Toshiba Launches 1.8-inch 320GB Hard Drive

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Toshiba sent out a press release today announcing the launch of two additions to their 1.8” Serial ATA HDD line of products. The first is the MKxx33GSG series of 5400 RPM 320 GB, 250 GB and 160 GB mobile hard drives. The second new series is the low-power MK1235GSL 120 GB "ultraportable" hard drive. Toshiba brags that these new 1.8" HDDs are substantially tougher than their bulkier cousins.

The manufacturer claims that these new drives can handle up to 1,500 Gs of non-operational shock, and as much as 500 Gs of operational shock. That makes them 50% and 25% (respectively) tougher than their 2.5" counter-parts. These 5400 RPM devices are capable of a transfer rate of 830 MB/s, quite impressive by any standards.

Posted on Thu, 5 Nov 2009 06:26:43 CST | by Robert Evans

Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB SATA 6 Gbit/s Hard Drive Performance Review

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Tweaktown published this review of the Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB SATA 6 Gbit/s Hard Drive.
Quote from the review: "Third generation Serial ATA technology is finally here. Today we are going to take a look at the new Seagate Barracuda XT, the first SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive to hit the TweakTown Test Lab. Read more

Posted on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS 15,000RPM Hard Drive Review

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Benchmark Reviews published a Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS 15,000RPM Hard Drive review.
Quote from the review: "Until SSDs can safely prove that they're a reliable long-term media for Enterprise storage, the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface owns the market share for server storage. Until Seagate launches their Solid State Drive counterpart, the 600GB Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS Hard Drive ST3600057SS delivers safe and affordable high-capacity storage to data servers and Enterprise environments. Read more

Posted on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Xbox 360 Gets A Blu-ray Drive Says Steve Ballmer?

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That comes out of now where. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says in a new interview just published on Gizmodo that the Xbox 360 gets Blu-ray drives as accessories.

Since the whole HD DVD disaster Microsoft always said no to Blu-ray drives and put streaming movie services as the valid alternative. Read more

Posted on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:23:24 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Pretec Launches World's Fastest Flash Drive

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Pretec has unveiled a new flash drive called the i-Disk Tango 266x that promises to be the world's fastest USB flash drive with record setting speeds of 40MB/s read and 30MB/s write. The theoretical maximum for USB 2.0 is 60MB/s.

Most devices can’t hit that theoretical limit because of overhead and Pretec claims that 40MB/s is the practical limit for the USB 2.0 specifications meaning its Tango flash drive is as fast as you can get before USB 3.0 is widely available. Read more

Posted on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Samsung Announces Internal Blu-ray Combo Drive with 8x BD-R Burning

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Samsung has announced the pending launch of its first Blu-ray combo drive that can burn BD-R media at 8x speed. The drive is called the SH-B083 and it can burn to 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray media.

In addition to burning BD-R and reading BD-Rom discs, the drive can also read CDs at up to 40x and DVDs at up to 16x. Samsung uses its dual layer jumping algorithm to provide a fast average access time of 350ms, which Samsung claims is much faster than other drives on the market. Read more

Posted on Thu, 8 Oct 2009 10:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

OCZ Agility 60GB Solid State Drive Review

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ThinkComputers published a review of the OCZ Agility 60GB Solid State Drive.
Quote from the review: "Lately it seems like everyone is releasing new solid state drives. Recently we reviewed the Vertex series drive from OCZ, which was one of their performance drives based on the ever popular Indilinx Barefoot controller. The thing about SSD drives is that they are still quite expensive. Read more

Posted on Wed, 7 Oct 2009 14:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

New LaCie Starck Designer Hard Drives Launched

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Today LaCie, in collaboration with world-famous designer Philippe Starck, announced the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive and the LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive.
The new LaCie drives combine the known clean design with a dramatic sculptural magma touch.

Complementing Starck's design philosophy is an intelligent surface that responds to your touch. Exclusively featured on the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive, you can customize the touch-sensitive surface to open an application of your choosing with the touch of a finger. It's an easy, efficient way to streamline your digital life. Read more

Posted on Tue, 6 Oct 2009 12:33:17 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

My Book Elite & Studio: Portable Hard Drive+E-Ink Display

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It looks like Western Digital hopes to be one of the big names in efficient, portable storage. According to Engadget their new My Book series of portable hard drives will come with a front facing E-Ink display that shows their label, and the amount of free space left on the drive. This way you'll be able to see how much space your drive has at a glance, without wasting power on an inefficient display.

Both the My Book Elite and the My Book Studio offer 256-bit hardware based encryption. Both are available in sizes ranging from 500 GB to 2 TB. The Studio, which is Mac formatted and has FireWire 800, costs between $150 and $300, depending on size. The Elite costs between $170 and $280.

Posted on Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:01:38 CDT | by Robert Evans

Super Talent Offers New Toshiba Branded UltraDrive SSD

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Super Talent has announced that it is now offering branded Toshiba SSDs in a line known as the UltraDrive DX. The new line of SSDs offers two levels of security to prevent unauthorized data theft or loss. The drives will be sold via Super Talent starting this week.

