OWC announces On-The-Go 320GB 7200RPM portable HDD

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Other World Computing announced today the highest capacity 7200RPM portable bus-powered storage solution on the market - the Mercury On-The-Go 320GB 7200RPM portable storage drive.

Immediately available and priced starting at $239.99, the new Mercury On-The-Go 320GB 7200RPM drive has models available with USB 2.0, USB 2.0+eSATA, FireWire 400+USB 2.0, and FireWire 800/400+USB 2.0 Interfaces. Read more

Posted on Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:38:04 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Toshiba unveils 160GB 1.8 inch SATA HDD

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Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of 1.8" SATA hard disk drives including the industry's first drive of this type with a capacity of 160GB.

The new 160GB HDD, MK1617GSG, and the 80GB drive, MK8017GSG, will enter mass production in August.

Toshiba’s new 1.8-inch hard-drives boost interface speed to 1.5Gbps and offer a rotation speed of 5,400 rpm, faster than the current generation of Toshiba 1.8-inch HDD (MK1214GAH, parallel ATA, 120GB). Read more

Posted on Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:21:40 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Western Digital Scorpio Black 7200rpm Notebook HDD

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Western Digital announced today that it was now shipping its line of Scorpio Black notebook HDDs. The drives are all 7200RPM and use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface and have 16Mb caches. Storage capacities for the line start at 80 GB and go up to 320GB.

Common features for the line include IntelliSeek for optimum seek time with low power consumption, SecurePark parks the recording heads off the disc surface, ShockGuard protects the drive from shocks, Free-fall sensor parks the heads off the disc in less than 200ms when a drop is sensed and WhisperDrive makes the line some of the quietest drives on the market. Pricing for the line is up to $250. Read more

Posted on Mon, 2 Jun 2008 10:04:05 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Thermaltake BlacX SATA to USB HDD Dock Test

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Tweaktown published a Thermaltake BlacX SATA to USB HDD Dock review.

Quote from the review: "Thermaltake has just come up with the ultimate enthusiast accessory; at least that is what went through my head when I first saw the press release of the new BlacX and BlacX SE. As I read the release my mind started to drift away, thinking about the two foot tall stack of SATA drives sitting in my closet and how useful it would be to just grab a drive and start transferring data to it within seconds. Read more

Posted on Sat, 31 May 2008 15:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Hitachi Announces a Pair of New CinemaStar HDDs

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Hitachi announced a pair of new hard drives today aimed at DVR and home theater use. The drives include the CinemaStar C5K320 and the CinemaStar 5K500. The C5K320 is a 2.5-inch drive available in capacities up to 320GB spinning at 5400 RPM.

The C5K320 uses Hitachi SmoothStream technology for smoother video streaming. Other features include time-limit error recovery and enhanced thermal monitoring. The CinemaStar 5K500 is the first CoolSpin drive from Hitachi and uses an enhanced motor to limit peak current during spin-up and lower continuous power. Read more

Posted on Wed, 28 May 2008 06:38:49 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

CF Card RAID in the size of a 2.5-inch SATA HDD from Sans Digital

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Sans Digital introduces interesting Compact Flash (CF) enclosures.

The Sans Digital CompactSTOR CS1T and CompactRAID CR2T convert Compact Flash cards to a single 2.5" SATA hard drive storage device.
The CS1T houses one Compact Flash card, while the CR2T supports spanning and RAID 1 (mirroring) by housing up to two Compact Flash cards. The CR2T allows you to easily upgrade your laptop to RAID and flash storage. Read more

Posted on Sat, 24 May 2008 01:36:01 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Samsung Announces 1TB EcoGreen HDD

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Samsung announced today a new eco hard drive with lots of storage capacity. The Samsung F1 EcoGreen hard drive has 1TB of storage space and provides a 15% power savings compared to other low-power 1TB drives.

The EcoGreen drive spins at 5400 RMP and uses the 3Gbps SATA interface and a 32MB buffer. The drive uses platters that each holds 334GB to reduce the number of parts required to operate the drive and boost overall performance. Samsung says the drive will be available in Q2 2008 for $199. Read more

Posted on Thu, 22 May 2008 14:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Alienware and Dell Ship Notebooks with Seagate 320GB HDD

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Seagate announced today that Dell and Alienware have become the first two notebook makers to ship systems that use Seagate’s new 320GB 7200 RPM HDD for performance and storage capacity. Seagate says that the 320GB drive is available now on some Dell XPs machines and will see be offered in Alienware systems.

The Seagate drive uses a SATA 3.0 Gbit/second interface. The fast 7200 RPM rotational speed makes for serious performance. Commonly when a notebook drive has a high storage capacity you have to live with 5400 RPM or slower speeds making data access slower. Read more

Posted on Mon, 19 May 2008 10:14:39 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10K SATA HDD Review

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TechwareLabs published a review of the Western Digital Raptor 150 Gb 10K SATA Hard Drive.

Quote from the review: "Today Artiom looks at the famed Western Digital 150GB 10,000RPM SATA hard drive. Read more

Posted on Sat, 17 May 2008 09:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Hitachi Ships 7200RPM TravelStar 320GB HDD

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Hitachi announced today that it is now shipping its TravelStar 7K320 2.5-inch notebook HDD. The drive has 320GB of storage space without sacrificing the faster 7200 RMP rotational speed. Hitachi says that the new drive delivers 60% higher capacity than the drive before it and application performance is improved by 12%.

