New Hitachi HDD Could Lead to 4TB and 5TB

Hitachi's new 2.5-inch HDD crams 500 GB onto one platter.

ZoomThursday Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) announced its new 2.5-inch, 5,400 RPM Travelstar Z-series family of hard drives. According to the company, the 500 GB version offers the industry's highest capacity for a single-platter, 7-mm thick hard drive. This is accomplished by using the sixth-generation perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) platters which feature a higher areal density (636Gb/inch2) than current hard drives.

With that said, Hitachi's new drive could pave the way to 3.5-inch HDD capacities higher than the current 3 TB limit. This would require using 3.5-inch platters with 636Gb/inch2 areal density, providing around 1 TB each. It's quite possible that within the next twelve months, we could see a 4-platter HDD offering a massive 4 TB capacity whereas a 5-platter HDD could offer 5 TB. For 2.5-inch form factor drives, consumers could see future models with 1 TB or 1.5 TB capacities using two and three platters.

As for Hitachi's new line of Travelstar Z5K500 drives, the series offers 500 GB, 320 GB and 250 GB models. Other feature include the previously reported 5,400 RPM spindle speed, a Serial ATA-300 interface and an 8 MB cache buffer. The drives also feature 1.8 watts read/write power, 0.55 watts low power idle, 5.5-ms average latency and 13-ms average read seek time.

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Facebook's Zuckerberg vows to donate his wealth

Computerworld - Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire behind Facebook, has pledged to part with a sizable chunk of his fortune for good causes.

Zuckerberg and 15 other billionaires signed on to the Giving Pledge, agreeing to donate the majority of their fortunes to charity. With the new names added to the list of charitable donors today, there now are 50 signatures, including AOL co-founder Steve Case, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle.

Zuckerberg isn't the only one at Facebook to make the pledge. Dustin Moskovitz, who co-founded Facebook along with Zuckerberg, also took the pledge.

"People wait until late in their career to give back," Zuckerberg said in a statement. "But why wait when there is so much to be done? With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts."

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Rumor: New Windows 8 64-bit UI Called ''Wind''

Windows 8 will supposedly have separate 32-bit and 64-bit interfaces, the latter dubbed as "Wind."

ZoomItalian-based website window8italia reports that Windows 8 will arrive with two separate interfaces, one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit. The latter version will be fully 3D and codenamed "Wind," requiring around 170 MB of dedicated video memory. Although "Wind" will reportedly exist in all copies of Windows 8, it will not be activated within the 32-bit version.

The news follows a recent discovery in Nvidia's Quadro 265 driver which specifically references a new kernel with the number 6.2-- Windows 7 is 6.1. The driver actually points to the 64-bit version of Windows 8 specifically as listed in the following:

; Nvidia Windows Vista / 7 / 8 (64 bit) Display INF file DiskID1 = "Nvidia Windows Vista / 7 / 8 (64 bit) Driver Library Installation Disk 1" Nvidia_Win8 = "Nvidia"

In addition to the 3D aspect, the 64-bit interface will reportedly be "fully dynamic" in that it will adapt to the user's habits. This includes the ability to speed up daily tasks by adapting shortcuts and icons to fit within different usage scenarios. 

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Is My Computer Dead?

This is a follow-up post with PC Won't Turn On post.

Today I managed to thoroughly test/troubleshoot my problematic computer. Here are what I’ve done:

1. Remove motherboard from its casing. I wanted to make sure that there is no faulty grounding.
2. Replace power supply unit, for isolation purposes.
3. Remove HDD, RAM, Video card and tested the board with only CPU installed. I was expecting for RAM or video card error.
4. Re-installed RAM, hoping that will give me video card error as its not yet installed.
5. Re-installed video card, hoping that it will give me HDD error.
6. Re-installed HDD, hoping it will boot properly.
7. System speaker may also be faulty as it don’t make any sound.

I’ve tried each procedure twice in minimum but gave me no joy.

CPU fan and video card fan turns on when powered on but nothing happen. No leaking/bloated capacitors or simply no visual issues on motherboard and its peripherals.

I am now thinking of buying new computer as replacement.

Any suggestions or comments are highly appreciated.

Thanks!

Kingston Launches HyperX External USB 3.0 SSDs

If you're packing a USB 3.0 PC, then you likely have the need for speed. SSDs are clearly on our list of things that make our computers go faster, but those are already sitting happily in our internal SATA interfaces.
Kingston has a solution for those wanting to make their USB 3.0 fly, and that is with the just-made-official HyperX MAX external SSD. We first laid eyes on this product in its early stages back in June of this year during our tour of the Kingston factory, but now the product is finished and ready to ship in December.

The HyperX MAX 3.0 has a read speed of up to 195MB/sec., and a write speed of up to 160MB/sec., when paired with a USB 3.0 compatible device. It is also fully compatible with USB 2.0 devices, but the speed defaults back to USB 2.0 capability.

During Kingston's internal testing, a 10GB movie file was transferred in 1 minute, 12 seconds to the HyperX MAX 3.0 from a USB 3.0 system. On a USB 2.0 port on the same system, however, the transfer time increased to 5 minutes, 52 seconds.

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Nvidia New Website

Good news for Nvidia lovers, Nvidia launched their new website. check out: geforce.com

What I like about this new site is its "Auto Detect Your CPU". As the name suggest that it will automatically detect your install Nvidia GPU and will suggest the best driver available.

Its "Beta & Legacy Drivers" are also cool.

This one big step from Nvidia supporting their video card drivers and users.

External TV Box - KWorld SA220

I have an extra 19" LCD monitor that I wanted to turn it to a television.

So I went to the local computer/electronic store and I found out this External TV Box: Kworld SA220. There is actually very small options of this item and I do not get any good and bad review of this brand/model on the internet, so closed eyes I get this. Anyways here is what it offers:

Enjoy analog TV and video games on your wide screen LCD monitor

• Support wide screen LCD to 1680x1050 resolution *Compatible with output resolution for 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1440x900, 1680x1050.
• Supports 4:3/16:9/16:10 ratio.
• Multi-channel preview function to easily facilitate channel selection.
• Still-picture function enables you to capture wonderful moments from TV program.
• Enhanced PIP function: size and position are adjustable. (PIP is not supported in YPbPr input)
• Full-function remote control.
• The supplied MMI cable enables you to connect to multiple entertainment devices. The product supports standard-definition and higher definition signal input (480i/480p/576p/720p/1080i).
• Auxiliary functions such as automatic start up or shutdown with in 24 hours, calendar, calculator, game and etc.
• Channel editing function allow you to arrange the order of programs up to your needs.
• PC/VGA/TV switch.

Unfortunately HD functionality is not available in this model. I think it is on its SA230 model.

I have cable TV connection. All channels are good on my tv but a little bit distorted on my TV Box which disappoint me.

will post more upon completion and testing of all its features.