Firm Thinks More Factors Than HDD Shortage Behind Intel's Reduced Q4 Revenue Forecast

Nomura Equity Research, an investment broker, recons that factors other than, and more significant than hard disk drive (HDD) shortage caused due to the recent Thailand floods affecting HDD manufacturing, are behind Intel's reduced Q4 forecast. Earlier this week, Intel shaved off close to a billion dollars from its Q4 Revenue Guidance, leveling the blame on HDD shortages, as HDD is a near-indispensable component in manufacture and assembly of a vast majority of PCs. Nomura Equity Research thinks "weak sell-through" is that other factor.

Hitachi Debuts the Ultrastar C10K900 10,000 RPM Hard Drives

Following yesterday's announcement of two 4TB consumer hard drives, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has today unveiled a little something for the enterprise market, the Ultrastar C10K900 series. This new line includes 300 GB, 450 GB, 600 GB and 900 GB HDDs which feature a 2.5-inch form factor, a SAS (Serial attached SCSI) 6.0 Gbps interface, 64 MB of cache, an average seek times of 3.8 milliseconds, an average latency of 3.0 ms, and an operating/idle power draw of 5.8/3.0 W. A Bulk Data Encryption option will also be available on specific models.

According to Hitachi, its new Ultrastar drives deliver 18% higher sequential and up to 17% higher random performance than the nearest competitor, and are perfect for Tier 1 enterprise networked storage arrays, or for blades and other rack-mounted servers.

The Ultrastar C10K900 hard drives have begun shipping in small quantities but they'll go into volume production in Q1 2012.

Transcend Announces StoreJet Cloud Wireless Portable HDD

Transcend announced the launch of its new StoreJet Cloud Wireless Portable Drive. Featuring small dimensions, long-lasting battery, and capacity of up to 64GB, the portable StoreJet Cloud significantly extends the storage space available on Apple iOS and other Wi-Fi enabled devices. Photos, documents, eBooks, music, and movies are accessed via a dedicated wireless network, providing much-needed freedom from cables.

StoreJet Cloud offers support to the capacity limitations of mobile devices and presents an excellent value alternative to the ongoing expense and coverage demands of Internet storage. By physically storing media with flash-based technology, StoreJet Cloud can provide a further 28 hours of DVD quality movies or 16,000 songs in a small and lightweight design, as well as skip-free playback in an instant. When connected to a computer, StoreJet Cloud acts like any other portable drive. Simply drag and drop files from the computer into personalized folders for straightforward file management.

Kingston Says SSDs Will Get Cheap Enough in 2012

Troubled times are upon the IT industry, or at least the storage segment, but Kingston thinks at least one type of storage device is in for good things starting next year, 2012.

The solid state drive market could reach its green pastures, so to speak, in about nine or ten months.

Though NAND Flash memory isn't all that affordable now, it definitely isn't going to stay so expensive forever.

ORICO Working On Thunderbolt HDD Enclosures

Even as the ecosystem of devices that use Thunderbolt interconnect grows at a snail's pace, there are companies such as ORICO from China that have ideas to take Thunderbolt-attached storage forward. It unveiled CGI sketches of products its working on, 3.5-inch SATA hard drive enclosures.