Hasta La Gadget!

The trouble with high capacity hard drives is that they’re about the size and weight of a brick, and just as bad for throwing in glass houses or ultrathin laptops. Samsung is slimming up the beastliest of disks though, with the just announced Spinpoint M8. Inside this 1TB drive are a pair of 500GB storage platters, instead of the three 334GB ones found in most storage solutions of this size. By using AFT, Advanced format technology, Sammy was able to up the storage density and trim its latest Spinpoint to a svelte 9.5mm thick (your average 1TB drive is 12.5mm). As an added bonus, the increased density also boosts performance and power efficiency since the drives heads need to move less. If you want to slap one in your notebook you can pick one up for $129, and we’re sure a few of these will find a home those skinny “ultrabooks” that Intel has been talking up. Check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading Samsung’s 2.5-inch Spinpoint M8 1TB drive fits in your laptop, no cramming necessary

Samsung’s 2.5-inch Spinpoint M8 1TB drive fits in your laptop, no cramming necessary originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Popping up in everything from tablets to servers, plain old solid-state drives are becoming as mundane as floppy disks were in the ’90s, so it’s about time someone got a little creative with the soldering iron. OCZ‘s RevoDrive Hybrid takes a HDD and puts it where it doesn’t belong — on top of an SSD. But unlike that deep fried Oreo you really shouldn’t have “tasted” at the state fair, this pairing has potential to keep the juices flowing, caching reads and writes for both drives on a single PCIe card. Shipping in July, the $350 base Hybrid is expected to include a 500GB HDD and 60GB SSD, with a premium model doubling both capacities (and we assume price). With OCZ out of the memory game, we hope to see the now strictly SSD company bring innovative, affordable flash-based goodies to market, and it looks like we’re off to a decent start.

RevoDrive Hybrid pairs HDD with SSD on PCIe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are SSDs and then there are SSDs — the Texas Memory Systems (TMS) RamSan-70 is definitely the latter, packing 900GB of high-speed SLC NAND flash onto a single half-length PCIe card. Boasting an incredible 2GB-per-second sustained external throughput, this near-terabyte solid state drive is clearly overkill for most of us, considering that it’s guaranteed to have a sky-high price (once details are released). Instead, the “900GB Gorilla,” as it’s come to be known around TMS HQ, is destined for high-end servers — though we certainly wouldn’t object to clearing out a slot in our desktop, if by some miracle we can afford this monster when it starts shipping in four to eight weeks.

Continue reading TMS RamSan-70 SSD packs 2GB-per-second throughput, up to 900GB capacity

TMS RamSan-70 SSD packs 2GB-per-second throughput, up to 900GB capacity originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 May 2011 08:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seagate just took the wraps off what’s likely the niftiest portable HDD to cross our path in a long, long while. The GoFlex Satellite is part storage device, part wireless media streamer, and it manages to wear both hats with little compromise on either end. For all intents and purposes, this is a standard 500GB GoFlex HDD with a bit of extra girth, an AC input, an 802.11b/g/n WiFi module and a built-in web server. The reason for those extras? A simple depression of the on / off button starts the streamer up, and it’s ready for a connection in around 30 to 40 seconds. Once fired up you can stream data to just about anything — even iOS devices. That’s an impressive feat, not quite a “first” moment as Seagate would like you to believe (we’ll give that crown to AirStash), but still a rarity.

Our unit shipped with a GoFlex USB 3.0 adapter and a car charger, with the latter enabling users to entertain their children on long road trips — a nice addition, we have to say. Installation is a cinch; just fire up a media sync application that resides on the drive (for OS X users, anyway), and you’re ready to drag and drop files as if it’s any ‘ole HDD. No media management software or anything of the sort, thankfully. The purpose of having your media onboard is to stream videos, photos, documents and music to your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or any other tablet, phone or laptop with WiFi. You heard right — while there’s only a dedicated app for the iOS family, any WiFi-enabled device with a web browser can tap into this. Care to hear our take on this $200 do-it-all hard drive? Have a look at our review video just after the break.

Continue reading Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite portable hard drive streams content over WiFi (review)

Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite portable hard drive streams content over WiFi (review) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve been on the hunt for a USB 3.0 drive to pair with your newly minted notebook, the list of options just keeps on growing. LG just released the XE1 and XE2, a pair of 2.5-inch HDDs available in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB sizes. The only difference: the XE1 has a glossy finish and its sibling, a matte one — both more conservative-looking than what Samsung’s been peddling. If you’re in Korea, you’ll soon be able to snag one in the size and style of your choice for somewhere between ₩100,000 and ₩160,000 ($92 to $147).

LG trots out XE1 and XE2 USB 3.0 drives for the Korean market originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 May 2011 13:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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