disk

This is good for those who have grave concerns over others knowing what kind of videos they're watching.

On Wednesday, Veoh announced that its new Web video player (which is still in beta) is now available in a portable version, but only on SanDisk's Cruzer USB flash drive. For those who already own the drive, the download is available for free on SanDisk's site.

That means any TV shows, movies, or other Web videos found on Veoh can be downloaded to the drive and played on any PC, without need for an Internet connection. Veoh has content … Read more

Join your hard drive fragments together into a tight bunch with this freeware. Auslogics Disk Defrag's interface couldn't be any cleaner or easier to use.

Choose a hard drive from an easy-to-read pull-down menu, and Disk Defrag instantly displays the drive's size, and used and free space. The program even displays a pie graph for visual learners. One click starts the defragmentation process. The program's defrag process screen displays another handy visual. A sector map makes it easy to see how much of the drive is fragmented, allocated, or free. As the program churns away, the … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Technology introduced at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference by SanDisk could boost solid-state drive performance in Windows Vista by 100 times.

The largest supplier of flash memory cards unveiled an advanced flash file system for solid-state drives that "has the potential" to accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems.

Despite being generally faster than hard-disk drives (particularly at reading data), solid-state drives fall short of hard disks when they randomly write data. Random writes are generally considered to be the Achilles heel of solid-state drives.

To maximize random write performance, SanDisk developed … Read more

Updated at 3:40 p.m.with additional comments and clarifications about solid state drives and ATA commands.

Will solid-state drives thrive on Windows 7? Microsoft is set to address that question at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week.

Microsoft will speak to both overall support for solid-state drives and Windows 7 support for Netbooks in Los Angeles at WinHEC 2008, which kicks off Wednesday.

In a conference abstract titled "Windows 7 Enhancements for Solid-State Drives," Microsoft states that "PC systems that have solid-state drives are shipping in increasing volumes" and that it is planning &… Read more

Updated Jan 27 2009 with a comment from the Turkish Government. See below

When criminals turn to disk encryption to hide the evidence of their crimes, law enforcement investigations can hit a brick wall. Where digital forensics software has failed to recover encryption passwords, one tried and true technique remains: violence. It is is this more aggressive form of good cop bad cop behavior which the Turkish government is alleged to have turned to, in order to learn the cryptographic keys of one of primary ringleaders in the TJ Maxx credit card theft investigation.

The 2005 theft of tens of … Read more

Correction: The month of the company's IPO has been fixed.

Rackspace Hosting, flush with cash post IPO, announced Thursday it has acquired two companies as part of a retooled cloud hosting strategy.

Rackspace, a hosting services provider based in San Antonio, Texas, snapped up Xen-based virtual machine hosting company Slicehost and cloud storage company Jungle Disk. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.

"Cloud computing offers tremendous benefits to our customers that complement our traditional managed hosting services," Lanham Napier, Rackspace Hosting CEO, said in a statement.

With the acquisitions and deeper dive into cloud computing, Rackspace … Read more

In the wake of a big loss posted this week by SanDisk, layoffs appear to be in the offing.

On Monday, SanDisk said in prepared remarks that as part of its efforts to reduce operating expenses, "actions will be implemented in the current quarter" and will include "canceling or exiting a number of products and marketing activities, and will result in employee reduction in R&D, Sales & Marketing, G&A, and Operations."

And on Monday during SanDisk's third-quarter earnings conference call, CFO Judy Bruner spoke about more restructuring to come. In response … Read more

Will 2009 be the year that solid-state drives take off? Maybe not. The speedy drives are catching on, but wider acceptance will take time--and the bad economy isn't helping.

Costs are still high for these drives, which typically outdo--and in some cases blow away--hard disks in performance. "2010-2011...that's when we think the price points for the SSD market get attractive enough to really drive stronger growth," Sanjay Mehrotra, president and chief operating officer of SanDisk, said this week during SanDisk's third-quarter earnings conference call.

Indeed, there is still a wide price gap between hard-disk … Read more

Updated at 11:40 p.m. with SanDisk response to Samsung letter.

Samsung on Tuesday withdrew its $5.85 billion bid for SanDisk, citing an increasing "risk profile."

This follows a new manufacturing agreement between SanDisk and Toshiba disclosed Monday and a stiff rejection by SanDisk last month of the Samsung offer.

"After nearly six months of efforts to pursue a transaction with no meaningful progress, we are withdrawing our proposal to acquire SanDisk," Yoon Woo Lee, vice chairman and CEO at Samsung Electronics, said in a letter that Samsung released Wednesday in Seoul.

"I … Read more