Lexar is getting the jump on CES and Storage Visions 2011 with the announcement of their 64GB and 128GB professional Class 10 SDXC cards. Beside the tremendous capacity, Lexar is touting the performance of these cards, a minimum transfer speed rating of 133x (20MB/s) provides quick transfer of the high-res images and HD video today’s

Intel has announced the latest extension to their SSD lineup, the Intel SSD 310. The 310 delivers X25-M performance in a tiny mSATA package designed for highly mobile applications like tablet and ultraportable notebooks. Intel is using 34nm MLC NAND and offering the 310 in both 40GB and 80GB capacities. 

While Intel and Micron have produced NAND flash memory through their IM Flash Technologies LLC joint venture, Intel has not yet invested in the venture’s new Singapore plant. Could Intel be backing out of the manufacturing and development aspect of its SSD business?

This news bits roundup covers several exciting product announcements: OWC announced its Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini portable RAID solution supporting 2.5" drives; Transcend announced low-profile and half-slim SSDs for small form factor applications; lastly, HighPoint announced its RocketRAID 2700 now supports SATA port multipliers.

Hitachi has just announced the industry’s first single-platter 500GB hard drive with a 2.5-inch form factor, the Travelstar Z5K500. The drive features a slim 7mm thin design compared to most 2.5-inch notebook hard drives, which are 9.5mm.

Power consumption is one of the hot topics currently being discussed in today’s hard drive market. Manufacturers are looking at many ways to cut down on power draw; either by decreasing spindle speed or in some cases having aggressive parking. On drives that support these newer power modes, excessive head parking can occur under the

Hitachi went all in today on their commitment to 3TB hard drives after posting the Deskstar 7K3000 to their website last month. In addition to the 7K3000, Hitachi also announced the Deskstar 5K3000 and the Hitachi XL, a 3TB external hard drive. 

Seagate today announced its Barracuda Green hard drive, which they claim is the industry’s highest performance eco-friendly hard disk with a 3.5 inch form factor. The Barracuda Green was formerly called the Barracuda LP.

Toshiba has announced the MKx001GRZB family of enterprise-class SSDs. The 2.5" drives use 32nm enterprise grade single-level cell (eSLC) NAND flash memory from Toshiba and a 6Gb/s SAS interface. The SSDs will be available in 100GB, 200GB and 400GB capacities and boast random sustained IOPS of 90,000 read and 17,000 write and sequential sustained reads of 510MB/s