storage

Feeling the storage crunch on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad? A free utility may be able to help.

Last summer, CNET's Matthew Elliott took iMobie's PhoneClean for a test drive. The utility provides a "digital colonic" (Matt's words), cleansing any iOS device of useless and unnecessary files that might be consuming valuable space.

However, Matt wasn't willing to subject his iPhone 4S to PhoneClean's mysterious ministrations, only his iPad.

Wuss.

As the braver, dumber, blogger, I decided to let the newly updated PhoneClean 2.0 do its thing on my iPhone 4S. … Read more

Microsoft's Surface RT tablet was knocked for the dearth of storage on the low-end version. Surface Pro isn't faring much better.

The 64GB version of the upcoming Surface Pro -- due for release February 9 -- will offer only 23GB of available storage space for user files, according to a statement CNET received from Microsoft.

"The 128GB version of Surface Pro has 83GB of free storage out of the box. The 64GB version of Surface Pro has 23GB of free storage out of the box," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.

(Note that a report … Read more

Testing a storage device is more difficult than you may expect. They may not be particularly glamorous, but storage devices serve a vital function in your digital life. Making sure they perform efficiently is important, which is why I wrote this post detailing how CNET tests the devices that we review.

Before I begin, though, it's essential that you have a good understanding of digital storage basics. So click over to read that series if you want to learn more.

There are three types of mainstream consumer-grade storage devices: internal, external, and network. Generally, we test them by transferring … Read more

If you are running OS X Lion or Mountain Lion and need to see some quick information about your Mac's hardware, you can do so by selecting "About This Mac" from the Apple menu, and then clicking the "More Information" button to launch Apple's System Information tool. This tool can be used to generate a detailed system report, but by default will show a brief summary window that includes a breakdown of storage usage.

The storage view shows your hard drive and includes a small diagram that breaks down the amount of space used … Read more

Today I transformed my 2009 laptop into a machine that feels like it's from 2012.

All I did was rip out its 500GB spinning-rust hard drive from Seagate and popped in a 256GB Vertex 4 solid-state drive from OCZ. Now I'm kicking myself for not upgrading to an SSD a year ago.

If you're not up to speed on your PC components, here's the technical background on SSDs vs. HDs. For decades, hard drives handled storage chores by writing data as tiny magnetized patches on spinning platters. SSDs use flash memory chips instead, a design that … Read more

Most external hard drives are on the big, bulky side, and they require their own power supply, which is a hassle to say the least.

Portable external drives run off USB power, which is convenient -- but it usually means a lower-capacity drive and higher price.

Not today. Newegg has the Seagate Backup Plus 1TB portable USB 3.0 hard drive for $79.99 shipped. That's after applying coupon code EMCXWVV26 at checkout.

Now, anyone who follows hard drives like I do needs to get a hobby knows that 80 bucks for a 1TB drive isn't all that … Read more

Box is poised to go public as soon as next year, following in the footsteps of other recent and successful Wall Street debuts for enterprise software companies.

The company's co-founder and CEO, Aaron Levie, told Bloomberg in an interview that Box is aiming to declare an initial public offering in 2014. He hinted that 2013 is still a possibility, but he described it as a "long shot."

Levie added that Box will "have to go public" as company leaders have no intention to be acquired by a larger competitor, perhaps Google or even Microsoft.

Expectations … Read more

Kim DotCom plans to launch his new site in two days, and users will get 50GB of storage for free, the infamous entrepreneur tweeted today.

DotCom also tweeted that his lawyers are working on giving former premium users their premium statuses on the new site but that the site "can't at this time."

50GB is a huge amount of free storage right off the bat. DotCom's tweet comes a day after another cloud storage service, MediaFire, announced it would be offering 50GB of free storage. Other storage services may offer as much -- or more -- … Read more

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