OWC has announced a new high-performance mainstream SSD dubbed the Mercury Electra 6G. Offering the same SandForce SF-2281 processor as their enthusiast-class Mercury Extreme Pro 6G, the OWC Mercury Electra 6G is paired with tier one asynchronous NAND versus the more expensive – and faster – synchronous NAND found in the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G.

Western Digital has released the WD Nomad rugged case for their My Passport line of external hard drives. The Nomad protects from drops as high as seven feet, moisture, dust, spills and other mishaps associated with the active life an external drive leads. 

Other World Computing has updated its “quad interface” Mercury Elite Pro mini portable storage device with a new Oxford 944SE chipset. OWC says the Oxford chipset offers better data transfer performance, reduced power consumption, and reduced heat. The Mercury Elite Pro mini portable storage device is bus powered and has four interfaces to choose from:

Samsung announced their new 9.5mm tall 1TB SpinPoint M8, using their two of their new 500GB platters. This drive will mark the first 1TB notebook drive in the more common 9.5mm drive height versus the larger 12.5mm size commonly used for the largest capacity 2.5-inch hard drives. Up until this release, the largest 2.5-inch drive

The Corsair Force Series 3 SSDs were announced just a few weeks ago – boasting SandForce SF-2281 controllers and a very aggressive price point. Just days after the first units started shipping, Corsair has issued a recall of the 120GB Force Series 3 SSDs. According to Corsair, the 120GB model is seeing, “a significant percentage

Mushkin announced their latest SandForce SF-2281-powered SSD called the Chronos and Chronos Deluxe. Aimed at both the enthusiast and value-oriented enthusiast markets, Mushkin differentiates each model with the type of NAND flash included. The higher performance Chronos Deluxe model will use faster synchronous NAND, while the budget-friendly Chronos will use asynchronous NAND. At its peak,

OWC has announced that they will be increasing the warranty on their SATA 6GB/s Mercury Extreme Pro 6G to five years. This applies retroactively to buyers who already purchased their 6G SSD. This warranty extension is only the second consumer SSD to get a full five years, with Intel offering it first on the SATA

Today Micron finally made their PCIe-based SSD official, releasing a 350GB and 700GB version targeted at enterprise markets. The Micron SLC-based P320h will be capable of 750,000 random 4K IOPS read and 341,000 IOPS write, with up to 3GB/s sequential transfer speeds.

Icy Dock has announced its new MB981U3-1SA hard drive docking station supporting 2.5- and 3.5-inch hard drives. When used with 2.5-inch drives, it can be powered by USB 3.0.