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

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS Hard Drive Review

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Futurelooks published a Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS Hard Drive review.

Quote from the review: "Hard drives remain the last great bottleneck in performance computing. Processors and RAM constantly get faster and more complex, due to being solid state electronics. Since hard drives consist of moving parts, they have been left behind in this race. Read more

Posted on Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Samsung Offers 7-year Warranty on RAID Hard Drives

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Samsung has announced a new warranty for its RAID class enterprise hard drives in the Spinpoint F1 RAID 3.5-inch SATA drives. The warranty covers the drives for a full 7 years. Samsung says that most RAID class hard drive warranties are only good for 3-5 years.

Capacities for the RAID drives from Samsung with the new warranty range from 250GB to 1TB and are designed for storage and surveillance applications. The mean time between failures for the Spinpoint F1 RAID drives is up to 1.2 million hours and the pricing for the drives starts at $299. Read more

Posted on Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:23:12 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Addonics Diamond Cipher Encrypted Hard Drive Kit

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Addonics has introduced a new encrypted hard drive kit that has enterprise level AES 256-bit hardware encryption. The kit has built-in eSATA and USB 2.0 connectors that can be used as an external hard drive or as an internal cartridge style drive.

The 256-bit AES hardware encryption protects data up to “Top secret” level, the highest level of document security used to protect national security. Addonics also says that the Diamond Cipher is the first enclosure to provide native SATA encryption on the fly with no performance degradation. Read more

Posted on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:56:23 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

ioSafe 3.5-inch Hard Drive with Disaster Protection

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ioSafe announced a new product called the ioSafe 3.5 series. The series are the first internal 2.5-inch hard drives that feature disaster protection. The drives are rated to protect data from fire and full immersion in water and can be deployed like any other 3.5-inch hard drive.

ioSafe says that the drives are engineered to protect data up to 1400 degrees F and for full immersion is fresh or salt water. The product puts a 2.5-inch drive inside a 3.5-inch rugged housing. Capacities for the line range from 80GB to 320GB. All the drives are 5400 RPM units with 8MB buffers. Prices range up to $459. Read more

Posted on Mon, 9 Jun 2008 14:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

WD My Passport Elite 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive Review

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Futurelooks published a Western Digital My Passport Elite 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive review.

Quote from the review: "The last while, we’ve reviewed portable 2.5 inch USB drives from both Maxtor (OneTouch 4 Mini) and Buffalo (MiniStation TurboUSB). Both units were solid performers and seemed to bring their own unique features to the table. Read more

Posted on Mon, 26 May 2008 00:10:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Dell Adds Hitachi Ultrastar Hard Drives to Severs

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Dell announced today that it is now using Hitachi Ultrastar hard drives in its enterprise server and storage systems. The drives being used are the 15,000 RPM Ultrastar 450GB units. The drives have a 30% greater data throughput than the original drives.

The fast speed of the drives provides average seek times as low as 3.3 milliseconds and reduce latency to 2ms. The Dell servers are intended for hosting email, database, and other enterprise applications. Read more

Posted on Tue, 20 May 2008 07:41:43 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive Revie

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ThinkComputers published a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive Review.

Quote from the review: "Terabyte hard drives are becoming more popular with the need for more hard drive space. If you're looking to expand your hard drive capacity I think the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive would be great for you. This drive includes USB and Dual FireWire interfaces with available capacities of 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB. Read more

Posted on Tue, 13 May 2008 17:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

MvixUSA Launches Hard Drive Based HD Media Player

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MvixUSA announced a new ultra portable HDD high definition media player today called the Mvix MV-2500U. The device uses a 2.5-inch PATA IDE drive up to 250 GB and when connected to a PC it works just like an external USB drive.

The device includes an IR remote and it can store and decode both HD video and SD video in more than a dozen file formats. Supported resolutions include 480p, 720p, and 1080i. Supported file formats include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4, DVD (VOB, IFO), DivX ® (3/4/5/6), Xvid, BivX ®, VCD (DAT) for both PAL and NTSC. The MV-2500U will ship this month. Read more

Posted on Thu, 1 May 2008 11:47:13 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Seagate First to Ship 1 Billion Hard Drives

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Seagate announced today that it was the first hard drive maker to ship 1 billion hard drives. Seagate says that the 1 billion drives shipped amounts to about 79 million terabytes of storage. That is enough space for 158 billion hours of digital video.

You could also store a whopping 1.2 trillion hours of music. Seagate says that it took 29 years to ship 1 billion drives but that it expects to ship its next billion drives in 5 years. The first hard drive Seagate shipped was the ST506 with 5 megabytes of storage for $1500 in 1979. Read more

Posted on Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:15:04 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

WD unveils VelociRaptor Hard Drives

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WD unveiled today that it is now shipping WD VelociRaptor hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA "Raptor" series of drives.

The new WD VelociRaptor hard drive is modified specifically for PC and Mac enthusiasts and professional workstations.
The WD VelociRaptor hard drive comes packed with twice the capacity and a 35% performance increase over the previous generation. Read more

Posted on Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:30:11 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Hitachi Introduces New Enterprise 450GB Hard Drive

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Hitachi announced today its latest enterprise hard drive called the Ultrastar 15K450. The drive has a 15,000 RPM spindle speed and a 2ms average latency. Hitachi says that the drive has shown a 30% improvement in sequential throughput compared to its predecessor.

