Posts by simplifried

'Seagate's OCZ gobble was real, but went sour in CEO row'

The NAND device makers, perhaps in partnership with HDD companies, will control any serious market in flash based SSDs when it comes. If Peterson overplayed his hand it was most likely because he was an ardent believer in their class of products and thought it was enough to leverage into a board seat. However, I think there was more than the board seat at play here.Keeping my first statement iin mind, Seagate already has what it needs to be player in solid state via their deal with Samsung. (part of their acquisition of Samsung's HDD business). I believe that view became more broadly understood by Seagate as preliminary diligence went forward and more contributors could weigh in with their respective views. As Seagate's ardor began to cool, Peterson overplayed his hand. I suspect the deal went upside down at that point.

A load of Tosh: External hard drives the new 'personal clouds'

Re: USB sticks

Good luck with that but with the kind of flash used for that stick, I fear you will be backing up the backup ad infinitum

Re: I can see it.

@SuperTim; I agree with you but will qualify. One of the key (selling) points of "cloud" is it's off site location and the implied or stated promise of a high level of curation and security. I believe the author's contention is based on that distinction. However, it is at best, an arguable point. Like you I am more comfortable in assuming the role of curation, including security, simply because I have no trust in device reliability, fate, and someone else's surety. That said, your point, imho, is enough to make a product and the thread only quibbles about what to call it. As we all might agree, clouds are a nebulous and ephemeral phenomena , and therefore cloud may in fact be exactly the right term for all of backup. Reaching the goal is still largely dependent on the user.

Chinese admirer fancies WD's 3.5-inch hardness - insider

The article mistakingly reports that China regulators are requiring a divestiture of 3.5 inch technology in order to clear WDC' s acquisition of Hitachi GST. That is not the case, it was the Euro regulators that stipulated the divestiture.

Apotheker severance outrage: $2.4m 'bonus'

As "outrages" go this one is mild

I would stipulate that Apotheker didn't run HP onto the rocks. I think the BOD bears more responsibility in this regard then he does. Having said that, Apotheker's brief watch was a major flop. However, this golden parachute is, within limits, is appropriate. Once someone reaches the high thin air of being a candidate for the head spot in a large company like H-P, their concerns should be for soft landings, in particular at H-P where the BOD had already demonstrated their flakiness. I am a great deal more outraged about the "bonuses" received by Wall Street execs as a reward for malfeasance. I don't think Apotheker set out to rape H-P shareholders, though I definitely understand why most of them would feel sore bums.

Are disk drives beginning to spin down?

Ascending Flash Memory and the death of the hard drive

Let me start with a quote that I think is accurate:

"We have taken a look at and in fact shipped product into the SSD, in the client environment, and we do not find a compelling value proposition there either for manufacturer or for customer because the economics do not work. The cost of the storage/performance is too high," said John Coyne, chief executive officer of Western Digital, during the most recent conference call with financial analysts.

One problem in this discussion is that so many believe that, as the title I've used seems to suggest, the flash to disk relationship is a sine qua non. This has been, effectively, the baseline of argument on the subject since the c.e.o. of Samsung announced the death of the hard drive during a speech given in the fall of 2007. The problem is that the proposition (that one is decidedly the cause of the other) is, in fact, a non sequitur. One has to consider much before you can claim to understand how these two technologies will relate to each other in the face of ongoing and overwhelming demand for storage. For example, which applications are we going to highlight to prove our respective case (regardless of which side of the debate you are on).? Anything less than all applications, including compute, and non-compute, will likely not give us the full picture. Can anyone say for sure what new applications lie in wait, and what storage requirements will they create? The truth is that we are allowing the thirty year old PC model to be our paradigm to extrapolate usage patterns and make predictions that in fact are missing most of the pieces of the puzzle. i.e. applications and architectures not yet in use. In the meantime, the non sequitur makes a good headline, and stirs debate, much of it facetious, some of it dissembling, most of it illogical.