Hasta La Gadget!

Iomega Mac Companion 2TB hard drive on sale now for $240, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re trying to make a name for yourself in the incredibly crowded portable storage space, you can innovate and create something totally awesome, or you can do this. The mDock from mLogic is an external hard drive, port extender and port blocker all rolled into one pricey coffin-like chamber of fail. $219 will net you an eternal resting place for 500 gigs of data, while $299 ups the ante to an entire terabyte. Plus, with a pair of front-facing USB ports, you can add a third-party portable storage yokel for the less-than-princely sum of 50 bucks. If you haven’t already gathered, the mDock is designed for mMacbook Pros, but there’s also the iMac-mountable mBack (curiously not the iBack), designed with Apple’s familiar desktop flavor in mind. That variant is slightly more affordable, with pricing ranging from $169 for 1TB to $349 for 3TB, but you’ll forgo the dock-like USB hub and headphone jack. There’s no word on when to expect these life-changing devices in stores, but it’s never too early to dust off the mChair iChair and park yourself on 5th Ave.

Update: As pointed out by many in the comments most ports that are blocked by the mDock are replicated on the silver brick, including the Magsafe. The only restriction appears to be a lack of pass-through for Thunderbolt, but you do get a mini DisplayPort for hooking up external monitors. We’ve added one more pic after the break.

Continue reading mLogic mDock extends your MacBook ports, steals your Thunder(bolt)

mLogic mDock extends your MacBook ports, steals your Thunder(bolt) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That tangled mess of a backup solution feeling a little cramped? Yeah, join the crowd. Seagate’s looking to give you a dash of capaciousness — a dash that you could desperately used — with its newest desktop HDD. The GoFlex Desk line is about as sleek as it gets for a non-mobile drive, with 1/2/3/4TB options being made available. The stock model ships with USB 2.0 / 3.0 support, a required AC power adapter (blah) and support for OS X and Windows platforms. The entire unit weighs but 2.38 pounds and checks in at 6.22- x 4.88- x 1.73-inches; true to the GoFlex name, the lower base can actually be swapped out for those who’d prefer a different interface (you know, like FireWire or Thunderbolt), and there’s a four-LED capacity gauge on there as well. In our limited testing, we consistently saw USB 3.0 burst rates top 100MB/sec, while sustained transfers hovered closer to 60MB/sec. When used on a USB 2.0 rig, we saw reads and writes hover between 30MB/sec and 40MB/sec. As for pricing and availability? The 4TB flagship can be found right now at Seagate’s site for $249.99, while the GoFlex Desk for Mac — which touts both Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 — will be available in Apple stores by the end of the month. We’re told that Thunderbolt will be supported once that GoFlex adapter is let loose, but an ETA isn’t quite ready for public eyes.

Continue reading Seagate plays the 4TB card with its GoFlex Desk external HDD, shipping now for $250

Seagate plays the 4TB card with its GoFlex Desk external HDD, shipping now for $250 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We heard about OCZ’s clever crossbreed a few months ago, but couldn’t be sure about pricing for this premium model. Turns out, it’s significantly less than we’d guessed: $499 for a 100GB SSD and 1TB HDD happily united on a single PCI Express card. Yup, that’s still a heck of a lot more than the $300 or so it’d cost to pick up a SandForce-controlled 120GB solid state beauty along with a separate 1TB SATA 6GB/s hard drive. The comparison isn’t entirely fair, though, because OCZ claims its combo boosts overall performance by caching both “hot” and “cold” data, which is automatically organized between the SSD and HDD, on a single card with up to 910MB/s bandwidth and 120,000 IOPS. Nevertheless, it’ll take some real-world benchmarking to determine whether the promised speed gain is worth our wages. More details in the PR after the break.

Continue reading OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid merges 100GB SSD with 1TB HDD for $499

OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid merges 100GB SSD with 1TB HDD for $499 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many SSDs could easily blow away that legacy spinning drive in your notebook, but there’s always room for a performance boost when it comes to tech. Announced last week, Samsung’s 830-series SSD packs up to 512GB of storage, and full support for SATA’s 6Gbps max throughput — a 100 percent boost over Samsung’s previous gen drive. There’s only one problem with last week’s version: it’s only available to OEMs, leaving a DIY upgrade out of the question. Well, today Samsung announced consumer availability for the same drive, letting any Joe Bag O’ PC Upgrades pick one up at retail come October. Drives will be available in 64, 128, 256, and 512GB capacities, with pricing details coming at the official launch this fall. Jump past the break for the full PR, should you care to read all about the drive’s “precision engineered” brushed metal enclosure, with “deep black” highlights and a “stylish and chic exterior” — exactly the features you should be looking for in an SSD.

Continue reading Samsung’s 6Gbps SSD gets a consumer label, October release date

Samsung’s 6Gbps SSD gets a consumer label, October release date originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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