The first level of security that the SSDs offer is password protection with an encrypted password. The password keeps hackers from accessing the data on the drive. The second level of protection is a new hardware randomizing technology. Read more

Posted on Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

LG N2B1D NAS With 2TB And Blu-ray Drive Unveiled

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LG unveils what the company calls the world's first NAS with a Blu-ray drive.
The LG N2B1D features 2TB of hard-drive disk space and a Blu-ray drive to backup data on Blu-ray discs.
The new LG NAS is geared towards consumers for home use and promises easy handling. Read more

Posted on Tue, 6 Oct 2009 04:30:27 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

A-DATA SH93: The Indestructible Hard Drive

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Some people are harder on their gadgets than others. Most folks are fine with a device that can handle normal wear and tear; being dropped once or twice from a low height, scuffed with a shoe, spritzed with water by accident, etc. But some of us want gadgets that can take a bit more of a beating, which is why A-DATA is working on the SH93 ultra-durable hard drive. (Gizmodo)

The SH93 is both shock and water resistant. It can handle being submerged up to one meter for 30 minutes, which is more than enough to protect it from the occasional spilled glass or impromptu Super Soaker fight. The SH93 also has a wrap-around USB cord, which should keep things nice and organized no matter the circumstances.

Posted on Mon, 5 Oct 2009 09:36:51 CDT | by Robert Evans

New Car Cam Voyager with LCD Display Is Ideal For Paranoid Drivers

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The new Car Cam Voyager with integrated LCD is apparently the first vehicle camera to let you see exactly what is happening in real-time while you're driving.
This car camera actually has a "cool gadget" design. The camera is on one side and the display on the other.

The car camera provides a live feed on its 2 inch 320 x 240 screen, but it also records up to 48 hours of video on the road with an 32GB microSD card (not included).
Read more

Posted on Sat, 3 Oct 2009 09:42:10 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Pioneer BDR-205 Blu-ray Drive for PCs Unveiled

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The first Blu-ray burner for desktop computers that I got my hands on a few years back was well over $1000. Today you can buy a computer with a Blu-ray player for about the same amount. Pioneer has unveiled a new Blu-ray burner for desktop computers called the BDR-205.

The drive is a 5.25-inch desktop drive made to go inside a computer. The cool part about the new drive is that it is the first Blu-ray writer to hit 12x speeds. If you have ever burned a full Blu-ray disc of data, you know how long it takes to write 50Gb of data. Read more

Posted on Thu, 1 Oct 2009 08:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Hello Kitty Mimobot USB Drives Celebrate 35th Anniversary Of Hello Kitty

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The Mimobot USB drives now feature Hello Kitty. The Japanese cute cat girl is aging very well considering she is already 35.

The Mimobot series has already featured all kinds of designs including Star Wars.
Read more

Posted on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:34:09 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Sony DRX-S70U-W Portable DVD Drive Unveiled

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The new Sony DRX-S70U-W sports a slim design and supports up to 8X DVD±R recording speeds, delivering a full 4.7 GB disc of video, data, music or images on standard 8X DVD+R media.
In addition, the new Sony drive can record on 8.5GB DVD+R Double/Dual layer and 4.7GB DVD-RW discs at 6X speeds, DVD+RW at 8X, DVD-RAM at 5X and CD-R/RW at 24X.

The DRX-U70-W comes bundled with the Nero DVD/CD mastering software suite, and offers quick and easy connectivity with a high speed USB (USB 2.0) digital interface for simple setup and maximum flexibility. Read more

Posted on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Freecom Releases First USB 3.0 Hard Drive For Sale

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This week at the Intel Developer's Conference (IDF) Freecom announced the first line of USB 3.0 hard drives to hit the market. The Hard Drive XS 3.0 comes out far ahead of the pack of new 3.0 devices, most of which are set to roll out in 2010. Freecom's hard drives, however, will be out in Europe starting mid-November, according to PC World.

The company did not state when or if their drives would be available for sale outside of Europe. They did announce that the product would come in three sizes; 1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2 TB. Prices will start at around $175 for the 1 TB drive, which is a fairly low fee to pay for the honor of being an early adopter for one of the coolest new technologies.

Posted on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:00:00 CDT | by Robert Evans

Kingston Improves Speeds on DataTraveler 410 USB Flash Drive

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Kingston has announced that it has increased the speed on one of its flash drives called the DataTraveler 400. The drive can be had in up to 32GB capacity. With such a high capacity offering, faster speeds are very important to allow large files to be moved more quickly.

The drive is also password protected to prevent unauthorized access to the data on the drive. The drive now has read and write speeds of 20MB/sec. Other capacities are available as well with 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB drives in the line. Read more

Posted on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:53:30 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Samsung Offers World's First Display Driver with Touch Screen Controller

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Samsung today unveiled what it claims to be the world's first mobile display mobile display driver with embedded touch screen controller functionality. The tech is based on the Samsung Touch Embedded DDI technology.

The single chip solution allows phone designers to make more simple designs and the display driver is aimed at the mobile phone, PMP, and MP3 player market. The component is a capacitive touch screen controller and allows for soft-touch and multi-touch functionality. Read more

Posted on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:04:37 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Pliant Unveils Fast (Fast, Fast) Lightning Enterprise Flash Drives

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Pliant has announced a new line of storage products with super fast data speeds called the Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD). The EFD line includes both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch products that use a software architecture and ASIC controller to improve performance and reliability of storage systems.

The EFD line is intended to be used in enterprise data centers and other HPC environments where 24x7 mission critical applications run. The line of EFDs have no cache to prevent data loss. The Lightning LB series is a 2.5-inch form factor with the LS models using 3.5-inch. Read more

Posted on Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Super Talent Unveils 2TB RAIDDrive

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Super Talent has unveiled its latest storage product called the RAIDDrive SSD. The SSD isn’t your typical internal storage drive with a 3.5-inch form factor. It is a PCIe add-in card that slips into an expansion slot on your computer.

The SSD promises data transfer speeds of up to 1.4GB/sec and uses the PCIe 2.0 interface. Bandwidth is up to 4GB/sec, more than ten times that of SATA-II 3Gbps and five times higher than the coming SATA-III bus. Read more

Posted on Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:59:56 CDT | by Shane McGlaun