Hasta La Gadget!

LaCie has updated its Little Big Disk Thunderbolt drive, boosting speed by up to a third over the already-whippet-like first-gen model. Now including a pair of SATA III SSDs, with read speeds up to 635MB/s, the new Little Big Disk is still clad in a distinctive aluminum chassis but delivers, LaCie claims, the fastest Thunderbolt rates around.

In fact, LaCie claims that the turn of speed the new SATA III drives bring means users will be able to transfer 50GB from their Thunderbolt-equipped PC or Mac to the drive in under two minutes. Alternatively, they’ll be able to edit six uncompressed video streams simultaneously.

As with its predecessor, there are twin Thunderbolt ports so that different peripherals – up to six at once – can be daisy-chained. However, now LaCie includes a Thunderbolt cable in the box, something we dinged them for not doing first time around.

The two SSDs can be set up as a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array, depending on whether you’re prioritizing capacity or redundancy. The 512GB model is priced from £589 ($943), while there’s also a more expensive 1TB version.

LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt v2 packs SATA III SSDs for 635MB/s is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The folks from Toshiba look to continue the trend of packing tons and tons of storage into an extremely small space. Today they’ve outed their latest Canvio Slim portable hard drive and are stating it’s the “world’s thinnest” portable hard drive. Coming in at just 9mm thick offering 500GB of storage for only $115 — lets take a look.

Essentially they are using an Ultrabook class leading 7mm portable HD, packed it into an ultra-sleek enclosure like most portable hard drives, added a few ports and are offering it for an excellent price. This new Canvio drive is extremely small and will fit in nearly all pants or shirt pockets — basically being the size of most smartphones these days.

As a comparison the new iPhone 5 is just 7.6mm thick, and the Galaxy S III is 8.6mm in size. Making this new 500GB portable storage option pretty sleek. Not only is Toshiba’s latest drive sleek and cheap, but it’s also quite fast being operated and powered by USB 3.0, with full compatibility with both PC and Mac. Here’s what Maciek Brzeski, VP of Product Marketing had to say:

As consumer electronics continue to get thinner, lighter and more portable, we recognized a huge demand to create a storage device that is in line with those trends,” and With the Canvio Slim, consumers can now easily stash their storage device right along with their Ultrabook, knowing that their data is always safe, even when they’re on the go.”

Other specs include 5400 RPM and an 8MB cache buffer, along with a 12 ms average seek time. It’s not the fastest around, but it sure is portable. You can get it from Toshiba direct today for $115 in Graphite Black or brushed Aluminum Grey, and it should hit retail stores starting in October.

[via MaximumPC]

Toshiba outs Canvio Slim as world’s thinnest 500GB hard drive is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re a fan of Western Digital and their popular VelociRaptor line we might have something for you. All those folks with a spare Thunderbolt port on their Mac might just want to check out this new release from WD. It’s called the Western Digital MyBook VelociRaptor Duo and offers Thunderbolt speeds and 2TB of capacity. Oh and it’ll cost an arm and a leg.

This new MyBook from Western Digital uses two blazing fast 1TB 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor drives in a RAID configuration to bring you some top notch speeds, and tons of storage. I want one already! Toss in the new Thunderbolt standard to help you achieve top read/write and in/out speeds and you’ll be cruising along in no time.

The new WD storage device offers speeds topping 400MB/sec and both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. That is near SSD performance only you’re getting 2TB of space instead of say 512GB. What is the price your wondering? This impressive new MyBook isn’t cheap with those speeds and performance. It will run you a pretty penny of about $900. All that precious HD video now has a fast, safe, and easy to access storage option.

WD details that the new VelociRapter Duo comes with dual Thunderbolt ports so you can daisy chain should you have a spare $1800 to pick up two. Then as you see above the device is user-serviceable and accessible should the unlikely event of a drive failure. You can easily pop her open and replace a drive. You can even boot your Mac right from this external storage drive. If you’ve got the cash to spend or the need for speed head to WD.com to get started today.

[via ZDNet]

Western Digital Announces MyBook VelociRaptor Duo with Thunderbolt and 2TB is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Pre-orders for Drobo‘s latest external storage arrays have opened, with retailers offering up early spots for the new Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini ahead of their September release. Announced back in June, the two models pack Thunderbolt connectivity and optional mSATA SSD bays that can dramatically increase performance, and Drobo claims that pre-sale interest in the pair has been the most frantic of any of the company’s models.

Multiple retailers are officially offering pre-orders. Amazon has the Drobo Mini and the Drobo 5D priced at $649 and $849 respectively, while CDW has the Mini and the 5D at $689.99 and $899.99 respectively. Finally, TigerDirect will also be offering pre-orders, though currently does not have either model listed; Drobo says that should happen in the next 24hrs. There are more retailers listed here, and Drobo offers the Mini and 5D direct.

If you haven’t been keeping up, the Drobo Mini is the company’s most compact model so far, a 7.3 x 7.1 x 1.8 inch box with room for four 2.5-inch drive bays and a mSATA SSD bay enabling new Drobo Accelerator, a caching system for speeding up overall performance. Two Thunderbolt ports – the second for daisy-chaining devices together – along with a USB 3.0 port round out connectivity, and Drobo is even including all the necessary cables.

As for the Drobo Mini, that steps up to five 3.5-inch hard-drive bays, and has the same trio of ports and all the required cables. It also has the mSATA SSD bay for boosting performance, and Drobo claims it runs quieter than its last-gen model.

Drobo Mini and 5D up for pre-order is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.