Storage

Back in August, I wrote about cloud-storage service MediaFire, which was offering a whopping 50GB of free space, no strings attached.

Well, there were strings in the form of certain limitations (see below), but it wasn't like you had to provide a credit-card number or start paying for the space after, say, six months.

Yesterday, the company unveiled MediaFire for Android, which joins the iOS version in giving you mobile access to your cloud drive. And new users still get 50GB of storage, free of charge.

Like other apps of its kind, MediaFire for Android lets you view documents … Read more

Microsoft has kicked off 2013 with a few helpful additions to your SkyDrive Web site.

As detailed in yesterday's Inside SkyDrive blog, you can now move files within SkyDrive to other folders by dragging and dropping them to a specific location on the breadcrumb bar.

For example, to move a file from your Documents subfolder to the root of your SkyDrive storage, simply drag the file onto the SkyDrive breadcrumb with your name. Previously, you'd have to right-click on a file, select the Move to command, and then choose a target folder in order to move it.

Those … Read more

LAS VEGAS--When it comes to network attached storage (NAS), Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system has been as good as it gets. Well, it's about to get even better.

At CES 2013 today, Synology announced and demonstrated the public beta of DSM 4.2.

This is a major upgrade from DSM 4.1 that brings improvements for both home and business users at no additional cost. Since DSM has a vast amount of features, the list of improvements is accordingly long. However, some of the major new or improved features include the following:

LAS VEGAS--Call it a minor upgrade, but that's what G-Technology has to offer this year at CES.

The storage vendor, which is now part of Western Digital, announced at CES 2013 that it now ships all of its popular G-Technology G-Drive Mini and G-RAID Mini external storage products with high-speed 1TB, 2.5-inch 7,200rpm hard drives.

Thanks to this, the G-Drive Mini, a compact single-volume external drive, now offers up to 136MBps performance speed. The drive offers both USB 3.0 and FireWire 8000 connection types and is bus-powered. It's preformatted for Mac and is now available … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Netgear showed off today at CES 2013 the latest in its line of NeoTV streaming players, the NeoTV Prime with Google TV (model GTV100).

The new player offers everything that previous players offered, plus the ability to run apps from Google Play. The player allows you to access a large pool of entertainment including movies, TV shows, and music from major streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video, HBO Go, Crackle, Flixter, Rhapsody, Pandora, and more. Google Play also gives you movies and new releases in HD, music albums, and apps designed specifically for the TV.

The … Read more

Two months ago, I called Promise's four-bay Pegasus J4 Thunderbolt storage device unconventional for its lack of RAID 5 support. Soon after that, at CES 2013, LaCie made the omission of RAID 5 a little more conventional with the introduction of the five-bay 5big Thunderbolt.

The new 5big Thunderbolt is the first multiple-bay storage device from LaCie that only supports RAID 0 or RAID 1. (Find out more about RAIDs here). In return it's a lot more affordable than a RAID 5-capable storage device of similar configuration.

The new 5big Thunderbolt is far from budget-friendly, however, with the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Looking for a one-of-a-kind storage device? LaCie has one for you.

The storage vendor unveiled today at CES 2013 a new USB 3.0 external hard drive, called the Blade Runner, that either screams crazy, or shows off as a statement piece, depending on your mood. LaCie says the drive is designed to look more like a piece of art than a storage device. And it indeed doesn't look like any external drives I've seen before.

The Blade Runner comes in a super-rugged all-aluminum body that is squared but not smooth. The body is designed to look … Read more

LAS VEGAS--LaCie showed off today at CES 2013 its latest high-end network attached storage (NAS) server, the 5big NAS Pro, which is a major upgrade to the company's previous 5big Network 2.

Powered by a dual-core 2.13GHz Intel 64-bit Atom processor and 4GB RAM, the 5big NAS Pro is a five-bay server that offers a massive amount of storage space (up to 20GB), and promises data rates up to 200MBps via its two Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The most prominent feature of the 5big NAS Pro, however, is its totally new novice-friendly SimplyRAID mode and cloud features

A new … Read more

LaCie's 5big NAS Pro is a major upgrade to the company's previous 5big Network 2. The new server is now significantly faster while retaining the excellent physical design of its predecessor.

The 5big NAS Pro does have some shortcomings, however, including a spartan feature list and the lack of customization options. The sever also doesn't provide a way to quickly set up its hard drives into a RAID configuration.

All things considered, at the current price of some $500 (disk-less version, or $1,100 and $2,000 for 10TB and 20TB, respectively) it's an excellent choice … Read more