Hasta La Gadget!

Solid-state drives cost just a fraction of what they did a few years ago, but with prices that can still exceed $1,000, you could hardly label them as cheap. Crucial still aims to put solid-state storage within reach of those on a budget, however, releasing its 2.5-inch v4 drive with pricing that starts at $50. That entry-level model will net you just 32 gigs of storage — hardly a lust-worthy sum — but the series is also available in configurations of 64GB ($70), 128GB ($100) and 256GB ($190), offering read speeds of up to 230 MB/s and write speeds of up to 190 MB/s with SATA 2-capable desktops and laptops. The v4 joins Crucial’s higher-end m4, which offers much speedier performance and Ultrabook-friendly configurations to boot. You’ll find full details in the PR after the break.

Continue reading Crucial outs v4 SSD for solid-state storage on a budget

Filed under: Storage

Crucial outs v4 SSD for solid-state storage on a budget originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Crucial  | Email this | Comments

Reviewing a drive isn’t very exciting. What can you say? “It contains a storage medium, is small, and surprisingly light.” Thankfully, the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt can add one important point to that litany of mundanity – a Thunderbolt port and cable that jacks the read and write speed up to amazing levels – thereby turning a ho-hum review into a real barn-burner.

This $229 1TB drive is no slouch on design, either. It has two ports – one USB 3.0/2.0 jack and a Thunderbolt port – and it’s clad in aluminum and white plastic, giving it a definitive Mac feel. The drive gets hot over extended periods of time but it’s entirely bus powered. It weighs a mere 9 ounces.

In my tests, I saw this drive hit RW speeds of about 97 MB/s, considerably faster than a USB 3.0 drive I tested and on par with what you’d expect from a standard Thunderbolt drive. The best thing, obviously, is the fact that Buffalo includes a Thunderbolt cable, a $50 value, right in the box. They also include a USB 3.0 cable for the technologically benighted.

A 500GB version will cost you about $195, but it really doesn’t make sense to buy a smaller drive in this case.

So, in closing, I wish to amend the MiniStation Thunderbolt review with one important point: “It contains a storage medium, is small, and surprisingly light and, most important, you get a $50 Thunderbolt cable for free. It’s also really fast. And pretty.”

Product Page

Us humans have been quick to embrace digital technology for preserving our memories, but we’ve forgotten that most of our storage won’t last for more than a few decades; when a hard drive loses its magnetism or an optical disc rots, it’s useless. French nuclear waste manager ANDRA wants to make sure that at least some information can survive even if humanity itself is gone — a million or more years, to be exact. By using two fused disk platters made from sapphire with data written in a microscope-readable platinum, the agency hopes to have drives that will keep humming along short of a catastrophe. The current technology wouldn’t hold reams of data — about 80,000 minuscule pages’ worth on two platters — but it could be vital for ANDRA, which wants to warn successive generations (and species) of radioactivity that might last for eons. Even if the institution mostly has that pragmatic purpose in mind, though, it’s acutely aware of the archeological role these €25,000 ($30,598) drives could serve once leaders settle on the final languages and below-ground locations at an unspecified point in the considerably nearer future. We’re just crossing our fingers that our archived internet rants can survive when the inevitable bloody war wipes out humanity and the apes take over.

[Image credit: SKB]

Filed under: Storage, Science

France’s ANDRA developing a million-year hard drive, we hope our badly-written blogs live in perpetuity originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot  |  Science  | Email this | Comments

The death knell for MobileMe has been ringing for some time, but if you’ve had your hands on your ears, hoping it’d go away, sadly this isn’t the case. Tomorrow sees the service hang up its storage-boots for the last time, before being brutally put down released to pasture. If the 20GB olive branch Apple offered wasn’t enough to turn you onto iCloud, then this is your last call to pack up your virtual things, and make sure the door doesn’t hit you on the way out. And while breaking up is never easy to do, there are plenty more fish in the sea.

PSA: The end of MobileMe is nigh, time to move on or move out originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 12:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  MobileMe  | Email this | Comments

Day two of Google I/O 2012 has started, and Big G just gave us an update on the success of its cloud storage solution. Google Drive’s been accessed by over 10 million people, which comes out to about 1 million a week since its launch. Not a massive number, but it’s a pretty good start, and with the explosive growth of Android and the addition of Chrome OS and iDevice users to the Drive party, the cloud locker’s legion of users will continue to grow.

Check out our full coverage of Google I/O 2012’s developer conference at our event hub!

Google Drive: 10 million users served originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments