While we are moving into a world with products that prefer to rely on flash based storage instead of traditional storage devices such as hard drives, this does not mean that hard drive solutions are being abandoned altogether. No sir, […]
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Buffalo has announced a new high-capacity storage solution that promises the speed of an SSD while offering the capacity and cost of a traditional hard drive. The storage solution is called the DriveStation DDR and it’s a high-performance external USB 3.0 hard drive featuring 1 GB of DDR3 RAM cache. That 1 GB of DDR3 RAM allows for accelerated transfer speeds.
The 1 GB of RAM integrated into the drive allows it to outperform other USB 3.0 hard drives according to Buffalo. Data transfer speeds promise to be up to 408 MB/s, which is 2.3 times faster than typical USB 3.0 hard drives according to Buffalo. The storage device works for both PC and Mac computers.
The drive is available in 2 TB or 3 TB capacities. The drive measures 1.8 x 5.0 x 8-inches and weighs 2.2 pounds. It gets power from an included AC adapter. The drive supports Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP in 32 or 64-bit flavors.
The DriveStation DDR is formatted in NTFS by default and requires reformatting to work with Mac computers. The 2 TB version of the drive is available for $139.99 with the 3 TB version available for $179.99. Both versions of the drive can be picked up online and in some retail stores right now.
[via Buffalotech.com]
Buffalo DriveStation DDR claims SSD speed without the wallet hemorrhaging is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Toshiba has just announced their Toshiba Canvio Connect portable external hard drive which will be very different from past Canvio releases, in the sense that this external hard drive will also let you access as well as share files straight from the device itself. This would clearly make it the first of its kind in the market, where you can carry up to 2TB of external storage space in a slim and compact form factor, and for fashionistas, Toshiba has got your back covered too, as it will come in several different colors, ranging from black to silver, blue, red and white.
Imagine performing a back up of all your videos and photos straight from compatible smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices which are able to run Toshiba Storage’s iOS or Android app. In a nutshell, as long as the Toshiba Canvio Connect remains hooked up to an Internet-enabled PC which remains powered on, users can remotely access the entire gamut of their files, photos, music and movies from any device, regardless of their geographical location. Toshiba will entice curious onlookers by throwing in 10GB of free cloud storage for storing “always available” copies of important files. Out later in the middle of May, the Toshiba Canvio Connect will come in 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB capacities, retailing for $99, $109.99, $129.99, $169.99 and $189.99, respectively. [Press Release]
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Flash Rods are flash drives that have been crammed inside of toy cars. These interesting storage devices have been around for a while. In fact, we talked about a version couple years ago that crammed a 250 GB hard drive inside of a Mercedes SLS replica.
It has been a while since we’ve heard anything new out of Flash Rods, but the company is now back with a new mid-size range of storage devices crammed inside of cool model cars. This particular series is based on classic muscle cars includes drives housed inside of vehicles like a 1963 Lincoln Continental, a 67 Mustang, or a Shelby Cobra.
These mid-size flash drives are larger than the Hot Wheels size cars that Flash Rods originally created, yet smaller than the 250 GB Mercedes SLS replica I mentioned before. Another nice feature is that these will be the first Flash Rods that have USB 3.0 drives inside. All previous versions of the car-based storage devices used USB 2.0 drives.
In all, Flash Rods is offering seven new vintage car storage drives. These storage devices would have started off as larger toy cars you can pick up at a store like Walmart. However, if you like the idea of a flash drive inside of a car toy, you might be interested in plunking down $110 for the 32 GB version or $140 for the 64 GB version.
[via EverythingUSB]
Flash Rods unveils souped-up USB 3.0 muscle car drives is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
When it comes to storage and backup drives, Western Digital would be a name that many people are familiar with, although some might have run into unpleasant experiences in the past where their backup hard drive just died even before making it past the 1 year mark, which is rather unfortunate. Still, we are not here to start an Aunt Agony channel for failed hard drives, but rather, talk about Western Digital’s latest solid state hybrid drives and hard drives that rely on a single edge connector to save space, and hence, reducing its thickness to a mere 5mm thick.
You can say that the all new WD Blue and WD Black 2.5-inch drives were specially manufactured with notebooks and Ultrabooks in mind, where being a mere 5mm thick, it would translate to sleeker notebook and Ultrabook designs down the road. The thing is, will the other components and parts of a notebook or Ultrabook be able to achieve such levels of miniaturization? This slimmer design is touted to lower weight by up to 36% compared to the traditional model, not to mention boasting of reduced noise during operations. The 500GB WD Blue 5mm will retail for $89 a pop, while versions of the WD Black 5mm SSHD are said to ship to PC manufacturers, leaving us in the dark concerning its capacity and costs.
