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

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

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

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

Seagate Offers Music Skins for External Hard Drives

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Seagate has unveiled a new line of music skins that users can take advantage of to customize their external hard drives. The skins are offered in conjunction with MusicSkins and are available for the FreeAgent Go and FreeAgent Go for Mac.

A wide range of skins are available to customize the drives and all skins use the same 3M adhesive technology to prevent air bubbles and allow for clean removal. Skins are available with musicians, Adult Swim characters and can even be made with personal photos and images. Read more

Posted on Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Samsung Story Station 1.5TB External Hard Drive unveiled

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Samsung unveiled its new 1.5-Terabyte (TB) external hard drive, Samsung STORY Station, which is designed to meet the explosive demand for external, secure, and eco-friendly desktop PC storage.
The 3.5-inch Story Station external hard drive, which features enhanced security software and a solid aluminum casing, is ideal for data backup of personal, hard-to-replace data, music, photos, and video files. Read more

Posted on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB Hard Drive Review

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Hard drive upgrades are easy enough to do on a notebook assuming you can install the operating system without any problems. Today we are looking at a new Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB HDD. The drive spins at 7200 rpm but consumes nearly the same power as a 5400 rpm drive.

The Seagate trounced the 5400 rpm drive I recently tested in most benchmarks and has drop protection built-in. If you need a large hard drive for your notebook with high performance that doesn't kill battery life, this may be the product for you. Read more

Posted on Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:34:26 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Hitachi 2.5-inch 500GB 5K500.B Hard Drive Review

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Today we are going to look at the Hitachi 5K500.B 2.5-inch HDD for notebook computers. The drive is only 9.5mm thick and needs only 1.4W during read/write operations. The drive family can be had in 120GB, 160Gb, 250GB, 320GB, 400GB, and 500GB.

The drive also offers optional bulk data encryption. The small hard drive is perfect for notebook users looking to add more storage to their notebook. Hitachi also integrates green features into the drive as well. Read more

Posted on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:44:01 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green Power Hard Drive Review

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Hothardware published a review of the Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green Power Hard Drive. Are 2TB to much storage for a single drive or is this the future?
Quote from the review: "The Western Digital Green Power Caviar 2TB drive features 4 - 500GB platters rotating at a variable speed in combination with Western Digital's IntelliSeek, NoTouch, and IntelliPower technologies. Read more

Posted on Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Seagate Announces New Video Surveillance Hard Drives

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Seagate has announced new hard drives aimed at the surveillance industry called the SV35.5 Series. The drives are optimized for 24x7 use with capacities up to 1TB. Seagate promises that the line has best in class reliability, performance, capacity, acoustics, and power consumption.

The drives are performance tunes for 140MB/s sustained sequential data rates and ATA-7 streaming commands for high-speed transfers. The drives also feature built-in error recovery for non-stop streaming, thermal monitoring, and reporting. Read more

Posted on Tue, 7 Apr 2009 10:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

SSD or Hard Drive on Your New Notebook or Netbook?

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Many of the netbooks and notebooks that are being offered today are available with the option of a hard drive or a Solid State Drive (SSD) for storage. Each storage method has its pros and cons and many people wonder what they should get when looking for a new computer.

The biggest issues for many consumers to consider with a SSD is that they cost much more than traditional hard drives do currently and they offer less storage space typically. In the netbook realm, you are usually looking at smallish 4GB and 8GB SSDs in most systems. Asus commonly makes netbooks with these size SSDs. Read more

Posted on Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Eagleroc to Show External Hard Drives at CeBIT 2009

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Rocstor will be showing its line of value external storage solutions at CeBIT 2009 called the Rocstor line. The external solutions feature a 2.5-inch SATA drive and connect with up to 800 MB/sec transfer speeds to a laptop vie FireWire 800, Firewire 400, USB 2.0 or eSATA.

The housing the drive sits inside is designed to reduce shock transmitted to the drive when dropped or bumped against objects. Compatibility for the drives is with Mac, Linux, and Windows computers. Storage capacities available in the line range from 250GB to a 2TB single drive configuration, which is great for large files. Read more

Posted on Mon, 2 Mar 2009 06:34:57 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Seagate Unveils Constellation Enterprise Hard Drives

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Seagate announced new enterprise class hard drives called the Constellation family. The new enterprise storage drives are for Tier 2 storage applications and includes two models including the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drives.

The drives offer power efficiency and storage capacity. Seagate PowerChoice is integrated allowing the drives to decrease power consumption by up to 54%. The 2.5-inch drive is available in 160GB and 500GB capacities in SATA and SAS 2.0 interfaces. Read more

Posted on Tue, 3 Feb 2009 12:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Western Digital Unveils 2TB Green Hard Drive

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It hasn’t been long since Seagate pulled the wraps off its 1.5TB hard drive, yet that number already seems small by comparison to the product Western Digital just announced. WD has unveiled the industry's first 2TB HDD.

Despite having lots of storage space, the drive also offers cool and quiet operation according to WD and fits into the companies Caviar Green line. The drive offers 500GB of storage per platter and a 32MB cache. Read more

Posted on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:58:10 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Western Digital Said to be Readying 2TB Green Hard Drive

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In the computer industry, there are lots of things that companies fight to have the most or least of. For instance, CPU makers battled for years over who had the most GHz in their processors. Laptop maker's fight over who has the thinnest and lightest notebooks and hard drive companies fight over speed and storage capacity.

Seagate has its 1.5TB hard drive right now, which is the high capacity king for the moment. Engadget reports that it hears rumblings that Seagate may soon lose the title of highest capacity drive to Western Digital as it readies a 2TB Caviar Green hard drive. Read more

Posted on Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Verbatim Announces Quad Interface External Hard Drive

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Verbatim has launched two new external hard drives in 500GB and 1TB capacities that offer quad interfaces. The new drives will work with both Mac and PC computers. Connectivity options include USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA II.

The new drives weigh 3.3 pounds and measure 8.7 x 5.9 x 1.5-inches and use 3.5-inch 7200rpm desktop hard drives inside the cases with 32MB of cache. A silent cooling fan inside the case keeps the drives cool. Read more

Posted on Mon, 5 Jan 2009 08:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Seagate Cheetah X15K.6 Hard Drive Review

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Hothardware published a review of the Seagate Cheetah X15K.6 Hard Drive.
Quote from the review: "Traditional hard disk storage is living on borrowed time. We know it and storage manufacturers know it. Solid state drives, which use non-volatile memory chips instead of rotating metal discs for storing data, are simply a better medium in the long run. They consume less power, create nearly zero heat, and produce no noise – but best of all, there are no moving parts to wear out over time. The technology and prices aren’t quite there yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Take a quick look through any tech-oriented forum and you will likely run into folks proclaiming the death of traditional platter based storage. For the most part, they're right - but there is a twist to the story as platter based storage manufacturers are fighting back. Read more

Posted on Tue, 2 Sep 2008 20:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Formation Doubles Capacity of ToughDisk 3500 Rugged Hard Drive

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Formation has announced that it doubled the size of its rugged ToughDisk 3500 SATA hard disk. The capacity for the drive went from 320GB to 640GB. The rugged ToughDrive is made to bridge the gap between SSDs and the normal HDD in a 3.5-inch form factor.

The drive is designed to be a drop-in replacement for a normal 3.5-inch HDD and is both vibration and shock hardened. The drive uses the SATA 3GB/s interface and has a USB 2.0 port for access with systems lacking SATA. The drive also supports eSATA and xSATA as well. Read more

Posted on Fri, 1 Aug 2008 14:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun