The drive is one of few things easily upgradable on these devices. On the Dell Mini 9, its a matter of removing two screws on the back plate, and two screws that hold the drive in place (which, if you've never seen a netbook SSD drive before, looks more like a RAM module.) The 64 and 128MB modules take up the space reserved for the WWAN card, so don't go that route if you have WWAN.





While I was able to restore my Mac OS X Time Capsule backup, it wouldn't boot til I used the DellEFIbootmaker (allows you to boot into the drive you just restored) and then ran DellEFI to restore the partition to a bootable condition. Oh, the Leopard install process which you use to restore won't read off of a Time Capsule, so you have to copy the restore file to a USB drive before hand. Anyhow, none of this is the point.





Look at how much faster the writes are, especially the random ones. The only sacrifice you end up with is a bit of big block read performance.

It's a bit of a shame the stock SSDs had these compromises in the first place, though. If you're buying a netbook, its worth checking the forums for results like these on the models you're interested in, and perhaps buying a low capacity stock model, and upgrading to an aftermarket drive later. (The Super Talent drive I tested wasn't cheap, though, at $200 for the 64GB model and $380 for 128GBs.) Kind of ridiculous next to the cost of a $200-$300 netbook, I admit. *shame*

One other thing to consider: The runcore SSD upgrades for netbooks have little microUSB ports on them, so you can load up and back up files/images from another machine. Handy for Hackintoshing, for sure, but I think they top out at 64GB, taking up only a single wide form factor.
[Super Talent Dell Mini 9 SSD]

PANASONIC INTRODUCES WORLD'S FIRST 6X WRITE-ONCE BLU-RAY DISC MEDIA*

Secaucus, NJ (June 18, 2008) – Panasonic today announced that it has developed the world's first Write-Once Blu-ray Discs (BD-R) with 6X writing speed*. The new discs will be available in both 25GB** and 50GB capacities.

Panasonic, which introduced the world's first dual-layer 1X BD-RE Blu-ray Disc in 2004***, 2X BD-R/RE Discs in 2006, and 4X BD-R Disc in 2007, is now launching the first 6X BD-R to meet consumer demand to read and write large amounts of data at higher speeds. The new 6X discs have a maximum data transfer speed of an amazingly fast 216Mbps. This transfer speed, along with the discs' high capacity, allows consumers to use these discs for a variety of applications such as storing high-definition video or backing up PC data.

The new discs feature a wide power margin at any writing speed from 1X to 6X. This enables high-quality recording, even if the drive's laser power fluctuates, resulting in greater overall drive compatibility.

Panasonic's adoption of newly-developed disc technology produces extremely level and well-balanced discs with highly precise signal grooves. This improves servo characteristics and enables the laser beam to focus to the right position even when the disc is rotating with 6X high speed, thus providing optimum reading and writing performance.

Specifications

6X BD-R

Format Name: Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format Ver. 1.3
Model Number: LM-BR25MDE, LM-BR50MDE
Data Capacity: 25GB, 50GB
Layer Constitution: Single Sided/Single Layer, Single Sided/Dual Layer
Recording Format: Phase Change Recordable
Laser Wavelength: 405nm （Blue-violet Laser）
Objective Lens Numerical Aperture (NA): 0.85
Disc Diameter/Thickness: 120mm x 1.2mm
Track Pitch: 0.32 μm
Minimum Mark Length: 0.149μm
Data Transfer Speed: 216Mbps(Max.)
Hard Coating

*As of June 18, 2008

**The capacity of Blu-ray discs is expressed in units of 1GB=1 billion bytes, but the capacity is slightly below that after formatting, so that the actual amount area that can be used will be less.

***Introduced in Japanese market only

[Panasonic and AVWatch]

Press Release [Apple]

Sifting through the crap that is the horrible press release, the 1TB models can use that Gigabit Ethernet connection to connect directly to your router, which then allows you to access your data from anywhere without actually having to turn on your PC. Essentially a cheap NAS, these WD My Books could be a decent way to let your family members access your photos without going through something like Flickr. – Jason Chen

Press Release [Western Digital]

Although Toshiba was careful not to mention anything about its relationship with Apple and how its 1.8-inch disks occupy the interiors of Apple's 80GB iPods, this is some pretty solid evidence that we'll be seeing a 100GB iPod soon, perhaps around the same time we see the new iPhone. – Charlie White

A new 100GB 1.8" hard disk [Akhihabara News]

This week at Lifehacker: Unlock the power of the scroll wheel and mouse gestures and drive Firefox without taking your hand off the clicker. Fix scratched CDs with toothpaste, Pledge, Pinesol or peanut butter. Get flight status information, horoscopes and drink recipes SMS'ed directly to your phone. Make sure your laptop battery doesn't poop out during the key scene of that DVD movie you're watching. Finally, get AIM on your PSP.

The war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray continues to chug on endlessly without a true winner. But we say "Screw em", because Maxell along with InPhase Technologies is coming out with some dope shit using holographics. Using cartridges (read: floppys), the new technology will support up to 1.6TB with data transfers at 120MBps. Yeah. That's a lot of storage. You could just go apeshit with Netflix renting every single movie and making a best of Edward Norton collection all on one disk your music, movies, and games all on one disk. It could even replace your hard drive if you think about how fast and big it will be. Don't expect anything huge before 2007, though. Here's what the technology is expected to be:

"Holographic recording technology utilizes intersecting signal and reference laser beams to store data in a number of 3D hologram images capable of saving hundreds of data pages in a single location. In principle, laser beams can be moved with no mechanical components, allowing access times of the order of 10 s, faster than any conventional disk drive will ever be able to randomly access data."

Maxell Releases Holographic Storage Medium [OhGizmo!]