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Western Digital has just begun shipping a new 2.5-inch internal hard drive that’s only a mere 5mm thick. The company is calling it the UltraSlim, and it packs in 500GB of whatever you can stuff in it. the new drive will fit in any standard 2.5-inch drive bay, but will take up less vertical space than a typical 9.5mm drive.
The drive will be a part of Western Digital’s Blue series of hard drives, and the 5mm drive is able to be so thin because of a tiny edge connector that combines both power and the SATA transfer interface, which leaves more room for the hardware to do its thing. Although, with its 5mm form factor, everything is squeezed in there rather tightly.
This marks the return of Western Digital back into the full production process. After the 2011 tsunami and earthquake over in Asia, Western Digital and other component manufacturers suffered setbacks and were unable to produce hard drives temporarily. However, the company got back on track last year, and took over the top spot in the hard drive market with $4.8 billion in revenue and 71 million hard drives produced during Q4 2012.
While the UltraSlim is definitely something to admire, this isn’t the first 5mm drive we’ve seen. A*STAR unveiled their own 5mm hybrid drive last year, and it packs in a whole 1TB of storage. Then again, the company has yet to ship the new drive, so Western Digital is certainly the first out of the gate it seems.
Western Digital releases 5mm UltraSlim 2.5-inch hard drive is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
For the computer builder enthusiast, we’re sure that some of you guys probably have old and unused, maybe even spoilt hard drives lying around, but what can we do with them? Having them sit in the corner and collect dust is one option, but what about turning them into a cotton candy machine? Wait, what? It seems that a rather enterprising engineer in China who runs a hard drive repair and recovery store did just that with some hard drives he had lying around. Making use of the hard drive and it’s rotating mechanism, a plastic basin, bicycle spokes and a round flat metal tin, he managed to churn out several successful cotton candies! Of course we’re not sure how tasty they are, although from the photos they don’t look half bad. Pretty cool idea, huh? For those interested in trying this out for yourself, there are instructions at MIC Gadget should you wish to embark on your cotton candy making project.
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Seagate is smiling big today, having announced that it is the first ever to offer a hard drive containing 1TB platters. There are a total of four platters, making the drive an ordinary 4TB in size, but it is not the overall capacity that is the bragging point. Although it’s not the most exciting announcement, there are some advantages to this drive over other 4TB offerings.
This 4TB drive offers a data transfer rate of 145MB/s, and utilizes about 35-less electricity over other 4TB drives because of the reduced number of platters. This also results in an increase in drive performance. The drive is being offered both with and without an external case: without will run you approximately $190USD, while with the case will bump the price to $212 USD.
This isn’t Seagate’s only claim to fame this year, with the company announcing last month that it is the first (and thus far, only) to ship 2 billion hard drives globally. Of those 2 billion drives, the first billion took about 30 years to sell, while the second billion took approximately 4 years to sell, a massive swing that shows the vastly increasing demand for storage.
Demand for hard drives – particularly, larger ones – is expected to rise as the quantity of digital content, such as high-definition videos, created by consumers increases. As such, even those who have invested in an external hard drive will likely find themselves buying a new one in the coming year or two as capacity and needs both increase. For now, 1TB platters are a step towards meeting that demand.
[via Tech Crunch]
Seagate unveils world’s first 1TB-per-platter hard drive is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
In our culture and society these days, it seems that there is a growing obsession with being first. First in class, first on the grid, first in line to get the new iPhone…the list is practically endless when you think about it. Well, Seagate, a company that is well known in churning out storage solutions and manufactures hard drives as their bread and butter, has achieved another industry’s first with their new 4TB hard drive. This 4TB hard drive might not seem like much at first, but the fact that it makes use of a quartet of 1TB platters makes it special.
According to a Seagate representative, “the four-platter design is a winning one that allows for the highest performance possible while doubling capacity and reducing costs, ultimately giving consumers the best of all worlds.” Just to get a better appreciation on how much information can 4TB of space carry, we are looking at 800,000 photos, 450 hours of HD video, or more than 1 million songs. SSDs will have a long, long time to go before being able to catch up with hard drives in terms of capacity for sure, but that is like comparing apples to oranges.
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We introduced the first models in Buffalo’s “Design Selection HDD” series in February.
Now, Buffalo has announced another 8 models of their designer portable HDD with USB 3.0 (1TB capacity will be released on March 25 2013.
All models are 13,860 yen:
– Pandaholic
– Cute eyes
– Dorothy
– Sapphire flash
– Monster’s safari
– Flower on water
– Flower in dream
– Look at me
Other specs:
Size: 77×14×114mm
Weight: 165g
Accessories: USB cable (50cm), instruction document
They can be …
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