Icy games: The 25 best PC games of 2012 Looks like it will be a vintage year for PC owners...

PC gamers: it's time to brace yourself for what promises to be a rollercoaster ride in 2012. This year's roster of PC games is going to be simply monstrous in terms of both quality and quantity.

So you might want to invest in a new graphics card, and splash out on that flash gaming keyboard/mouse combo you've had your eye on. And perhaps have a word with your bank manager: 20-odd must-buys adds up to a pretty penny. These, then, are the upcoming PC games we're most stoked about - arranged in alphabetical order to avoid any suspicion of favouritism.

1. Alan Wake

Not before time, Remedy's third-person action-adventure, studded with plot-twists, surreal episodes and a heavy dose of horror is endowed with an agreeably intelligent storyline that would grace a best-selling psychological thriller. Thanks to Nordic Games, which picked up the PC game's publishing rights, its stunning Pacific Northwest landscapes will be lusher than ever, with the graphics cranked up to the max now that it has been unleashed on PC freed from the constraints of the consoles. It may not be all-new, but PC Alan Wake oozes quality... full review to computerandvideogames.com

Did your favorable games in this list of 2012? I think most gamers are waiting for Diablo 3 released this year...Because I am also looking forward to this game! How about your idea?

Icy news: OCZ Octane 1.13 Firmware Update: Improving 4KB Random Write Performance

The one thing that OCZ has been missing for so many years is finally one of its staples: focus. The same company that dabbled in everything from brain mice to DIY notebooks is now almost exclusively an SSD company that peddles power supplies on the side. OCZ's penchant for aggressively trying new things hasn't faded away however. As an SSD maker, OCZ is currently or will in the near future, be shipping drives based on controllers from three different vendors - each with their own strengths. OCZ's relationship with SandForce continues and the Vertex 3remains OCZ's highest performing offering. A recent partnership with Marvell gives OCZ early experience with native PCIe based SSDs, experience that is extremely important as the industry marches towards a new PCIe based interface standard for SSDs (SATA Express). Finally there's OCZ's own controller, theIndilinx Everest, which it is quickly building momentum behind. It's obviously in OCZ's best interests to have its own controllers in the bulk of the drives it makes, but one doesn't simply build a better controller than everyone else on the first try...full review to Anand Tech

Icy news: LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series Now Available

LaCie showcased their 2big Thunderbolt drive at CES 2012 and it has now started shipping. 

Specifications of LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series
Capacities	4TB and 6TB (and 8TB)
Revolutions per minute (rpm)	7200rpm
Maximum Read Speed	327MB/s
Maximum Write Speed	320MB/s
Connectivity	2x Thunderbolt
Dimensions (WxHxD)	3.5" x 6.7" x 7.8" (9.1 x 17.2 x 20.0 cm)
Price	$649 (4TB) and $799 (6TB)

The LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series is essentially the LaCie Little Big Disk in 3.5" form factor. It has two swappable 3.5" drives whereas the Little Big Disk has two 2.5" drives. 3.5" drives offer larger capacities and better performance, particularly with hard drive. The 2big is rated at transfer speeds up to 327MB/s while the Little Big Disk tops out at 190MB/s (both results are for the non-SSD versions). LaCie has an 8TB model on their site as well but there is no price listed, which suggests that it's not shipping yet.

There are also two Thunderbolt ports for daisy-chaining, so you can daisy-chain several 2bigs or other Thunderbolt devices. The 2big most likely uses the same SATA controller as the Little Big Disk, which means you are limited to two SATA 3Gb/s ports. For the standard configuration this isn't an issue, but people who are interested in swapping the hard drives for SSDs should be aware that the SATA controller will be a potential bottleneck with the fastest SATA 6Gb/s SSDs.  Source from Anand Tech

Icy News: Hitachi Ultrastar SSD400M Enterprise SSD Review

The Ultrastar SSD400M is Hitachi's effort to provide a serious contender in the burgeoning eMLC enterprise SSD space. The SSD400M offers all the pedigree that enterprise buyers could want, including not just Hitachi's longstanding leadership in the storage industry, but Intel's as well. The SSD400M leverages Intel's highest quality 25nm eMLC NAND and SSD processor technology, combined with Hitachi/Intel jointly engineered firmware. The resulting SSD400M carries Hitachi's brand name but is the result of a strong co-development effort. 

Hitachi offers the 2.5" Ultrastar SSD400M with a 6.0Gb/s SAS interface and delivers throughput of up to 495 MB/s read, 385 MB/s write, 56,000 random 4K read IOPS and 24,000 random 4K write IOPS. In the enterprise though, it's not just about speed with SSDs, there's a larger total cost of ownership measurement at play too. Hitachi quotes 8,360 IOPS/watt, for those factoring in power consumption in their storage buying decision. 

