Hasta La Gadget!

Personal cloud provider Connected Data has announced version 2.0 of its Transporter, the bottle-shaped desktop drive that raised more than $260k on Kickstarter, as well as news of merger discussions with Drobo. The updated Transporter functionality – which will be pushed out to existing owners courtesy of a software upgrade – pares back the interface for easier link-sharing and drag’n’drop file management, as well as more granular control over which files are synchronized.

That means big folders – such as movies or music collections – can be kept solely on the Transporter itself, while other data that users might want to have ready access to, such as documents, can be synchronized across multiple devices. Connected Data also has new mobile apps, for iOS and Android, for browsing a remote Transporter and exchanging files with it (in both directions).

Meanwhile, there’s new technology which helps make firewalls more transparent, and as before multiple Transporter units can communicate with each other and create synchronized backups. Connected Data’s argument is that a local drive is more secure than entrusting your files to Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive, or one of the other cloud storage providers, while its internet-connectivity means you can still access content no matter where you are.

It’s a similar argument to what Pogoplug has been pushing for some time, though Transporter – and future hardware based on the technology – could become a much greater threat now that Drobo is weighing in. The two companies are in “merger discussions” it was announced this week [pdf link] and are currently in a 30-day due diligence process.

A collaboration wouldn’t be too great a surprise, however, given the heritage of Connected Data’s founders. The start-up’s CEO, Geoff Barrall, was in fact the original founder (not to mention former CEO) of Drobo, while other key members of the team previously worked there too.

Drobo’s multi-drive boxes have met with highly-positive feedback, not least because of the convenience of the BeyondRAID data redundancy system they use, but the range’s remote access options are comparatively lacking. Bringing the Connected Data team back into the fold would certainly address that shortcoming.

The Connected Data Transporter 2.0 will hit shelves in June, priced at $199 drive-free, $299 for the 1TB model, or $399 for the 2TB version.

Connected Data Transporter 2.0 detailed as Drobo merger talks revealed is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Ever-increasing storage demands prompt increasingly higher capacity storage cards, including the newest release from Transcend, a 64GB microSDXC UHS-I. This ultra-high speed memory card offers very fast transfer speeds in the tiny microSD shell, bringing high storage capacity to your small mobile devices. This is part of the maker’s UHS-I line, which ranges from 8GB to 64GB.

The Transcend 64GB microSDXC Ultra-High Speed Class 1 memory card offers high transfer rates that go up to 45MB per second, giving users very high performance for demanding tasks. The memory card is being marketed towards smartphone and tablet owners, but is also applicable to other devices with support for microSDXC cards with this high of a capacity.

This card is boasted as offering data transfer speeds that 300 times faster than its non-Ultra High Speed equivalents, making it a good choice for those who watch, process, or record high-definition video, such as those utilizing the 1080p camera on their smartphone. It is also a good option for use with apps that are memory-intensive.

To help put the 64GB in perspective, this tiny microSD can hold approximately 10,000 high-res JPEG photographs taken at 12-megapixels with an average size of 6MB each. Or, for those who spend more time recording video than they do taking pictures, this newest Transcend card can hold 16 hours of video recorded at full 9Mbps 1920 x 1080 H.264 video. The card is available now for $109.

[via Transcend Info]

Transcend announces 64GB microSDXC Ultra High-Speed storage card is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Backblaze, the company that’s sells online backup services, has announced its third generation storage pod with a capacity of 180TB. For all the companies who want a budget solution for their data needs, this can be one option to look at, since the cost per GB is roughly 6 cents.

Backblaze created its first generation storage pod with a capacity of 67TB. Because of success, Backblaze launched the second generation pod with a capacity of 135TB. The latest pod, which is open sourced, comes with 180TB. The pod also sports 3 anti-vibration drive bays, each holding roughly 15 hard drives, support for multiple boot-drives including regular HD and SSD drives and the hird generation storage pod comes with a Supermicro MBD-X9SCL-F motherboard that includes extra features.

The design plan is open and free. In-case something breaks or if someone feels the need to create their own pod, they can do so. This certainly helps in giving small and medium business a choice between cloud storage which is gaining popularity every day and on premise storage. Backblaze does not create the pods itself, and consumers can either create their own storage pods, or ask companies listed by Backblaze, to create the storage pod.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Russian Meteor Creates New Online Video Record, Asus Sabertooth AMD-based Motherboard Announced,

Should LaCie’s Blade Runner have enough style but not enough space for your external data needs, fear not; the company has a pair of new 5big arrays with a choice of network or Thunderbolt connectivity for those with big storage demands. The 5big Thunderbolt and 5big NAS Pro each follow the monolithic design language of previous LaCie drives – all brushed aluminum and glaring blue power-light “eye” – but offer up to 20TB of capacity or optional RAID redundancy.

The 5big Thunderbolt supports RAID 0, 1, and JBOD across its five hot-swappable bays; however, it’s also possible to mix and match those RAID setups, so for instance you could have a three-disk array in RAID 0 for performance, and then leave the remaining two disks in RAID 1 for backup redundancy.Two Thunderbolt ports are included, and up to six devices can be daisy-chained. LaCie reckons the 5big is good for up to 785MB/s when used with the five 7,200rpm/74MB cache drives in the standard RAID 0 configuration.

As for the 5big NAS Pro, that ditches Thunderbolt in favor of dual gigabit ethernet (with link aggregation support); LaCie also throws in a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a further pair of USB 3.0, and a VGA port for hooking up a display for management. Inside there’s a dualcore 2.13GHz Atom 64-bit processor and 4GB of RAM, plus a choice of RAID 5, 5+spare, 1, or 0 setup.

LaCie will offer the 5big NAS Pro in barebones, 10TB, and 20TB capacities, priced from $549. The 5big Thunderbolt is priced from $1,199 for 10TB, with a 20TB option.

LaCie 5big Thunderbolt and 5big NAS Pro hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Seagate certainly isn’t new to the wireless external hard drive business — they released the Satellite drive a couple months ago, and they’re back here at CES 2013 to show off the successor to the Satellite, the Wireless Plus. We ended up getting our hands on the new storage solution to see what this new edition offers.

Essentially, Seagate booted up the storage to 1TB (from 500GB), doubled the battery life (now 10 hours), made it smaller, and kept the price the same as its predecessor ($199). The drive comes with the company’s adapter system, where you can plug in and swap out different interfaces (even Thunderbolt) and use it as a normal external hard drive.

As far as size and weight, the Wireless Plus is still a bit large, but it’s smaller than its predecessor and is only barely larger than Seagate’s regular hard drives. It can also connect up to eight mobile devices over its WiFi network, which by the way creates its own WiFi network to connect to tablets and smartphones, so there’s no need to be around a home WiFi network.

The Wireless Plus comes with a USB 3.0 adapter to use as a regular hard drive, and it’s priced at $199. Pre-orders start today, and the device is expected to ship in 1-2 weeks.

Seagate Wireless Plus WiFi hard drive hands-on is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.