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Intel Ships Fastest Enterprise-Class SSD

Posted on October 20, 2008 9:13 AM by Rob Williams

Intel unveiled an interesting product last week that I somehow overlooked completely, but it's definitely cool enough to mention now. Solid-State Disks are nothing new and we've talked about them a hundred times in the past, but the company's X-25E Extreme SSD becomes (from what I know), the fastest-performing drive on the market, and yes, it will cost you.

When Intel released their MLC-based X-25M last month, jaws dropped because no one knew that MLC was capable of such extreme speeds, and it helped breath new life into the memory type. SLC memory is better in almost every way over MLC. It's faster, more durable and has a lower power consumption. The downside is that SLC is so expensive, the overall density of any equipped SSD will be lacking.

So what does it bring to the X-25E Extreme? Well, it shares the same Read speed as the X-25M, at 250MB/s, but blasts the Write speed up to 170MB/s, from 70MB/s. Its performance is unbeatable, but the same can't be said for the price, at $695 in quantities of 1,000 for the 32GB model. 64GB models are en route, but it's safe to say the demand at first will be low, and this is exclusively a workstation/server product. It's still undoubtedly fun to ogle over, though.

Intel achieves this breakthrough performance through innovations such as 10-channel NAND architecture with Native Command Queuing, proprietary controller and firmware efficient in advanced wear-leveling and low write amplification. The 32GB X25-E is capable of writing up to 4 petabytes (PB) of data over three-year period (3.7 TB/day), and double that for the 64GB version - delivering outstanding data reliability.

Source: Intel Press Release


OCZ Releases First Tri-Channel Memory Kit

Posted on October 20, 2008 8:41 AM by Rob Williams

With Core i7 right around the corner (~one month for launch), we'd expect that we would be seeing lot of specialized memory kits, CPU coolers and motherboards being announced, but that's not the case at all. It actually seems a little sketchy right now. Not a single memory vendor I've spoken to has product en route to retail, but some are very close, including OCZ.

The Sunnyvale company has become the first vendor to announce their tri-channel kits, and we might be able to see them hit retail even before X58 becomes official. The company is offering three kits in total, with 3GB and 6GB parts for each. The lowest-end kit isn't low-end at all in terms of frequency, at DDR3-1333, but those include rather high latencies of 9-9-9-20.

Moving up we find a DDR3-1600 kit with 8-8-8-24 timings, which is going to be typical of launch kits with this frequency. Probably the most appealing kit would be the DDR3-1333 Platinum, with latencies of 7-7-7-20. All three kits operate at X58's highest recommend memory voltage of 1.65v. Pricing is currently unknown, and it's really too early to speculate.

"OCZ engineered these 3GB and 6GB kits specifically for Intel's imminent platform," commented Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology Development at OCZ Technology. "By using special-screened, low voltage-capable ICs, these modules are the perfect complement for the Intel® X58 Chipset to deliver the maximum performance by enabling low latency settings and higher system frequency."

Source: OCZ Press Release


Restoring Failed or Deleted Partitions with TestDisk

Posted on October 20, 2008 8:19 AM by Rob Williams

Error screens are a common part of computing, as we've discussed before, but there is one type of "error" that no one ever hopes to get. One so severe, you actually manage to lose your breath at the first sight. I'm of course talking about an error related to data loss, and that's something I almost experienced on Friday.

Although I'm adamant about pushing users to backup their machines, I recently restructured my NAS from a RAID 0 to a RAID 1 (ironically, for better security), which means some things I used to have backed up, were no longer. Late Thursday night, I had boot into Windows in order to create a few graphs for today's review of Gigabyte's EP45-EXTREME, when I realized I left the result's file in Linux. In a brilliant move, I decided to Google an application used to read ext3 partitions, and I can certainly say now... I wish I hadn't.

The program I used was ext2 IFS, and while it did properly read all the partitions on my primary drive, it somehow took it upon itself to ruin the partitioning table of the secondary, which was a 750GB drive with 630GB used. I had one of those breathless moments... not because I was entirely screwed, but because restoring a hard drive so large is an absolute chore. There was also a fair amount of non-important data that I would have liked to retain.

After battling with a few Windows applications to restore some data, I got nowhere. Then via the Gentoo forums, I was recommended TestDisk, an application I've used before, but manage to keep forgetting about. I'm pleased to say that this completely free application worked wonders, and I was able to keep more than 99% worth of my data, unharmed. I did lose 38 FLAC files and two DVD rips, but those are easily replaced by digging the discs back out of the closet.

Simply put, TestDisk is free, powerful and managed to save me once again. If you run into an issue with partitioning, download this first to see where you can get. It's going to prove more reliable than most GUI applications you'll find for Windows or any other OS... even products that cost hundreds of dollars. You can download TestDisk for any OS, or use it with the SystemRescue CD, which is the route I'd recommend. If it's not a part of your current PC fixit toolbox... it sure should be.

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

Source: TestDisk Homepage


Tech Roundup - October 20, 2008

Posted on October 20, 2008 2:00 AM by Rob Williams

Thanks to a sweet computer issue (sarcasm) I ran into on Thursday evening (which I explain more about in an above post), I was unable to post a roundup for Friday since my e-mail client was on the problematic PC. So, today we'll have a super-mega-awesome roundup to make up for the lost day!


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