Toshiba Develops 100GB 1.8-inch HDD

Toshiba Develops 100GB 1.8-inch HDD

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Higher capacity music players and laptop computers could be on the way thanks to a new hard-disk drive from Toshiba that manages a 25 percent jump in storage space over current models. The new 1.8-inch hard-disk drive can store 100G bytes of information whereas current models hold a maximum of 80G bytes. The drives are about the same size as a PC Card and are commonly used in music players, like Apple's iPod, and compact laptop computers. Toshiba plans to start mass producing the drives in January next year. The company doesn't sell them direct to end-users but to other companies for integration into their products. In the past device makers have typically incorporated higher capacity drives quickly into their products. The drive will be on show at the Consumer Electronic Show, which takes place in Las Vegas from January 8 to 11. Toshiba first developed a 1.8-inch drive in 2000. The device, which was at the time the highest capacity such drive available, could hold up to 2G bytes of data and cost around $740 at the time. Today the drives have not only risen in capacity but also fallen in price to the point where an Apple iPod, which includes an 80G-byte drive and color screen, costs $349.

Life is like

Computer technician accidentally wipes out info on $38 bn fund

COMPUTER-FUNDS (INTERNATIONAL)
Created on : 03/20/2007 21:22 (PRI)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Juneau(Alaska), March 20 (AP) Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroy hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disc drive containing an account worth USD 38 billion.

A computer technician at the Alaska Department of Revenue deleted applicant information for an oil-funded sales account, one of state residents' biggest perks.

While reformatting the disk drive during a routine maintenance check, the technician mistakenly reformatted the backup drive as well and, suddenly, all the data disappeared.

A third line of defense, backup tapes that are updated nightly, were unreadable.

"Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario," said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow, about the computer foul-up in July that ended up costing the department more than USD 200,000.

Nine months worth of information concerning the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence.

The only backup was the paperwork itself, stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

"We had to bring that paper back to the scanning room, and send it through again, and quality control it, and then you have to have a way to link that paper to that person's file," said Skow.

Staff working overtime and weekends re-entered the lost data into the system by the end of August. (AP)