Hasta La Gadget!

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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You know, making that jump from HDD to SSD still costs an arm and a leg, so how about somewhere in between that gap? That’s what Lenovo‘s offering as an option for the IdeaPad Y460 and Y560 coming in March. The idea with this RapidDrive technology is that you can have a 32GB or 64GB PCI-Express SSD installed alongside your regular HDD (up to 500GB option), and the two drives will effectively be combined into one. Sounds like a tribute to the hybrid hard drives that seem to have quietly disappeared. The guys at Lenovo Blogs claim that “this is not Intel TurboMemory” as RapidDrive implements a “more automatic” algorithm to dynamically pool and manage the hybrid drive, thus giving up to 66 percent increase in Windows 7 boot speed as well as everyday performance. Regardless of this jab at Intel, we’ve seen this demoed at CES and it looked as good as the video demo after the break. Just don’t let us down with the SSD prices, Lenovo.

Continue reading Lenovo RapidDrive brings SSD and HDD together, demoes 66 percent speed boost on video

Lenovo RapidDrive brings SSD and HDD together, demoes 66 percent speed boost on video originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You knew it wouldn’t be long before Seagate hopped on the USB 3.0 bandwagon, right? Right. Here in Vegas, the company just announced its BlackArmor PS110, which is its first USB 3.0 portable HDD. What makes this one a touch different than the rest is the “performance kit” that it ships in, which is comprised of a 500GB USB 3.0 HDD (a 2.5-incher with a 7200RPM spindle speed), a power cable and an ExpressCard USB 3.0 adapter. ‘Course, your shiny new MacBook won’t take too kindly to this type of gesture — but hey, at least you can read SD cards without breaking a sweat! The kit is up for purchase right now for $179.99, and if you’re looking to take a closer look before pulling the trigger, you’ll find our hands-on below along with a glance at a for-demonstration-only 7mm 2.5-inch drive that was first announced last month.

Seagate unveils USB 3.0 BlackArmor PS110 hard drive originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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