Simplify your laptop buyingIf 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.
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.
If you're into high-class fashion, LaCie has something for you. The company has come out with two new external hard drives by famed French designer Philippe Starck, who makes everything from furniture to clothes to luggage.
The front surface of the new LaCie desktop external hard drive responds to a finger's touch.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)Other than the fact that they offer extra storage, the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive and the LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive come with a bit of fashion flair. Both are housed in a distinctive-looking, sturdy aluminum case that protects the internal drives from shocks.
While the LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive seems to be just a plain yet good-looking compact USB external hard drive, the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive features a curvy front that responds to the touch of a finger. It also has a status LED light that shines an orange plus sign--Starck's signature symbol--on the surface.
There's not much you can do with the drive's novelty touch-sensitive surface, unfortunately. It can be programmed to launch an application, such as Firefox or Word, when you touch the front of the drive. But to do this, you will need to install LaCie Destkop Manager software, which runs all the time in the background. I found this sort of a waste for a function that's not really useful or necessary. But obviously fashion isn't always about necessity and functionality.
The LaCie Destkop Manager software will also help format the hard drive to work with a Windows, Mac, or Linux platform. The drives also come with LaCie Backup Assistant software, which can automatically back up the computer's data onto the drive.
Other than that, the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive is very much like a brick. It also generates some sort of vibration during operation, reducing its suitability for sitting on top of your desk. It only comes with a USB port, which is rather disappointing as this is the slowest connection. Other desktop external hard drives often come with FireWire and eSATA connections.
LaCie's two new external hard drives are available now. The LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive costs $130 for the 1TB version and $250 for the 2TB version. The LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive comes in 320GB and 500GB versions, which cost $100 and $140, respectively.
Six months after showing off the demo, Seagate announced Monday that it is now shipping what it says is the word's first 3.5-inch 6Gbps 2TB hard drive.
The drive is based on the third generation of the Serial ATA (SATA) standard, roughly called SATA3. The majority of existing hard drives use the SATA2 standard that caps at 3Gbps. Theoretically, the new 6Gbps standard's throughput could be fast enough to transfer the entire contents of a CD (about 800MB) in just one second.
The new 6Gbps 2TB Barracuda XT hard drive from Seagate.
(Credit: Seagate)The new hard drive is called Barracuda XT, and it belongs to the company's mainstream line of desktop hard drives. It spins at 7200rpm and boasts 64MB of cache memory, as opposed to the 16MB or 32MB of most existing hard drives. It is a four-platter drive with an areal density of 368 gigabits per square inch.
Of course, to take advance of the new 6Gbps throughput speed, the Barracuda XT needs to be installed in a computer with a 6Gbps SATA controller. The good news is that's also available now.
According to Marvell, a maker of hard drive controllers, the first SATA 6Gbps controller is now incorporated in high-end motherboards from Asus and Gigabyte, such as the Asus P7P55D Premium or the GA-P55-Extreme. There will soon also be expansion cards that add the new controller to existing computers.
However, the new drive is backward-compatible with previous versions of the SATA standard, including the SATA 1.5Gbps and SATA2 (3Gbps). This means you will be able to use it with your current computer at the speed of the current controller. Nonetheless, it's predicted that by the end of next year, the new SATA3 will be the mainstream standard that replaces the existing SATA2.
According to Seagate, the new Barracuda XT hard drive is ideal for high-performance desktops, low-cost servers, and external storage devices.
Together with the Barracuda XT, Seagate is also introducing Seagate SeaTool software, which allows for optimizing the drive configuration and tuning it for performance by sacrificing some capacity. For example, users can use the tool to format the 2TB drive into a 1TB drive that offers much faster performance.
The new Barracuda XT 2TB 6Gbps hard drive is available now and costs $299, which is the same price as other 2TB 3Gbps hard drives currently on the market.
Another day, another external hard drive. I thought by now, storage vendors had exhausted ideas for new external hard drives. I was wrong.
Western Digital announced on Thursday its new and refreshed lines of My Book external hard dives, including the My Book Essential and My Book for Mac. Both hard drives are for desktops, and most importantly, they come with the new WD SmartWare software that's designed to ease the job of backing up your data.
The new My Book Essential external hard drive from Western Digital.
(Credit: Wetern Digital)Both new external hard drives are available in capacities ranging from 500GB to 2TB and feature user-selected password protection combined with military-grade 256-bit hardware encryption, which scrambles files before they're stored. Prior to these drives, these security technologies have been available mostly in much more expensive storage systems.
The two new drives also use WD's GreenPower Technology that helps lower the power consumption of the internal drive, according to WD, by up to 30 percent. They both sport an illuminated capacity gauge that gives you a quick glance of how much space is available on the drive.
The My Book Essential drive is a budget product and comes with only one USB 2.0 connection and is preformatted for Windows. The WD SmartWare software will launch by itself the first time the drive is plugged in and offers a real-time visual interface of the backup process. After the first backup, users' files are backed up automatically every time they change or add a file. This is similar to how HP's SimpleSave external hard drive works, with the exception that it requires a bit more user interaction than HP's solution.
The My Book for Mac is essentially the same as the My Book Essential with the exception that it's preformatted for Macs and comes with the Mac version of the WD SmartWare software. It also is compatible with OS X's built-in Time Machine backup solution.
The two new external hard drives are available immediately and are estimated to cost between $100 and $250, depending on the model and capacity.
Awhile ago Western Digital released its top-capacity laptop hard drive, the Scorpio Blue, which is the first 2.5-inch hard drive to offer 1TB of storage. On Tuesday, Toshiba announced its own largest laptop hard drive to date, the MKxx65GSX, which caps at 640GB.
