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Apple "announced" upgrades to both their Time Capsule and Airport Extreme Base Station in October. After much ado, attempting to get the new revisions and the old ones in-house to test, we've finally completed testing and have updated the reviews.

The thing about network testing is that because so many factors can potentially affect wireless network traffic, results can be quite unpredictable. This is especially true in an office environment like CNET's San Francisco office, where everyone and their mother seems to own an iPhone or BlackBerry.

While we attempt to minimize interference by analyzing the spectrum and choosing the best wireless band, we can't stop random devices using the band and cluttering the network. The mothers are usually the worst offenders.

So we test in an environment that, while not 100 percent clean, is 100 percent real-world. Check out the review updates for the Apple Time Capsule and Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, to see how these two fared in a real environment.

If you've wished you could connect your external hard drive to your computer without having to use the USB cable, now you can.

Imation announced Thursday the availability of the first wireless USB external hard drive, the Pro WX. The hard drive works just like any other USB hard drive, with one exception: it doesn't require a USB cable.

The Pro WX wireless USB external hard drive.

(Credit: Imation)

Wireless USB has been under development for about five years, and some of the first products were demoed at CES 2009. This technology allows you to connect USB 2.0 devices to a computer wirelessly from up to 30 feet away with a throughput speed of up to 480Mbps.

According to Imation, the Pro WX wireless USB external hard drive offers less than that, with speeds of up to only 120Mbps or 15MBps; this is about three times slower than regular USB 2.0 hard drives. At this speed it can finish copying the entire content of a CD-ROM (roughly 800MB) in about 50 seconds. Other than that, this drive is based on the 3.5-inch desktop hard drive and offers 1.5TB of storage.

The Imation Pro WX features a sleep-mode feature to conserve energy and a one-touch, backup sync button for you to manually start a backup when needed. The device is compatible with both PC and Mac operating systems

In order to take advantage of the wireless USB, your computer needs to support this. As most computers don't have built-in wireless USB, there are adapters that you can add to the machine. It's unclear if an adapter is included with the Pro WX.

What's clear, however, is the fact that this is going to be one of the most expensive external hard drives you can find. At the estimated price of $500, about three times the price of regular external USB hard drives of the same storage capacity, I am not sure if it's worth it when the only benefit is losing the USB cable.

Windows Home Server soon gets supercharged to better support Windows 7.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Microsoft announced Thursday its latest update to the Windows Home Server, the Power Pack 3. Originally, this upgrade was planned to be rolled out prior to the launch of Windows 7, but it was delayed due to a problem found during testing.

Power Pack 3 is much like a service pack to Windows Home Server, which is a special version of the Windows operating system designed specially for network-attached storage devices, such as the HP MediaSmart servers.

Judging from a few Windows Home Server-based NAS servers we've reviewed, Windows Home Server significantly helps new consumers familiarize themselves with network-attached storage devices by providing a similar management console, features, and file system support to those of the Windows operating system for desktop computers.

According to Windows Home Server Team's blog, the Power Pack 3 will be available next Tuesday in all shipping languages (including Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish). The pack will be free and can be downloaded via Windows Update.

If you plan to manually download it, the Power Pack 3 requires Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2 already installed. However, if your NAS server is connected to the Internet, Power Pack 3 will be automatically installed as part of automatic updates. Make sure you turn this feature on.

The major improvement the Power Pack 3 delivers is support for Windows 7, especially in the realms of backing up and media playback. The breakdown:

• Windows 7 Libraries integration: Now users can access Windows Home Server shared folder from within Windows 7 libraries.
• Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression: Windows 7 Action Center now recognizes Windows Home Server as a legitimate backup solution and stops warning you that a backup has not been set up.
• Windows 7 power settings: Windows Home Server can wake a Windows 7-based computer to do a backup, then put it back to sleep once the backup is done.
• Windows Search: Power Pack 3 includes Windows Search 4, which improves query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.
• TV archive: Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This is actually a very handy feature if you want to play back recorded TV shows to multiple devices, including portable ones.

For the complete details of what you can get from the Power Pack 3, check out the release documentation. It seems if you move to Windows 7, the Power Pack 3 upgrade is a must for your Windows Home Server-based NAS servers.

It's fair to say that so far Synology is the NAS maker with the fewest misses. Ever since the company joined the network storage arena in early 2008, it has earned three CNET Editors' Choice awards, with the newest one being the DS409Slim.

The new DS410j NAS server from Synology supports Time Machine.

