Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Apotop All-in-1 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Memory Card Reader/Writer

Apotop's 3R01 All-in-1 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Memory Card Reader/Writer supports nearly all modern flash memory media cards. Unlike many readers in its class, the 3R01 SuperSpeed USB reader's premium features don't command a premium price. With broad card support, the reader is plenty fast enough to support transfer hungry memory cards like speedy UDMA 7 CompactFlash cards used in high end DLSR cameras. Utilizing SuperSpeed USB's maximum theoretical speeds of up to 5Gbps, waiting for photos and videos to transfer off cards is now a thing of the past. This SuperSpeed USB 3.0 flash memory reader also supports the massive capacities of modern storage devices, currently supporting up to 2TB on some flash media cards such as SDXC. The 3R01 SuperSpeed USB memory card reader/writer is fully backward compatible with both USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 hosts. Its five open memory card slots can be used at the same time for data transfers and exchanges, even between cards. The reader supports Hot-Swap and Plug-N-Play, and utilizes USB bus power so no additional power source is required. The multi-platform reader is best used with systems that support SuperSpeed USB 3.0 in order to take advantage of its speed.

Apotop All-in-1 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Memory Card Reader/Writer

Benchmarks

Apotop 3R01-B USB 3.0 All in 1 SuperSpeed Card Reader with ATP ProMax CompactFlash 300X UDMA 16GB

Apotop 3R01-B USB 3.0 All in 1 SuperSpeed Card Reader with ATP ProMax SDHC Class 10 16GB

A very helpful SSD endurance guide

As Solid State Drives (SSD) like OCZ Vector Series find more deployments than ever before, it's important to keep in mind some of their technological compromises. While smaller processes, and hence increased transistor densities, are often desirable in microelectronics, NAND cells present a trade-off. Smaller processes reduce the endurance cycles of NAND memory, while simultaneously providing better capacity to cost ratios.

On April 10, 2012, AnandTech published an interesting piece that discusses this compromise, and provides an informative table of typical SSD total estimated life-span for several program/erase cycles. That table is reproduced here for informational purposes. Synchrotech recommends potentional SSD users familiarize themselves with the trade offs that SSDs pose.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Register Article -- 12 simple rules: How Ted Codd transformed the humble database

We found this piece by The Register's Gavin Clarke on the history of the relational model for database management to be inspiring and worth sharing. The piece pays homage to Ted Codd, whose Turing Award winning idea is now taken for granted because it is ubiquitous.

12 simple rules: How Ted Codd transformed the humble database

Monday, September 9, 2013

The Orico 2595SUS3 2.5-inch SATA enclosures tested by PC Funs


The folks at pcfuns.com ran benchmarks on the ORICO 2595 Series 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD external enclosures with eSATA and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 with a Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GB SSD installed.

Comparing both the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and eSATA, they found the eSATA interface to be significantly faster, but that isn’t to say the USB 3.0 numbers were entirely unimpressive. The 2595's eSATA port averaged 200 MB/s reads and 171 MB/s writes with the Solid State Drive, while the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port weighed in with 164.5 MB/s reads and 103 MB/s writes.

All in all, the stylish 2595SUS3 deployed with modern 2.5-inch devices provides excellent performance and is perfect for mobile applications at a price that anyone can appreciate.

ORICO 2595 Series 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD external enclosures with eSATA and SuperSpeed USB 3.0