For a few years, Intel Optane felt like it was cheating. Random reads that beat any SSD on the market. Latency low enough to make a spinning hard drive feel like a relic. And the most interesting side? A whole new memory tier that nobody else could touch. Then it just quietly stopped existing.

If you've ever held the power button to shut your PC down, you've done an "unsafe shutdown," and chances are that your SSD wasn't too happy about it. The event was probably logged, adding up to your error count.

Having your files safe somewhere on the network doesn't help much if a completely blank machine can't even see the network yet. Getting a dead computer back to the point where it can talk to anything needs to solve a hardware recognition problem before the operating system exists to solve it. Early NAS handled this surprisingly well, and understanding how they did it makes it easier to appreciate why modern tools, for all their efficiency, usually can't fully replace what those older systems got right.

This is a PSA: Please stop abusing your SSD. Mistreating it is easier to do than it might seem. We all do it to some extent, but if you do it too much, it'll eventually backfire.

Microsoft has been on a roll recently, bringing new Windows 11 features left and right. The latest one to reach general availability (meaning it's available to every Windows 11 user, not just Windows Insiders) is called point-in-time restore, and from what I've seen, it's essentially a modern take on System Restore, which has been around for more than a quarter of a century, first debuting with Windows ME back in 2000.

Back in 1997, a few years after video game consoles and computers had fully embraced CD-ROM technology, a new optical format standard known as DVD-RAM was finalized.

A NAS is a great way to host a few services and back up your files, but you shouldn't rely on one device to protect you against file loss. I have two separate NASes on my network that do two very different things: One serves as a daily driver, the other is "cold storage" that only receives periodic backups.

At the end of the 1990s, IBM took the same basic machinery found inside regular HDDs and squeezed it into a package barely larger than a quarter. The Microdrive contained a tiny spinning platter, a motor, and a moving read/write head.

Google's biggest solar and battery project stands in sharp contrast with xAI's nearby unpermitted power plant.

MicroSD card slots were once ubiquitous on Android phones. Now they’ve all but disappeared—at least from the more premium models. Why are the best phones seemingly making us do with less?

Counterpoint says rising AI memory demand helped drive smartphone shipments to their weakest second quarter since 2013 as DRAM and NAND costs climbed.

The post AI’s Memory Boom Is Reshaping the Smartphone Market appeared first on TechRepublic.

A sodium-metal battery reached a four-minute laboratory rate, but its strongest lifespan figures came from slower and smaller tests. The pouch-cell results show why EV use remains a long way off.

Modern life runs on subscriptions that are often useful, reasonable, and increasingly difficult to live without. The future arrived, but apparently we’ll need to keep paying monthly to use it.

A Pixel 11 pricing leak suggests Google may drop 128GB storage and start all models at 256GB, potentially raising entry prices.

The post Google Pixel 11: Pricing Leak Reveals Bigger Storage, Higher Costs appeared first on TechRepublic.

Starting with macOS 28, Apple will no longer support encrypted Mac OS Extended, or HFS+, volumes. Users will need to decrypt them or reformat them as APFS to keep using them. 9to5Mac reports: In a new support document, Apple explains that starting with macOS 28, "the Mac OS Extended file system format will be supported only for volumes (disks and other storage devices) that aren't encrypted." In practice, this means users who currently rely on encrypted HFS+ external drives or other encrypted legacy Mac-formatted volumes will need to "either decrypt or reformat any encrypted Mac OS Extended volumes." Apple doesn't explain the reason for the change. Still, the move appears to be another step in Apple's transition to APFS, its file system with built-in encryption support, which replaced Mac OS Extended as the default Mac file system in macOS High Sierra. As a result of this change, Apple says that starting with macOS 26, Macs might notify users when they're using an encrypted Mac OS Extended disk that won't be compatible with macOS 28 or later. According to the support page, "the notification will identify the volume by name." However, Apple says users can manually confirm whether a volume is both using Mac OS Extended format and encrypted by following these steps [...]. Apple adds that "macOS 28 and later will continue to support unencrypted volumes that use Mac OS Extended format," and notes "Mac OS Extended is also known as HFS Plus (or HFS+)."

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Instead of paying iCloud or Dropbox more every month, get a 20TB cloud storage that stays with you for life.

The post This 20TB Cloud Storage Lifetime Subscription is on Sale for $350 appeared first on TechRepublic.

Say goodbye to recurring fees and complicated systems with FileJump’s straightforward and secure cloud storage platform — with lifetime access to your files.

The post Your Data, Always Within Reach – 2TB of Lifetime Cloud Storage Is $59 appeared first on TechRepublic.

GitHub is offering a limited run of 1,000 CD-ROM copies of public repositories as a pro-physical-media jab at Sony's plan to stop producing PlayStation game discs in 2028. Tom's Hardware reports: The coding and collaboration platform, owned by Microsoft, states that "In light of recent developments in physical media, GitHub is proud to announce that you can now obtain your public repo on CD-ROM." Moreover, it appeals to the human side of computing, adding the emotive line "Keep it. Lend it to friends. Pass it on to your children." It isn't April 1st, so thankfully this is no joke. However, if you check out the above-linked GitHub Your Code, On a CD offer page, it quickly becomes clear this is a very limited in time/scope stunt. "Order a burned CD of your own public GitHub repo. Yes, a real physical disc you can hold in your hands, no download required," begins the spiel. But this is a very limited run of 1,000 discs, with applications required between July 2 and July 6 (inclusive). Limit one per person, with availability varying between country/region. "Your code is physically yours, forever. Until you lose it, let's be real," says GitHub. At best, these CDs will be framed and put on a wall, some becoming collector's items or eBay money spinners (discs like 0001 or 0888 would be good ones, if they are numbered). Also, many will be lost or eventually/accidentally discarded, as GitHub seems to know. So this 'protest' is arguably 1,000 doses of expensively shipped e-waste.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.