5-inch

Think 2.5-inch spinning hard disk drives are slow compared with the solid-state variety? Not always, Toshiba seems to be saying with today's announcement of drives that top 10,000rpm.

Toshiba launched four 2.5-inch HDDs, ranging up to 900GB in capacity, that boast speeds of 10,500rpm.

That's faster than the 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm 2.5-inch HDDs typically found in laptops.

The internal transfer rate for Toshiba's AL13SEB900 family of HDDs is 286 MB/s (megabytes per second), a boost of approximately 32 percent over the previous generation of drives "due to improved liner recording density," according to Toshiba.

Though slower than the fastest solid-state drives on the market, that kind of transfer rate approaches some less-expensive SSDs in speed. … Read more

Calling it a tablet may be a bit of a stretch, but that's the ad copy a Japanese company is using on a new 21.5-inch Android device.

"A 21.5-inch Android tablet comes to market!" -- is how Japan-based Kouziro is advertising a new touch panel display that runs Android 4.0 on top of a Texas Instruments OMAP dual-core 1GHZ processor.

The "Frontier" branded FT103 sports a 21.5-inch 1,920x1,080 touch display, 1GB of memory, 8GB of storage, webcam, Wi-Fi, and HDMI, microUSB, and microSD ports. … Read more

LG has announced it will release a new 5-inch LCD screen later this year that boasts a 1080p resolution.

Designed for "smart devices," the new panel also features a 440ppi pixel density -- handily beating the 330ppi Retina display found on Apple's iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. "The naked eye is unable to distinguish between individual pixels," LG said in a statement announcing the new screen.

The 5-inch display will have a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1920x1080 resolution, a combination more associated with HDTVs and high-definition monitors. The display is built on AH-IPS (… Read more

The WD My Passport, the first-ever 2TB portable drive WD introduced last week, turned out to be pretty impressive.

Despite the fact that it offers the top capacity for 2.5-inch-based drives that use the current perpendicular recording technology, the drive is also compact and light. In fact, it's more compact than the My Passport Studio that offers just half of its storage space.

Originally, it was predicted that for 2.5-inch internal drives -- those housed inside portable drives like the new My Passport -- to reach 2TB, a new recording technology would be required. WD's My … Read more

Is a bigger iPhone a better iPhone?

The iPhone rumor du jour this week was about a big screen. In fact, "iPhone 5" rumors going way back almost invariably cite a bigger screen. Sizes run the gamut from 4-inch screens to 4.2-inch to, now, 4.6-inch.

The iPhone currently has a 3.5-inch screen.

And that's just fine with me. A smartphone should be as small as possible. Certainly not BlackBerry Curve small but not so big that it isn't compact. It's a phone, after all.

The brave new big-honking-iPhone world that Reuters claimed is coming (… Read more

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Western Digital (WD) announced today a mutual and definitive agreement of property divesting between the two.

Under the agreement, Toshiba will acquire from WD manufacturing and related intellectual property for 3.5-inch hard drives (HDDs), used in desktop PCs and consumer applications, and near-line HDDs for server applications. Near-line storage is a type of data storage supporting larger capacity and with higher reliability than HDDs for desktop PC applications.

"The purchase of part of Western Digital's 3.5-inch HDD manufacturing equipment and with it the capability to produce 3.5-inch HDDs for desktop … Read more

Hitachi GST announced today that it's now shipping the Travelstar Z7K500 hard drive. The company says this is the first low-profile (7mm) 2.5-inch hard drive that spins at 7,200rpm, supports SATA 3 (6Gbps), features 32MB of cache, and can handle shock up to 400G.

The new drive uses only one platter and offers up to 500GB, meaning it has a data density of 626 gigabits per square inch. Despite being much thinner, the Z7K500 drive supports standard power and data connectors and can replace existing 9.5mm standard 2.5-inch hard drives, as well as working in … Read more

The Samsung Galaxy Note is getting some company in the emerging world of mega-smartphones from LG's Optimus Vu, which has been revealed ahead of the upcoming Mobile World Congress.

The world is now home to at least two 5-inch Korean-made Android smartphones that are blurring the line between phone and tablet and attempting to resurrect the stylus. Like the Galaxy Note, the Optimus Vu is designed with a pen-friendly interface in mind.

LG also claims the 4:3 aspect ratio on the Optimus Vu as a central selling point--a Korean press release touts the huge screen space and brightness as ideal for reading e-books and other content.… Read more

Having up-to-date backups of your data is like insurance, we all need it and at the same time never want to have to resort to it.

Though backing up data is not required by law, the consequences of not doing it are often so huge that it's fair to call those who don't frequently back up their important data, well, reckless, irresponsible, or just simply foolish. The truth is, when you realize that the originals of your important documents or photos are gone because of a hard-drive crash or losing your laptop, being called names is the least of your worries.

Now there's an easy fix. Here's a list of our top portable hard drives that make backing up data a no-brainer. Take a look and get yourself one if you don't already have a backup solution in place. … Read more