One of Toshiba's new portable hard drives.
(Credit: CNET)Though smaller in capacity, the new Toshiba hard drive has two advantages over the WD Scorpio Blue. First, it spins at 5400rpm as opposed to the 5200rpm of the WD, meaning it potentially has a faster throughput speed.
The new Toshiba drive also comes in the regular 9.5mm thickness and therefore will work in all applications where SATA 2.5-inch hard drives currently are used. The Scorpio Blue is 12.5mm thick and therefore only fits in laptops with a larger hard drive bay.
The new hard drive is built based on Toshiba's new 320GB-per-platter design which, according to the company, reduces power consumption and heat dissipation by more than 80 percent compared with 3.5-inch hard drives of the same capacity. This helps save energy and prolong the life span of the drive.
... Read moreLess than a month ago, Hitachi announced its 2TB hard drive for desktops. The company on Tuesday brought the same speed to its newest Travelstar hard drive for laptops.
The new hard drive is called Travelstar 7K500. This is a 500GB, 2.5-inch, SATA 2 (3Gb/s) hard drive designed for high-performance notebooks and external storage solutions. The new Travelstar 7K500, according to Hitachi, delivers up to 56 percent higher capacity and 16 percent better application performance than its predecessors. It also comes with Hitachi's new technologies designed to withstand shocks and vibration, and offers better power management and security.
The new 7200 RPM TravelStar hard drive.
(Credit: Hitachi)As with previous generations of the Travelstar hard drive, like the Travelstar 5K500.B, the Travelstar 7K500 comes optional with hardware-based bulk data encryption (BDE). However, it's one of the first that's compliant with the Trusted Computing Group's (TCG) Opal storage security specification. This is a new open standard designed to protect data in the event of system loss or theft.
(Hitachi BDE, much like the Seagate's full disk encrytion, is a hardware-based encryption provided as an option for hard drives. Once enabled, the hard drive will encrypt all data that comes from the system as it is written to the media. When read back, the drive decrypts the data so that it can be understood by the system. Since the hard drive is doing the encryption work, there is no impact on the operating system's performance. In case of loss or theft, the data can be automatically deleted, rendering the hard drive unreadable.)
Hitachi claims that the new Travelstar 7K500 has been designed for energy efficiency with power consumption as low as 0.69 watts when idle and 1.8 watts during operation. The drive also offer halogen-free design and RoHS compliance.
The new Travelstar 7K500 comes in 120GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB capacities. It's currently only available to OEMs but you can get your own sometime later this month with the 500GB version costing $160.
After releasing relatively low-performance 2TB hard drives a few months ago, Western Digital announced Tuesday that it's now shipping high-performance versions of these top-capacity drives.
The WD RE4 drive
(Credit: Western Digital)The new drives are the WD Caviar Black and the WD RE4. According to the company, the former is designed for desktops while the latter is suited for servers and network storage devices.
These two new hard drives are based on WD's 500GB-per-platter technology. They both combine 7200rpm spin speed, 64MB cache, dual-stage actuator technology, SATA 2 (3Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor.
(Dual actuator technology is a head-positioning system with two actuators that improves positional accuracy over the data track. The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.)
Other features of the two drives include:
- IntelliSeek, a technology that calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration.
- StableTrac, a mechanism that makes sure the motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.
- NoTouch, a ramp-load technology that keeps the recording head from ever touching the disk media to significantly reduce the wear and tear of the recording head and media as well as provide better drive protection in transit.
In addition, the WD RE4 2TB enterprise drive features 1.2 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) and other power-saving, speed-enhancing, and fail-proofing technologies.
The WD Caviar Black 2TB (model WD2001FASS) drive is available now for $299. The WD RE4 2TB (model WD2003FYYS) drive is currently being qualified by OEMs. Both drives are covered by a five-year, limited warranty.
Hitachi joined the 2TB hard drive club Tuesday with the Deskstar 7K2000, an all-new hard drive it claims offers both capacity and performance for desktop computers.
(Credit:
Hitachi)
While this is not the first 3.5-inch 2TB hard drive, it's indeed the first consumer hard drive that boasts the spinning speed of 7,200 rpm. Western Digital released its first 2TB hard drive back in April, the WD RE4-GP, which is a low-power and low-performance hard drive that doesn't have rpm specifications.
There are lots of factors that would affect a hard drive's performance. However generally, the higher rpm number translates to higher performance.
The new Deskstar 7K2000 features Hitachi's five-platter design with relaxed bit density and perpendicular magnetic recording technology. It has a 32MB cache and supports the SATA2 interface. Hitachi claims that apart from the performance, the new drive is also designed to be eco-friendly, being halogen-free and compliant with the RoHS standard.
In addition to the new 2TB Deskstar 7K2000, Hitachi offers the new 7,200 rpm Deskstar 7K1000.C family that comes in capacities from 160GB to 1TB.
These two new hard drives are available now, with the 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 costing $329.
Eric Franklin's colleagues once had the following to say to him: "Eric, you've been doing this performance testing thing for over 10 years now. How about you try something different?" To which Eric responded, "How about you shut the #%$@! up?" This candid attitude
allows him to go toe-to-toe with the most extreme of personalities, including that of Dong Ngo. This bio was written by Eric Franklin.
Dong Ngo is a knowledgeable, opinionated individual who wants to convince the world that he's just a normal person; but he hasn't had much success. According to him, this is because the world itself is abnormal. Dong loves traveling and is well-versed in several languages. He, unfortunately, is not so well-versed in English. Still, it's best to ask him questions. From networking and how to optimize your system, to turning a strange place into home or what the meaning of life is…most of the time, he has the answers. The question is: Will he make himself understood? Subscribe and find out!