"With the higher capacity and performance of the Ultrastar 15K450, enterprises are able to address their throughput requirements using fewer drives, which reduces three things; the cost of ownership, the datacenter's footprint and overall power requirements," said Dean Amini, director, Enterprise Market & Strategy, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "Coupled with our intensive testing and quality assurance process, the Ultrastar 15K450 offers the highest available performance and reliability for mission-critical computing environments." Read more

Posted on Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:26:33 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Maxell Introduces New Field Archive Removable Hard Drive

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Maxell is announced a new field archive removable hard disk solution at NAB 2008. The removable hard drive comes from the Maxell Professional Media Products Division. The drive is rugged and shock resistant for field operations.

Maxell says that that drive is part of the first field tough media solution and leverages its iVDR technology. The removable drives connect via a bi-directional USB or eSATA adapter to a shoulder mount camcorder capable of delivering 10-bit 4:2:2 master –quality video and full HD video. Read more

Posted on Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:15:09 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

WD My Passport Exernal Hard Drives in Colors

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Traditionally portable hard drives are black or silver in color. For many the color of their hard drive doesn’t matter, but for some it’s a big deal. Western Digital has announced today that its line of My Passport hard drives are now available in a rainbow of fashion colors.

The drive is now available in 10 colors and it still weighs less than 5 ounces. Connecting via a USB cable to your PC the drive can be had in up to 320GB of storage with prices starting at $119.99 and going up to $179.99. Available colors include: brilliant orange, super sunny yellow, raindrop blue, arctic white, deep viola, cherry red, ultra mint, real red, intense blue, and vibrant pink. Read more

Posted on Wed, 9 Apr 2008 07:39:33 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

1TB Hard Drive Comparison

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TheTechLounge compares three 1TB Hard Drives. The three 1TB HDDs put to the test are: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST3100340AS) and the Seagate Barracuda ES.2 (ST31000340NS).

Quote from the review: "Barriers are meant to be broken. As capacities have increased and prices fallen, each company wants those bragging rights of having the "biggest," or at least the fastest. Read more

Posted on Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Samsung Ships 500GB Spinpoint Notebook Hard Drive

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Samsung announced today that it is now shipping its 500GB Spinpoint M6 notebook hard drive. The drive uses three platters that each have 167GB of storage space. The rotational speed is 5400 RPM and the drive is 9.5mm thick.

"Our customers require more and more notebook storage for their data, video and music files", said Andy Higginbotham, director of hard drive sales and marketing, Samsung Semiconductor. "Our Spinpoint M6 easily fits within notebook PCs with no modification to the notebook PC chassis, giving users more storage power than ever before." Read more

Posted on Wed, 5 Mar 2008 06:58:49 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Fujitsu Unveils 500GB 2.5-inch Notebook Hard Drive

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Fujitsu announced a breakthrough in notebook hard drives today with a 500Gb 2.5-inch notebook drive. The MHZ2 BT drive spins at 4200 rpm and consumes only 1.8W of power. Fujitsu says the drive is intended for notebook computers, DVRs and external hard drive applications.

"With the expansion of HD digital broadcasts and Internet-based video distribution, there is an increasing need for high-capacity hard disk drives that can handle large volume data storage in portable devices," said Lorne Wilson, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. "Fujitsu will continue to focus on developing high-capacity and reliable 2.5" HDDs that will further enhance its product offerings in the IT and consumer electronics markets." Read more

Posted on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:02:14 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Apricorn Aegis Biometric 120GB Portable Hard Drive Review

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Everything USB published a review of the Apricorn Aegis Biometric 120GB Portable Hard Drive.

Quote from the review: "When carrying your data becomes a necessity, and using web-based methods like server storage just aren't an option, you have two choices: flash drives, or portable hard drives, each with a number of possible security options, from password-protected encryptions to biometrics. Although solid-state drives are increasing in capacity and declining in price at a rate that will soon revolutionize the storage industry, if you've got a lot of data to tote, you're going to need a portable hard drive. With today's concerns about hackers and data thieves running rampant like characters out of a William Gibson story (not to mention government regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley), there's a good chance you'll need some sort of protection on that drive, so your company doesn't end up on the evening news as the latest victim of a data theft scandal. Read more

Posted on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:20:31 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Samsung, Hitachi sign License Deal on Hard Drives

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SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday it had agreed with Hitachi Ltd's data storage business unit to a license deal over hard disk drive (HDD) patents. Read more

Posted on Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:42:40 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Western Digital's Green Hard Drive

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Western Digital announced its latest enterprise hard drive today which reduces energy usage and lowers costs for data centers. The new GreenPower family of HDDs range from 500GB to 1TB storage capacity.

The drives are reliability rated at 1.2 million hours mean time between failure in high duty cycle environments. WD says these drives can reduce power usage by 40%. "Delivering up to 40 percent savings in hard drive power consumption, Western Digital's new RE2-GP hard drives are an excellent choice for customers deploying Rackable Systems' newest generation of Eco-Logical storage systems -- enabling even greater efficiency and performance," said Tony Gaughan, chief products officer of Rackable Systems. Read more

Posted on Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:09:15 CST | by Shane McGlaun