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Lilbits: Apple is worth $2 trillion, hard drive failure rates, and the US vs. Huawei

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Apple is basically a money-making machine these days thanks to a combination of sales of popular hardware and control of an ecosystem that allows the company to take a cut of sales of apps, games, music, videos, eBooks, and other content. But Apple became a […]

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WD introduces Red Plus hard drives in response to SMR performance complaints

Recently a number of the companies that produce hard drives have begun shipping models that use SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology rather than CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording). And some users have noticed. For example, the Western Digital Red line of hard drives are designed specifically for use in NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices… but in […]

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Lilbits 5-30-2020: Android 11 beta postponed, WD sued for deceptive hard drives, and One GX pre-orders begin in China

Google had scheduled an Android 11 Beta Launch Show for June 3rd, but now the company says it’s postponing that event and the beta release of Android 11, because “now is not the time to celebrate.” Meanwhile, Western Digital is facing a lawsuit over its decision to use technology in some hard drives that may […]

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HAMR technology could lead to 80TB hard drives (with 20TB HDDs coming this year)

SSDs may be faster and more durable than hard drives with spinning platters. But HDDs still have a few things going for them — they’re cheaper on a cost-per-gigabyte basis and the highest-capacity hard drives can store way more data than an SSD. And it looks like that’s going to remain the case for a […]

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Western Digital to acquire SanDisk for $19 billion

Two major storage companies could soon combine forces: Western Digital has announced plans to buy SanDisk in a deal valued at $19 billion. Western Digital is probably best known for producing hard drives, while SanDisk is a major player in the flash storage space. Western Digital says the acquisition will help the company expand its product lineup […]

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Lilbits (7-21-2014): Are you ready for 8TB hard drives?

My first desktop computer didn’t have a hard drive. My first system that did came with a whopping 40MB of storage. We’ve come a long way since then. You can buy terabytes of storage for under a hundred bucks. Still, it’s kind of mind-boggling that Seagate has announced it’s begun shipping samples of its first 8TB […]

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Lilbits (6-03-2013): Chrome for iOS speaks when spoken to, Android on an Ivy Bridge tablet

Android tablets are getting faster and faster, thanks to the latest chips from NVIDIA, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Intel. But even the fastest ARM-based chips still only offer a fraction of the performance you’d expect from an Intel Core processor (their key advantages are that ARM-based chips use less power and cost less). So even though […]

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Seagate drops 7200rpm laptop hard drives to focus on SSD/HDD hybrids

One of the world’s largest producers of hard drives is giving up on 7200rpm hard drives for notebooks. Seagate will end production of 2.5 inch drives which spin at 7200 revolutions per minute. The move isn’t surprising — while 7200rpm disks are faster than the 5400rpm drives that you tend to find in cheaper laptops […]