blu-ray disks hold 25GB of data per layer.  As the prices drop, Blu-ray will finally become a viable alternative to standard DVD for backing up large amounts of data, and this should help users of larger external hard drives find a faster way to preserve their files.

To help provide a central source for news and information about data recovery and storage technology, we’ve created the Sector Logics InfoCenter.  In addition to links to the latest storage industry news and announcements, the InfoCenter will include articles by Sector Logics staff about various aspects of the data recovery process and industry.