A version of the drive will also be offered with bulk data encryption as well. The standard version of the drive will use a SATA 3GB/s interface and the BDE version will use the SATA 1.5GB/s interface. Power utilization is on par with 5400 RPM drives. Read more

Posted on Wed, 7 May 2008 06:39:45 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Verbatim Announces 500GB Portable HDD

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Verbatim announced this week that it was adding a 500GB version is its 2.5-inch SmartDisk portable hard drive to the lineup. According to Verbatim this is the world’s first 500GB portable hard drive featuring a 9.5mm Z-height drive.

The drive is about the size of a PDA and joins the SmartDisk like that already has capacities of 120GB to 320GB available. The drive promises a weight of under 6 ounces and measures 3.38” x 5.38” x 0.63” and will be available with either a USB interface or with a USB/Firewire interface. Read more

Posted on Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:05:12 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Thermaltake BlacX HDD Docking Station Review

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3dGameMan published a review of the Thermaltake BlacX HDD Docking Station.

Quote from the review: "The Thermaltake BlacX HDD Docking Station is by far the coolest HDD docking system around. There are all kinds of HDD enclosures for 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs but mounting the HDD into the enclosure with screws is needed. This means a separate HDD enclosure for each HDD is required. Read more

Posted on Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Western Digital VelociRaptor VR150 HDD Review

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The TechReport got their hands on the new Western Digital VelociRaptor hard-drive that tries to ride on the success of the Raptor hard-drive series.

Quote from the review: "If PC enthusiasts had a hall of fame for hardware, Western Digital's Raptor hard drive would be a shoo-in. Storage-related products are usually a little short on sex appeal, but the Raptor has become an icon—a testament to what it means to be an enthusiast. Read more

Posted on Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:22:40 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Silverstonetek TS01B RFID protected HDD Enclosure Review

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Metku published a review of an RFID protected HDD Enclosure from Silverstonetek dubbed TS01B.

Quote from the review: ""As 2,5" laptop drives already range up to 320 GB in storage space, in worst case scenario they can contain virtually endless amounts of classified material that in wrong hands can lead to huge problems. Read more

Posted on Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Sharkoon SATA QuickPort PRO HDD Docking Station

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Sharkoon introduces the SATA QuickPort PRO hard-drive docking station.

In case you are too lazy to mount your SATA hard-drives inside your PC case the Sharkoon SATA QuickPort PRO is for you.

The Sharkoon SATA QuickPort PRO is providing direct and simple access to uninstalled hard drives and also includes a front mounted 2-port USB hub and a SD/SDHC/MMC/MS memory card reader. Read more

Posted on Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Seagate Launches 1TB HDD with SAS interface

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Seagate announced today that it is now offering the world’s first 1TB hard drive with a SAS interface. The drive is the enterprise class Barracuda ES.2 with Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface. Seagate says the SAS interface can boost performance by 135% compared to SATA drives.

"The explosion of content in enterprise environments is driving the need for faster data access and bandwidth that Seagate's 1TB Barracuda ES.2 drives can deliver with a SAS interface," said Sherman Black, Seagate senior vice president and general manager, Seagate Enterprise Compute Business. "SAS dual-port capability with redundancy, improved performance and data integrity make this drive the perfect low-cost/GB enterprise-ready drive for our customers." Read more

Posted on Mon, 7 Apr 2008 10:33:53 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 2.5 inch HDD Review

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Tweaktown published a review of the Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 2.5 inch Hard-drive.

Quote from the review: "Hitachi has really come through in the hard disk market since taking over the department from IBM. So far the Hitachi drives have been top notch with no real reason to discredit them. Hitachi’s current range of drives are extremely impressive. Read more

Posted on Fri, 4 Apr 2008 07:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

WD Caviar RE2 GreenPower 1TB HDD Review

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Hothardware published a review of the Western Digital Caviar and RE.2 GreenPower 1TB hard drive.

Quote from the review: "In addition to their large capacities, these drives offer a number of proprietary features designed to lower their power consumption and acoustic profiles, like IntelliPower, IntelliSeek, IntelliPark, and in the RE.2's case RAFF (Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward). Read more

Posted on Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Fujitsu Announces 320GB 7200 RPM Notebook HDD

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Fujitsu announced its latest notebook hard drive today in the MHZ2 BJ series. The new drive has a 320GB storage capacity but still spins at a speedy 7200 RPM. Typically higher capacity notebook drives only spin at 5400 RPM or less.

The drive requires 2.3 watts of power, so the performance it provides won’t hit the battery especially hard. The drive uses the SATA 3.0 Gb/s interface and is manufactured in compliance with RoHS directives. Read more

Posted on Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:36:43 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Western Digital Scorpio 2.5'' 320GB HDD Review

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Tweaktown published a review of the Western Digital Scorpio 2.5" 320GB HDD.

Quote from the review: "While SSD or Solid State Disks are making their way in, we are still working with the current generation of storage and Western Digital has managed to do very well at increasing sizes and speeds. Read more

Posted on Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Samsung Announces new 7200 RPM 250GB Notebook HDD

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The big tradeoff with notebook hard drives to get more storage space is normally a loss of rotational speed. The slower the drive rotates the longer it takes to retrieve your data and run your applications from the drive. Samsung announced today a new 250GB HDD for notebooks that uses a fast 7200 RPM spindle speed.

The drive is called the Spinpoint MP2 and it uses the SATA II 3.0Gbps interface, native command queuing and Samsungs SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies. The drive also sports a 16MB buffer and is available in sizes from 80GB to 250Gb. Read more

Posted on Wed, 5 Mar 2008 08:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun