Toshiba has announced a new 51GB HD-DVD Rom disc at this year's CES.

Beating Blu-ray by 1GB, Toshiba today said that they had successfully created a triple layer HD-DVD disc that could contain 51GB worth of data with 17GB on each layer.

"Continued improvement in disc mastering technology has achieved further minimization in the recording pit, supporting a further boost in capacity to 17GB in single layer and a full 51GB on a single-sided triple-layer disc. Toshiba has confirmed the disc structure and its successful operation." said the press release. "This time-tested physical structure offers proven volume manufacturing at little cost increment."

Toshiba has now closed the storage gab with Blu-ray, which can store 50GB on a dual-layered disc.

SOURCE URL: DVDTOWN.com

Memorex brings a new look and greater capacity to its Mega TravelDrive USB 2.0 portable hard drive. With 12 GB of capacity in a sleek 2.6-inch design, the new Memorex Mega TravelDrive offers high capacity at an incredible value, compared to flash-based USB storage devices. The 12 GB Memorex Mega TravelDrive features a pivoting USB connector that easily plugs into your computer's USB port without requiring an extra power supply.

Sporting data transfer speeds of up to 7.9MB per second, the newest Mega TravelDrive delivers 12 GB of capacity based on 1-inch hard drive technology. At 2.6" long, 1.5" wide and only 0.5" thick, the 12 GB Mega is among the smallest portable USB hard drives available. The Memorex Mega TravelDrive line also includes 6 GB and 8 GB models in charcoal and black finish respectively.

Additionally, Memorex announces added capacity for its award-winning, flash-based Mini TravelDrive U3. The Memorex Mini TravelDrive is a U3 smart flash drive that hosts not only a user's data and files, but also software programs, personal preferences, passwords and settings — and the means for managing them — all in a highly secure and stylish device.

The Memorex 12 GB Mega TravelDrive will be available at major consumer electronics retailers, office super stores and eMemorex.com next month, for a suggested retail price of $149.99. The Memorex 4GB Mini TravelDrive U3 will be available at consumer electronics retailers nationwide this month for a suggested retail price of $99.99.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD have both been around for a while now, and neither one has made a significant gain in the market over the other (despite what Sony has to say about it).  So what do we do?  Some say it's time to compromise.  Warner Brothers is the first company to introduce a hybrid disc that will play on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players.  It calls this new disc the "Total Hi-Def," or THD, disc.

The THD disc contains a Blu-ray movie on one side of the disc and an HD-DVD movie on the other.  It's 1.2mm thick, just like a standard DVD, Blu-ray, or HD-DVD disc, and supports two layers on either side, which gives you a total of 80GB of storage space (50GB on the Blu-ray side and 30GB on the HD-DVD side).  Warner intends to share this technology with other companies, it says, so we should be seeing plenty of these discs available.  If you ask me, though, a hybrid player would be more useful than a hybrid disc.

Toshiba, one of the leading supporters of the HD-DVD format, today unveiled its latest HD DVD writer the SD-H903A. The SD-H903A is a full-featured drive, which allows you to store nearly 30 GB of data on dual-layer discs, which can accommodate up to eight hours of HD DVD movie content, up to five full-length standard DVD films, up to 7,500 MP3 songs or up to 30,000 high-quality images.

Apart from the HD DVD support, SD-H903A provides read and write support for legacy formats and is therefore backwards compatible. Another interesting point to note is that unlike conventional writers which are available on the PATA interface, the SD-H903A features a Serial ATA (SATA) interface thereby eliminating the need for legacy cables.

This new drive will be showcased at the upcoming CES conference to be held in Las Vegas. The drive will be available commercially from February 2007 onwards.

Today, two leading hard-drive manufactures, Hitachi and Seagate, announced their plans to launch the first 1TB hard-disk drives in the first half of this year. Both these drives will probably be on display at the CES next week.

Hitachi's 7K1000 is a high capacity hard drive that can pack 1TB of data. By using perpendicular recording technology, Hitachi was able to achieve this density. It's available with SATA II or PATA 133, a 32MB buffer, and a 7200rpm spindle speed. Priced at $400, these drives are expected to hit the market in Q1 of this year.

Seagate too has announced that the company will launch a high capacity HDD in the first half of this year. It features capacity-boosting perpendicular recording technology, and is expected to have 1TB storage capacity. The drive will use fewer heads and discs, and will have four high density platters of 250GB each. The company claims that above mentioned technologies can increase drive reliability, and also reduce operating temperatures, power consumption, noise, and weight.

(Pictured above is the Seagate Barracuda 750GB HDD)

Pioneer has unveiled its DVR-A12J DVD writer. The Pioneer DVR-A12J can write Dual Layer DVD+/-R media at up to 10x write speed and single-layer DVD media at 18x, even DVD-RAM at 12x. It comes with the Labelflash technology which is similar to LightScribe. The DVR-A12J lineup comes in piano black, silver, and white colors.

Other technologies of the new drives include the "UltraDRA" (Dynamic Resonance Absorber), buffer under run protection, the "Precision recording technology", and the "PowerRead" function. The later technology has been developed by Japanese Buffalo and allows scratched DVD media to be read correctly by the drive.

The Japanese retail package includes Cyberlink PowerDVD v6 for DVD playback, PowerProducer v3 for DVD/CD authoring, Power2Go v5, InstantBurn v5 for packet writing, PowerBackup v2 for personal backup, Medi@Show v3, LabelPrint v2 software that supports the Labelflash technology and Pioneer's Quiet sound utility, which limits the disc's rotation speed for quiet playback.

Pioneer will not release the DVR-A12J series overseas, but a variation of the same drive dubbed DVR-112 (for OEMs) should be expected early 2007 in Europe and U.S.

Fujitsu has announced a massive 2.5-Inch, SATA, 4200 RPM, 300GB notebook hard drive just in time for Windows Vista - once again raising the bar for notebook storage.

The new 300GB MHX2300BT 2.5 inch Serial ATA notebook hard disk drive utilises perpendicular magnetic recording and will be available in late February 2007. A 250GB model will also be released. Fujitsu is targeting users running audio/video applications such as gaming, video editing, audio recording and digital video recorders.

Key specifications of the 2.5” PMR hard disk drives include best-in-class read/write power consumption at 1.6W, whisper-quiet operation, and high shock tolerance. With these benefits, the new Fujitsu mobile series is well-suited for the audio/video computing market.

Fujitsu has also announced sales goals of 1.5 million units during fiscal 2007 for both the 300GB and 250GB models combined (Fujitsu’s fiscal year ends March 2008).

2.5" Notebook SATA Hard Drives are becoming more common nowadays and hard disk enclosures supporting these high speed drives are already hitting the market. The only drawback is with these enclosures is that SATA Hard Disks normally support data transfer rates of 1.5Gbps but the enclosures, which use the USB2.0 interface, limit this to a maximum speed 480Mbps.

Thermaltake, which has been the forerunner in the Cooling solutions business for a long time now, released a new product recently, called the Muse OTB2.5 eSATA Harddisk Enclosure. The OTB stands for One Touch Backup. This enclosure, as the name suggests, is capable of supporting SATA transfer speed and the much touted One Touch Backup.

We reviewed the Thermaltake Muse OTB2.5 eSATA Enclosure a few days ago, and now it's time for some 3.5 inch action.

Today, we have with us the Thermaltake Muse 3.5" eSATA & USB2.0 Combo Enclosure. This unit combines great looks with excellent features. USB2.0 or eSATA connections means you can have your cake and eat it. So what are you waiting for - click on over to the main review!