Apple's not an enterprise company or a storage company. In fact, they're rapidly jettisoning both - consider the sad fate of the Xserve RAID. But Apple does have enterprise features and storage features in their operating systems. And Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" is a great case in point. From Versions to Time Machine Local Snapshots to AirDrop, Lion brings some storage love, and … [Read more...] about Key Storage Features in Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion”
TRIM
Is TRIM Useful For Thin Provisioning?
If WRITE_SAME can be a semaphore for thin un-provisioning, what about TRIM? It sounds like a perfect fit, and has wider implementation to boot! Let's take a deeper look. First, I'd like to remind the reader that I'm not some specialist storage engineer. I am regular guy who wanted to know about this TRIM thing. I welcome corrections and feedback on this piece! We … [Read more...] about Is TRIM Useful For Thin Provisioning?
Are Hybrid Hard Drives A Good Alternative To An SSD?
Ask a Pack Rat A timely question from a comment on my cheap Momentus XT post and continued in my inbox: How well does [the Momentus XT] perform in a Mac laptop? What I've noticed is substantial slow-down on my older MB Pro when there's a lot of virtual memory usage (e.g. when running several apps plus Parallels.) For my next MBP (hopefully in the next 2-3 months), I'm … [Read more...] about Are Hybrid Hard Drives A Good Alternative To An SSD?
Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)
More information about the unconventional SSD used in Apple's new MacBook Air. As I discussed in my previous coverage of this new flash form factor, it resembles a PCI Express Mini Card but is much smaller. Toshiba has now proved my speculation that the device uses SATA signals rather than the PCI Express lane used by the similar AirPort card. We also know that the lauded … [Read more...] about Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)