(Credit: Synology)

Synology NAS servers offer a vast number of features; signature among those are the advanced surveillance system, sophisticated photo sharing/managing capability, and a robust user interface. And now Synolgoy has overcome one of its only former missteps: by adding support for Apple's Time Machine.

The company announced Wednesday the launch of its new four-bay NAS server, the DS410j. This new NAS server carries all the features of other Synolgoy NAS servers and, on top of that, support for Apple's popular backup solution. For the first time ever, Mac users can use Time Machine (available in Mac OS 10.5 and later) with a Synology NAS server. Currently, very few NAS servers on the market support this feature.

Beyond that update, according to Synology, the DS410j is designed for busy home networks and entry-level businesses. It can house four 3.5-inch SATA hard drives of up to 2TB each, making the total storage up to 8TB. Like other models, the DS410j supports multiple RAID configurations when used with two or more hard drives. It also comes with automated backup, remote file sharing, and multimedia streaming features and is fully DNLA-compliant.

The DS410j is available now both with and without hard drives. Its price varies depending on the configuration; however, like other Synogloy NAS servers, it will not be cheap. It seems that affordability is something that Synolgoy will continue to miss for a while.

There have always been fewer options in the enterprise-storage market than there have been in the consumer market. That's why it's significant that enterprise buyers now have another choice.

Western Digital announced Tuesday its entry into the enterprise market with the first shipments of its WD S25, 10,000rpm, 2.5-inch SAS interface hard drives.

The new WD S25 enterprise hard drive from Western Digital.

(Credit: Western Digital)

While high-end consumer-grade 2.5-inch SATA hard drives can spin at 7,200rpm, at 10,000rpm the new hard drive from Western Digital is still considered entry-level. This is because in the enterprise market, vendors such as Seagate already offer SAS-based hard drives that spin at 15,000rpm.

Nonetheless, according to Western Digital, the new WD S25 drive is still suitable for high-performance storage for mission-critical enterprise server and enterprise-storage applications, such as high-I/O-driven applications, data centers, and large data arrays. Each drive offers up to 300GB of storage space.

The WD S25 supports both the 3Gbps and the 6Gbps SAS interfaces and offers a sustained sequential data rate of 128MBps. In addition to having the speed needed for enterprise needs, the WD S25 also provides a mean time between failures (MTBF) rating of 1.6 million hours.

The WD S25 drive is available now. You won't be able to buy one for yourself, but chances are you'll find them in your new enterprise-storage gear.

G-Tech's new 2TB 7200 rpm-based external storage devices.

(Credit: G-Tech)

It's not hard these days to find external storage devices that offer 2TB or even 4TB of storage. However, most of them use low-power and relatively low-performance internal hard drives, such as the My Book series from Western Digital or the FreeAgent series from Seagate. If you are looking for top speed and top capacity form external storage solutions for your Mac, G-Tech has some news for you.

The company announced Monday that it now incorporates Hitachi's 2TB, 7,200rpm, 32MB cache buffer SATA hard drives across its entire 3.5-inch product line, offering different storage solutions from single-volume external hard drive to RAID systems, with capacities ranging from 2TB to 32TB.

The company's newly refreshed products include the G-DRIVE, G-SAFE, G-RAID, G-SPEED eS, G-SPEED eS Pro, G-SPEED eS PRO XL, and the G-SPEED FC XL. With these new products, G-Tech claims that it's now the first in the world that offers a complete line of 2TB, 7,200 RPM drive-based external storage solutions, specifically designed for the Mac computer and audio- and video-editing markets.

G-Tech's new storage solutions comes with virtually all existing connections, from USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA for desktop external drives to miniSAS and Fibre Channel for high-end RAID storage systems. The fact that now it uses the top 2TB capacity hard drives means that customers can significantly increase the amount of storage while retaining the same physical footprint.

The new G-Tech external storage devices are available now with premium prices ranging from $379 for the simple desktop 2TB G-Drive, $3,599 for the high-end 8TB G-Speed eS Pro to tens of thousands of dollars for other high-end storage systems.

The new Rocket 622 and Rocket 620 SATA 3.0 controller cards from HighPoint.

(Credit: HighPoint)

In September, Seagate made the first 6Gbps SATA hard drive available. The new Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive offers twice the throughput speed of existing popular 3Gbps SATA hard drives. Now you're about to get the chance to take advantage of the new drive's performance with your current PC.

HighPoint, which makes controllers for storage devices, announced Monday the availability of the first SATA 6Gbps (or SATA 3.0) host adapters, the Rocket 600 series, which are based on PCI-Express 2.0 technology.

