Hasta La Gadget!

Lacie’s Thunderbolt-equipped Little Big Drive will be available this summer

Boom! As quick as a flash, Lacie has announced what is probably the first Thunderbolt-compatible hard drive to market. And when I say “to market”, I mean “to have a press release.” The drive is a version of Lacie’s Little Big Disk, the compact 7200rpm USB/FireWire/eSATA drive that is already pretty well-specced as it is.

Thunderbolt is the new super-fast connection interface from Intel and Apple, and was announced yesterday as part of the new MacBook Pro lineup. The connector is particularly suitable for portable hard drives: It provides 10 watts of power, so even a big, fast hard drive will be well served, and the multi-protocol nature of Thunderbolt does away with all the ports in the back. A pair of Thunderbolt ports will connect to anything with the right adapter: eSATA, USB and FireWire are all covered. And that second port is for daisy-chaining other Thunderbolt peripherals, meaning you’ll never have to carry a USB hub ever again.

Lacie’s take on this goes a little further. The new Little Big Disk will come packed with a pair of 250GB Intel 510 Series SSDs. Those should make sure that the read/write speeds can keep up with what is being squirted down the cable. Price is yet to be announced, but an HDD version shouldn’t be far off the price of the $300 1TB drive you can buy today.

I’m pretty excited about Thunderbolt. As a Mac user, I have gotten sick with the ever-changing ports in recent years. FireWire is dropped, and then returns; display ports seem to change almost monthly; and USB is just too slow. Now, with one port to rule them all, I can forget about one more tech annoyance.

Little Big Disk featuring Thunderbolt technology [Lacie. Thanks, Audra!]

See Also:

• How Thunderbolt Could Hook Up Notebooks With Powerful Peripherals …
• New MacBooks Get Faster Chips, Thunderbolt Port
• Rumor: New MacBooks Come With Light Peak, Renamed 'Thunderbolt …
• LaCie Rikiki Hard Drive is Smaller Than a Monkey

Do you like Batman? Robin? What about USB sticks? Well, thanks to Mimoco, you can have both in one awesome package. We spotted these newly released jump-drives at the International Toy Fair and we gotta say — they’re actually quite detailed in design. The flash drives will cost you a pretty penny if you want more storage — a 2GB dongle is $20 while the 16GB version is $60. If you’re a DC Comics junkie and think that the company has sold out, ask yourself this: why so serious?

Batman, Robin, Joker and Catwoman shrunken down to USB collectables originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 01:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Data Robotics has certainly flexed its biz muscle before, but this is nothing short of a full-out assault on the boardroom. Or at least the boardroom’s IT closet. The outfit’s new Drobo for Business line is being revealed today, with three pieces of hardware making up the initial line. The new trio is primarily aimed at small businesses, but even average consumers in need of some serious at-home storage may find something worth investigating. Though the system designs are obviously built for use in rack-mount arrangements, you’ll still find the same BeyondRAID setup that existing Drobo users have grown familiar with. At least initially, the company will be offering an 8-bay file sharing Drobo with remote backup, an 8-bay SAN (iSCSI-attached) Drobo and a 12-bay SAN (also iSCSI-attached) with expanded redundancy features, support for thin provisioning and deprovisioning and new data-aware tiering technology. Those who buy in will also be treated to a bolstered level of DroboCare business support, a refreshed management interface tailor to the needs of SMB, new functionality / redundancy and boosted performance from top to bottom. The former two are available now — with pricing to start at just north of $2,000 ($8,500 on the 12-bay) — while the latter can be reserved as we speak for a Q2 delivery.

Continue reading Data Robotics launches Drobo for Business line, new 12-bay SAN option

Data Robotics launches Drobo for Business line, new 12-bay SAN option originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look, we get it, you want DRAM that behaves like flash, flash that behaves like DRAM, and everything in between — speedy computer memory that doesn’t lose its data when the power goes off, and lasts for years on end. Well, it looks there’s a new challenger about to enter that ring — double floating-gate field effect transistors, currently in prototype form at North Carolina State University. Whereas the single floating-gate variety is currently responsible for the flash memory in your USB keys and SSDs, the second floating gate lets bits of data stay in an active, ready state, but the computer can also apply a higher voltage to “freeze” them in place. Since the memory can switch between static and dynamic modes in a single cycle and the data never disappears in between, researchers imagine the new tech could lead to instant-on computers and power-saving techniques that shut down idle memory banks. That’s the consumer take, at least — find the technical deep dive at our more coverage link.

Scientists build double-floating-gate FET, believe it could revolutionize computer memory originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Western Digital has announced the availability of its second-generation WD S25 SAS drives and its latest WD RE SAS 3.5-inch drives for enterprise. Shipping now, the 2.5-inch, 10,000 RPM, WD S25 offers IT pros storage in 450GB and 600GB capacities. The WD S25 line is designed for mission-critical server and storage systems.

The new 3.5-inch, 7,200 RPM, WD RE SAS offers 1TB and 2TB capacities, representing an important addition to WD’s enterprise lineup. The WD RE SAS is targeted at high-capacity data center storage, storage area networks, and cloud storage.