storage - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• OCZ's new Agility SSD is true to its name

  OCZ has had its share of problems out of the gate with its low-end, consumer solid-state disk drive, the Apex Series SATA II. But its most recent economy SSD, the Agility Series SATA II 2.5-in., appears to be a successful effort to correct old problems with fresh technology. The Agility has ample cache to boost write performance and, most important, uses a higher-end controller. Yet it is only slightly more expensive than the Apex, which is still being sold.

• Review: Hard disk vs. solid-state drive -- is an SSD worth the money?

  Solid-state disk (SSD) drives are all the rage among techies. The drives use non-volatile NAND flash memory, meaning there are no moving parts. Because there is no actuator arm and read/write head that must seek out data on a platter like on a hard disk drive (HDD), they are faster in reading and, in most cases, writing data.

• HP uses outside air, big fans, 12-foot raised floor to cool servers

  Just off the North Sea coast in the United Kingdom, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&amp;articleId=9085019">EDS unit</a> has built a data center that largely relies on cold sea air to keep servers chilled and -- by doing so -- cut the center's cooling power needs in half.

• SpaceSniffer identifies hard drive hogs

  "Where did all my space go?" This question has been asked by every computer user since the days of the 5.25" floppy (probably since the days of the ENIAC), and SpaceSniffer is a fast, free, easy, way to answer it. While SpaceSniffer in itself does nothing to reclaim space, it does provide you with a very good overview of what's occupying the nether reaches of your hard disk.

• Lost hard drive and other government data blunders

  The U.S. government says it's lost - yes, lost - an entire hard drive full of sensitive data. The external drive, stored at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, held personal data from the Clinton era, including information about White House staff and visitors and electronic storage tapes from the Executive Office of the President.

• SSD performance -- is a slowdown inevitable?

  The recent revelation that Intel Corp.'s consumer-class solid-state disk (SSD) drives suffer from fragmentation that can cause a significant performance degradation raises the question: Do all SSDs slow down with use over time?

• What your hard drive will look like in five years

  As solid-state disk (SSD) technology closes in on hard-disk drive (HDD) capacity and price, experts say it may not be long before spinning disks are a thing of the past and a computer's storage resides in flash memory on the motherboard.

• 10 new year's resolutions for your business

  We know: You mean to do all kinds of things to keep your IT infrastructure in peak condition, but when the office gets busy, things fall through the cracks. The problems won't go away on their own, though. If you need help compiling a list of what you have to accomplish, here are our top ten New Year's resolutions that you can implement to get your business in tip-top shape.

• 10 tips to preserve data for the long haul

  The growth of digital data is threatening to spiral out of control. More than 452 exabytes of information have been created and replicated this year -- an amount higher than the world's available storage capacity, according to IDC.

• Seven Lessons That SMBs Can Learn from Big IT

  Just because you don't have a large enterprise doesn't mean you can't run your IT operation like the big guys. Here are seven ways to help your SMB--a small or medium-size business--implement some of the lessons big IT operations have learned over the years. Using these tips, you should be able to improve productivity, cut costs, and keep your business running smoothly.