IHS iSuppli reports the global HDD market reaches "record revenues" in Q1 2012-- $9.6 billion, thanks to higher average selling prices following the October 2011 Thailand floods.

The industry high Q1 2012 revenues beat the previous record of $9.3bn from Q1 2010.

Shipments for the quarter reach 145 million units-- still down from pre-flood Q3 2011 shipments of 174m units. However average selling prices are much higher, being $66.28 compared to Q3 2011 prices of $51.49.

The analyst estimates Continue reading...

The Serial ATA International Organisation (SATA-IO) announces a new Universal Storage Module (USM) standard-- USM Slim, a thinner specification ideal for ultrabooks, tablets and "other mobile devices."

Part of the SATA 3.2 Revision, USM Slim trims the port to 9mm (down from 14.5mm) in order to allow integration with thinner devices.

The SATA interface supports transfer speeds of up to 6GB/s, providing HDD levels of speed and reliability.

Seagate is already shipping a 500GB Slim external HDD based Continue reading...

In a bid to boost both consumer and cloud storage businesses Seagate buys 65% of France-based LaCie, with a deal that values LaCie at around $186 million.

LaCie consumer and SMB storage products include USB HDDs, NAS, RAID appliances and optical appliances. It also has a cloud storage service (Wuala) and a strong presence in Apple-related storage.

The purchase also represents a move towards more international waters for the California-based Seagate-- unlike Seagate, Lacie is successful in the Continue reading...

Did you know Seagate CEO Steve Luczo has a tattoo on his left ring finger? That's one fact one can learn from a recent Forbes interview, with other topics including the aftermath of the Thailand floods, flash memory and opportunities in the cloud...

Following the Thailand floodings, Luczo says the industry is rebuilding "for the future," and predicts the market will soon reach pre-flood levels (170-180 million units monthly)-- even if Luczo insists the industry is not about units ("the obsession about units is ridiculous") but storage capacity.

Petabytes, in other words.

Commenting on the recent Western Digital purchase of Hitachi GST, Luczo says WD did it "to get the enterprise business," a segment Hitachi is strong at.

When it comes to flash memory, Luczo says it "is a complementary technology, it’s not a competitive technology," and the future will mostly lead to hybrid drives as a compromise between performance, capacity and pricing.

If you are constantly looking for ways to pass on heavy video files or client documents, the race is on for Cloud Storage. Dropbox may be the leader in offering free storage but others want to jump in.

BitCasa recently won venture capital funding for its concept: “Infinite Storage on Your Desktop.” It’s only in Beta, but you can try it for free using our link below.

Go DropBox (free)

Go BitCasa (free)

Samsung announces microSD cards supporting the Ultra High Speed Class 1 (UHS-1) memory card interface, with 16GB cards reaching maximum sequential read speeds of up to 80 MB/s.

The UHS-1 interface is ideal for LTE (Long Term Evolution) smartphones and tablets, allowing high-quality image and video playback directly from memory cards.

Currently only SDXC and SDHC cards designed for pro-camera use carry the UHS-1 designation.

Samsung promises microSD cards carrying the interface will also be available Continue reading...

Following a difficult 2011 due to massive natural disasters, WW HDD shipments should see some growth in 2012-- according to IDC 2012 HDD shipments will grow by 7.7% Y-o-Y and show a CAGR of 9.6% for the 2011-2016 period.

In comparison, 2011 shipments were down by -4.5% Y-o-Y as floodings caused production to slow down to a crawl.

IDC also expects 2012 Y-o-Y HDD revenue growth to exceed shipment growth (a precedent for the industry) before revenues total $50bn in 2016, with a 2011-2016 CAGR of 8.6%-- at least if one assumes industry achieves success with hybrid SSDs.

Seagate achieves the HDD storage density milestone of 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) pers square inch using Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), an achievement it compares to the number of stars in the Milky Way.

As the company puts it "the bits within a square inch of disk space, at the new milestone, far outnumber stars in the Milky Way, which astronomers put between 200 billion and 400 billion."

The data density reached is 55% higher than the current area density ceiling of 620 gigabits per Continue reading...