Hasta La Gadget!

Western Digital claims its newly-announced 2.5 TB and 3 TB Caviar Green hard drives are the largest capacity SATA drives on the market. But WD admits that these bigger drives need a little bit of help working on older systems.

“Drives with capacities in excess of 2.19 TB currently present barriers for PC hardware, firmware and software,” according to WD’s press release. To get around these barriers, WD is bundling its new drives with an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), which will pair legacy operating systems with a driver than can support bigger drives.

The 2.19 TB limit isn’t a problem for 64-bit versions of Windows 7 or Vista, OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, or many versions of Linux. Really, the problem is Windows XP.

XP (whether in 32- or 64-bit) runs into problems because of its legacy BIOS and Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table, which it in turn carried over from earlier versions of Windows. These allow XP to address a maximum only 2^32 logical blocks at 512 bytes each — for an upper bound of 2.19 TB.

Any 32-bit system (even one as new as Windows 7) has trouble booting into a drive with a capacity over 2.19 TB, but they can work around that limitation for a secondary internal drive. XP can only use these large drives as external drives with special USB firmware that either presents it as a single drive using larger sector sizes or as more than one smaller drives to the host (this is how Seagate’s 3 TB external drive works) — or using an internal HBA card, which does basically the same thing.

Still confused? WD has a complete list of operating systems, motherboards and USB bridges that it supports for its new large-capacity drives. Meanwhile, if you’re ready to roll and the old 2TB drives just weren’t enough storage, the new drives are available now. The 2.5 TB is $189 and the 3 TB hard drive is $239.00.

See Also:

• Western Digital Hard Drives With E-Ink Displays
• Western Digital Portable Drives Now Smaller (and Bigger)
• The Price of a Hard Drive
• HyperDrive 750GB Photo-Storing Hard Drive for iPad
• Imation Ships First Wireless USB Hard Drive
• 'World's First' 3TB Desktop Drive Offers USB 3.0, FireWire …

Heads up, Sony NEX owners: There’s a firmware update for your camera and it’s actually something to get excited about. An exciting firmware update? Yes. With a simple download, you now have full access to 14 new lenses.

The update, for the NEX-3 and NEX-5, brings autofocus to these A-mount lenses. These lenses, which include both Sony’s own and third-party models from Carl Zeiss, are designed for the bigger Alpha SLRs and previously only worked in manual mode on the smaller mirrorless NEXs.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that, by Sony’s measurements, focussing these lenses will take from two to seven seconds, or longer than doing it by hand. Still, it’s free, so what are you gonna do?

There are a few more upgrades: two of the three soft-keys on the back of the cameras can now be programmed with your choice of function, you can choose which menu pops up when you hit the “menu” button, and when you choose manual focus, you can have a section of the picture enlarged on-screen to make things easier, just like Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds cameras.

The updates are available now, and can be installed from Windows or Mac OS2 (!?).

More enhancements for NEX-5/NEX-3 cameras [Sony]

See Also:

• Sony's NEX Mirrorless Cameras Are the Smallest in the World …
• Firmware Update Adds 3D Panoramas to Sony NEX Cameras
• Lens Adapters Put Leica, Nikon, Canon Lenses on Sony NEX

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Sony has taken the time to upgrade the firmware on its minuscule NEX-5/3 system cameras to improve usability, make manual focusing easier, and allow single-shot autofocus when using A-mount glass via an adapter. The latter will be perhaps the most important thing for owners of Sony’s large-sensor compact, allowing them to use a total of 14 lenses from the company’s DSLR range without having to worry about focusing manually. Though, if you are into that kind of thing, the MF Assist mode has been improved with a new feature giving you a zoomed-in view of the area you’re trying to keep sharp — to make it easier to tell if you’re doing it right. The UI has also undergone a bit of a streamlining, which you can check out for yourself by downloading the new software from the source link below.

Continue reading Sony NEX-5 and NEX-3 firmware update adds autofocus support for company’s A-mount lenses

Sony NEX-5 and NEX-3 firmware update adds autofocus support for company’s A-mount lenses originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 02:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you liked the idea of paying £40 (about $65) for the right to access your media via AirPlay on the Marantz Melody Media receiver, you’re going to love paying the same to do the same on three further devices that the company has confirmed will be getting similar updates. Those new devices are the SR7005 receiver, the AV7005 AV preamp, and the NA7004 network audio player. It’s unclear exactly when these updates will release, or how much they’ll cost, but just think of the wonder they’ll bring to the eyes of your children and your children’s children.

Marantz expands AirPlay support to four devices, keeps on charging for the privilege originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case you hadn’t noticed by now, Best Buy’s Geek Squad isn’t always the most scrupulous sort, but their latest attempt to upsell consumers is truly off the charts. We’ve confirmed for ourselves that the Staten Island, NY store is offering 120GB PS3 Slims for $329.98, explaining away the surcharge as their fee for a firmware upgrade. In case you’ve never booted up a PS3 yourself, let us explain the sheer ridiculousness at work here: a system update requires about three button presses, and some discs prompt you automatically. Hell, if you want to play online or access the PlayStation Store, you don’t even have a choice — ever since Other OS got Sony’s goat, firmware updates have been mandatory across the board. Still, it’s hard to say no when Best Buy employees are this polite — when we explained to a rep that we already had a PS3, he graciously offered us an update anyhow… for just $29.98.

Best Buy charges $30 for PS3 firmware update, laughs all the way to the bank originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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