Storage World

Intel and a group of companies including HP, Microsoft, NEC, and Texas Instruments have begun developing the successor to USB 2.0. The third generation of USB will transfer data at speeds of up to 4.8 gigabits per second, ten times faster than USB 2.0’s 480-megabits-per-second transfer rate. The new standard will be backward-compatible with existing USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices.

According to Intel, the USB 3.0 specification will be designed for low power consumption and improved efficiency. USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed with both copper and optical cable capabilities, so even higher speeds will be possible in the future.

Updates are also planned for the Wireless USB (WUSB) transfer format, which currently operates at the same 480-mbps speed as USB 2.0. A new WUSB 1.1 interconnect format will operate at speeds of up to 1 gbps.

Jeff Ravencraft , Intel’s technology strategist, cites increasing interest in digital music and high-definition video as the main reason for updating the USB standard. Th e group hopes to have a final specification ready by the middle of next year.

Microsoft and Samsung Electronics recently showed a prototype hard drive that can record data while idling, a twist that has the potential to significantly cut power consumption in notebooks.

The trick is that the hard drive contains a 1GB flash-memory chip. Incoming data is directly recorded to the chip. When the chip is close to full, the hard drive wakes up, takes the data, records it, and goes back into idle.

Typically, hard drives rotate, but in the hybrid model, the drive rarely spins only about 30 to 45 seconds every half hour, says Ivan Greenberg, director of strategic marketing for Samsung Semiconductor, a division of Samsung Electronics. The goal is to get it to 30 to 45 seconds per hour.

“The traditional hard drive takes up about 10 to 15 percent of the battery power of your notebook,” Greenberg says. Thus, in a notebook with a 4-hour battery, the hybrid drive could extend battery life by about 36 minutes. The companies also say the drive could help accelerate boot up time.

Serial ATA
The SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) interface is coming to prominence for internal hard drives due to its convenient form factor and technical advantages. SATA carries data on a single thin cable, which creates more room in the chassis and allows for smaller cases. SATA cables are also faster than EIDE (Enhanced Integrated Device Electronics) and can extend to lengths up to 1 meter, providing more flexibility working in cases without disconnecting everything.

Hybrid flash drives
Flash memory, usually found in media cards and USB thumb drives, operates on somewhat different principles. Flash memory, without any moving parts, doesn’t contain platters, heads, or arms. Technically, flash memory devices aren’t hard drives at all, though many people have become accustomed to thinking of any permanent built-in storage as a “hard drive.” Many hybrid hard drives built since 2006, in fact, combine a disk drive with flash memory to reduce power consumption and improve seek times for frequently accessed data.

FireWire and USB 2.0
Until the advent of FireWire (also called IEEE 1394 or i.Link) and second-generation USB, external hard drive storage wasn’t feasible for applications needing fast access to large amounts of data. Now, more and more storage is going external and portable, thanks to these highspeed connections.

Network-Attached Storage
Increased network bandwidths herald the expansion of NAS as an alternative to local hard drive storage. NAS simply refers to networkaccessed hard drive capacity (including network shares and dedicated storage servers), rather than locally attached drives for storage.