Hasta La Gadget!

We tell ya, these HDD docks… they sure know how to keep pace with the latest and greatest of technological innovations. Shortly after Sharkoon busted out a USB 3.0-enabled version, along comes this fellow: a dual-drive version of the same device. Packing a pair of SuperSpeed USB sockets and room for two 2.5- or 3.5-inch hard drives (or a combination, if you prefer), this device makes it dead simple to clone drives and ready a new one to supplant your existing platter. It’s available now for €59.90 ($81), but if you wait a fortnight or so, we’re almost certain the next iteration will be out to take its place.

Sharkoon’s USB 3.0 SATA HDD dock doubles up, now handles two drives originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve got a notebook with an eSATA port, it’s time to put it to work. LaCie has expanded its Rugged family of external hard drives with the LaCie Rugged eSATA. Transfer huge files in no time with speeds up to 90MB per second. The drive is bus-powered when connected to a USB-eSATA combo port, also known as Power eSATA. It also works with standard eSATA ports with the included USB power-sharing cable.

The tough, orange, good-looking casing was designed by Neil Poulton, while the aluminum shell is scratch-resistant aluminum. Internal shock absorbers and a shock-resistant bumper protect you from drops and bumps. Besides the onboard storage, this external comes with 10GB of online storage with Wuala for one year. Pick one up and you’ll get 500GB of storage for $159.99.

We’ve already seen Lenovo and others pair an SDD up with a standard hard drive for maximum speed, but SilverStone now has a fairly novel solution to let you build your own hybrid storage device. Dubbed the HDDBOOST, the device itself is just a simple chassis that lets you plug in any SDD drive and any standard hard drive and connect the whole rig to your computer — you can even apparently daisy chain multiple hard drives and have them all take advantage of the SSD boost. Of course, those drives will be recognized as one by your computer, and the initial setup appears to be minimal, with only a simple mirror backup required to copy all your priority data to the SDD — which the company says could result in up to a 70% increase in speed. No word on an official release over here, but this one should be available in Europe later this month for €33 (or about $45).

[Thanks, Alex]

SilverStone HDDBOOST lets you build your own hybrid SSD hard drive originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey there, why so glum? You’ve overfilled your PS3’s internal storage with mission-critical data and don’t have anywhere else to stash your incoming Best of Miley Cyrus compilation? Fear not, Sony’s got you covered with a pair of officially licensed external HDDs built by Buffalo. They look remarkably similar to standard issue USB portable drives — so much so in fact that one of them is a rebadged unit that Buffalo already retails in the US — but let’s not nitpick here. The two drives on offer come with a generous 500GB of storage and their prices aren’t too bad with the rebadge setting you back around $130 while the more stylish HD-AV500U2 above will cost around $168. You could of course ignore Sony, buy any drive you like and jack it into your PS3; it’s just that these aren’t too terrible as far as unnecessarily licensed peripherals go. Both drives will be hitting Japan in March to coincide with the Torne DVR adapter release.

Sony licenses ‘official’ PS3 external HDDs, doesn’t fully comprehend concept of interoperability originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LaCie dabbled in the CES extravaganza with a few minor offerings, but it decided to wait a few weeks for things to calm down before busting out a new range of wares. Today, the outfit is slinging out a trio of products in the freshly created Enterprise Class: the d2 Quadra Enterprise Class, 2big Quadra Enterprise Class and the 4big Quadra Enterprise Class. Obviously engineered for the more hardcore among us, these units pack enterprise-class SATA drives, a five-year warranty, 128-bit AES hardware encryption and hardware RAID with hot-swappable disks. Each HDD within spins at 7200RPM and boasts 32MB of cache, and 700MB/sec are promised when using a RAID 50 array with four 4big Quadra Enterprise Class units. The whole slate of Neil Poulton-designed drives offer up quad interfaces (FireWire 400 / 800, USB 2.0 and eSATA), and prices get going at just $299.

LaCie serves up Enterprise Class versions of Quadra external drives originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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