SATA 3.0 is the next generation of the SATA storage standard. Currently most computers use the second generation of this standard, the 3Gbps SATA (or SATA 2.0). At its full potential, the SATA 3.0 standard could theoretically transfer entire contents of a CD (about 800MB) in just one second. According to HighPoint, its new controller cards, however, offer the sustained speed of up to 500MBps.

HighPoint's new series of controller cards comes in two versions, the Rocket 622 that offers external eSATA connections to 6Gbps hard drives and the Rocket 620 that adds the higher-speed SATA to a computer's internal storage. Both of them, however, require an available PCI-Express slot inside the computer. You need the Rocket 620 if you want to install an operating system on the new and faster SATA 3.0 hard drive.

The two add-in controller cards are fully compliant with the Advanced Host Controller Interface (or AHCI) standard. They can also be installed in PCI-Express 1.0 slots and are backward compatible with previous generations of the SATA standard (the 1.5Gbps SATA 1.0 and the 3Gbps SATA 2.0). This means you can use them with any existing SATA-based hard drives and solid-state drives, other than the new 6Gbps SATA Barracuda XT from Seagate.

The new controllers are available this month. The Rocket 620 is slated to cost $70, while the Rocket 622 costs another $10.

"I'll give you two guesses as to this product's identity. Is it the Base Station or Time Capsule? Only the astute among you will know for sure.

(Credit: Apple)

Along with the major Apple announcements that took place Tuesday, Apple also--quite stealthily, I might add--announced upgraded performance, specs, and support for both its Time Capsule and Airport Extreme Base Station.

Time Capsule received the most updates, with Apple claiming that with the new technologies and refinements added to both Time Capsule and the Time Machine software, backing up using Snow Leopard is up to "60 percent faster than before."

That number is based on internal testing done by Apple comparing a new preproduction (unreleased) Time Capsule with the version released earlier this year.

Apple also claims that by using the latest 802.11n wireless technology, you'll see "up to five times the Wi-Fi performance and up to twice the range of 802.11g wireless networks."

This, also based on Apple testing comparing both Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme Base Station to "Apple's 802.11g products." The company doesn't specify which products it compares them to, however.

Finally, Apple claims that improvements to both Time Capsule's and the Airport Extreme Base Station's antenna design can give "up to 50 percent better performance and up to 25 percent better range than with the previous-generation Time Capsule and Airport Extreme base Station."

This performance is based on Apple testing comparing the Time Capsule and Airport based Station to "Apple's 802.11n products." Again, although we can safely assume they're basing the comparison on apples to apples test results on the previous versions of the versions of the same hardware, we can't be certain.

We'll of course be conducting our own testing as soon as we get these updated versions of the products in for review. It'll be interesting to see how close our performance numbers match up with theirs.

According to Apple's site, both new versions of the hardware are shipping now.

The new WD TV Live DH Media player shares the same shape and size with the previous model, the WD TV, but has a lot more to offer.

(Credit: Josh P. Miller/CNET)

Awhile ago, Western Digital tackled the home entertainment arena with the WD TV, which turned out to be a success. Nonetheless, a lot of enthusiasts, including me, were turned off by the fact that the WD TV lacks support for networking and doesn't include the capability to decode DTS audio, which is popularly used in compressed high-def video formats.

It seems Western Digital took our complaints to heart as the company announced Tuesday the availability of the next generation of the device, the WD TV Live HD Media Player.

Outside, the WD TV Live has the same shape and size as the WD TV. However, on the back, apart from the USB, HDMI, and composite ports, you'll find the newly added 10/100 Ethernet port. This port opens the device to many possibilities, which, for now, include access to YouTube, Flickr, and Internet radio stations.

On the inside, the device now can decode both DTS and DTS 2.0 audio encoding and sports a faster processor.

Like the previous WD TV, the new WD TV Live supports playing back all kinds of video, audio, and photo formats, including the most popular high-def video formats such as Matroska (MKV) and DivX. In addition, it also has these new and improved features:

• Full-HD 1080p video playback with support for different sound tracks, subtitles (when available), and the capability to decode DTS audio
• Capability to play videos, music, photos, and radio from the Internet
• Ethernet port for wired connection to access digital content from other network devices
• Supports two USB mass storage devices at the same time, including external hard drives, digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players

WD TV Live DH Media Player photos

I tried the unit out and it was indeed a much better experience than the WD TV.