The SSD400M isn't just about performance though, Hitachi's engineering and qualification leads to an SSD that supremely reliable, with just a .44% annualized failure rate (2 million hour MTBF). From an endurance perspective the drive offers writes up to 7.3PB (400GB capacity), equivalent to 4TB of writers per day for five years, and unlimited reads. Other highlights include the T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF) standard, extended error correction code (ECC), Exclusive-OR (XOR) parity to protect against flash die failure, parity-checked internal data paths without an external write cache, and a power loss data management feature that does not require super-capacitors.

Hitachi offers the SSD400M in 200GB and 400GB capacities with optional TCG self-encryption and are backed by a five year warranty...full review to storagereview.com

Icy News: HP P4900 SSD Storage System Announced

HP has announced the P4900 SSD G2 6.4-TB SSD Storage System, an all-solid state drive array, at its Global Partner Conference. HP’s new Storage System is a part of the company's LeftHand Network P4000 family.The P4900 uses SAN/iQ 9.5 software to monitor the health of the SSD called the HP SMARTSSD Wear Gauge. It has been integrated into the P4000 management console, which gives IT administrators the ability to see how much more remaining life an SSD has as well as alerts that predict drive outages and failures.

All-flash arrays are useful in virtual desktop and online transaction processing (OLTP) database environments because they allow millions of I/O per second to avoid boot storms. It also provides fast access to data allowing organizations to make decisions more efficiently.

The P4900 is available in two configurations: a two-node bundle of SSDs with a 6.4-TB storage capacity, and a one-node expansion with a 3.2-TB storage capacity. The new storage system uses 400GB multi-level cell SSDs with a serial attached SCSI interface, has 12GB of RAM, and uses hot-swappable power supplies. Additionally, the P4900 has four RAID controllers with 2,048 MB of battery-backed cache, which connects to the network with four 10GbE or 1GbE network ports. The P4900 supports RAID 5, 6, and 10.

With the addition of a P4000 G2 unified NAS gateway, the P4900 can support a common internet file system and network file system traffic. The 6.4TB P4900 is available for $199,000 and the expansion unit is priced at $105,000.

Full HP P4900 Specs:

• Drive Description - (8) SFF SSD Supported
• Drive Type - (8) 400 GB MLC SAS Solid State Drive
• Capacity - 3.2TB Starting, 102.4TB Maximum
• Storage Expansion Options - Use storage clustering capability and add the same P4900 G2 node into the SAN.
• Host Interface - 10 GbE (2) Ports, 1 GbE iSCSI (2) Ports
• Supported Operating Systems
  • Apple OS X
  • Citrix XenServer
  • HP-UX
  • IBM AIX
  • Microsoft Windows 2003
  • Microsoft Windows 2008
  • Novell NetWare
  • Oracle Enterprise Linux
  • Red Hat Linux
  • Oracle Solaris
  • SUSE Linux
  • VMware
  • All major operating systems and hyper visors are supported. 
• Clustering Support - Hyper-redundant clustered storage
• Availability
  • Redundant, hot plug power supplies
  • redundant fans
  • redundant, hot plug hard drives, integrated storage controller with battery-backed DDR2 cache
  • disk RAID 5
  • hyper-redundant clustered storage: Network RAID levels (per volume) 0,5,6,10,10+1, and 10+2 for up to four copies of your data allows data to remain available in the event of a disk, controller, storage node, power, network, or site failure.
• Thin Provisioning Support
• SAN/iQ Thin Provisioning
• Snapshot Support
• SAN/iQ Application Integrated Snapshots
• Replication Support
• SAN/iQ Remote Copy Asynchronous Replication with Bandwidth Throttling
• Multi-Site/Disaster Recovery Solution Pack with SAN/iQ Synchronous Replication
• Smart Clone
• SAN/iQ SmartClone
• Management
• Centralized Management Console, HP ProLiant Integrated Lights-Out 2 Remote Management, Baseboard Mgmt Controller IPMI 2.0   Source from storagereview.com

The 3.5" HDD shortage starts recovering slowly, the price may not go back to pre-flood phase soon. Even though 2.5" probably rise its price but still lower than SSD's. Through new technology of SSD and provide a cost-effective prices for people and enterprise, SSD gets the good opportunity to develop the market from this year. Just read the news of HP developing customerized SSD storage, HP is focus on the market of SSD! How do you imagine SSD market for following year?