Filed under: Storage

The LaCie product roof has been raised to 7.5TB with the new 5big Network — an Active Directory and gigabit Ethernet-friendly array of storage drives that supports several RAID configurations for up to five hot-swappable hard drives. You can try it on in four different sizes — 2.5TB for $899.99, 5TB for $1,399, or the aforementioned, bar-raising 7.5TB for $1,899. In keeping with his sixteen year relationship with LaCie, the renowned Neil Poulton applied his HAL 9000-inspired design to the product, winning him another Janus de L’industrie award. The only problem with the HAL motif: you really, really don’t want your RAID storage device to drone on about how its “mind is going, Dave.”

[Via Technabob]

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Filed under: Storage

We certainly hope that Joongoo Lee has a royalty check in the mail, because to the untrained eye, it looks like Samsung has taken the Costume concept we peeked back in July and made it a reality. The fashionable S1 and S2 hard drives include 1.8- and 2.5-inch HDDs (respectively), with the former arriving in 80/120/160GB capacities and the latter in 160/250/320/500GB sizes. The compact drives are entirely USB-powered and include a handful of expected backup / data protection features. As for colors, you can expect these in piano black, snow white, red wine and chocolate brown this month in Europe, while South Koreans will be asked to wait until November. As for the rest of ya? Hope you know a good importer.

[Via I4U News, thanks Luigi]

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Filed under: Storage

We certainly hope that Joongoo Lee has a royalty check in the mail, because to the untrained eye, it looks like Samsung has taken the Costume concept we peeked back in July and made it a reality. The fashionable S1 and S2 hard drives include 1.8- and 2.5-inch HDDs (respectively), with the former arriving in 80/120/160GB capacities and the latter in 160/250/320/500GB sizes. The compact drives are entirely USB-powered and include a handful of expected backup / data protection features. As for colors, you can expect these in piano black, snow white, red wine and chocolate brown this month in Europe, while South Koreans will be asked to wait until November. As for the rest of ya? Hope you know a good importer.

[Via I4U News, thanks Luigi]

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Filed under: Peripherals, Storage

When the SATA HDD Stage Rack launched last October, we figured it would just be a one-off gizmo that all of four or five people would pick up. A year later, we’re staring at a smattering of iterations from a number of companies. Sharkoon’s own attempt at beefing up this apparent product category looks to be a pretty solid product, as the SATA QuickPort Duo gives owners the ability to slam in two 2.5- / 3.5-inch internal SATA hard drives and connect them up to a PC via USB 2.0 or eSATA. Unfortunately, the €47 ($64) price tag is a touch on the high side, but it is the Cadillac of the bunch, you know.

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Filed under: Storage

Western Digital didn’t have too many comrades on the green bandwagon back in July of last year, but now it’s just one amongst legions. Nevertheless, it’s keeping its eco-friendly membership badge up to date with the second-generation Caviar Green Drive. Said HDD features the firm’s own GreenPower technology to “significantly reduce power consumption” compared to those traditional energy-sucking alternatives. The freshened platform is based on WD’s 33 GB/platter technology with 32MB cache, with sizes ranging from 500GB to 1TB. According to the company, this one consumes up to 20-percent less power and offers a 10-percent uptick in performance over the previous Green Drive, and best of all, the 1TB edition (WD10EADS) can be ordered up right now for $219.

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Filed under: Storage

Fabrik’s SimpleTech brand initially pushed out its Pro external drives and online backup service around this time last year, but thankfully it finally figured out what we consumers want: that it keep up with the capacity curve. The firm’s Duo Pro drive, which boasts four interfaces (eSATA, FireWire 400 / 800 and USB 2.0), will be available in Q4 with 3TB of room. As for its smaller sibling, you can expect the single-drive 1.5TB Pro model to land around the same time for a definitively different unknown price.

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Filed under: Storage

Nothing too special about Tosh’s latest USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive — just a good lookin’ 400GB unit that should slide into most average sized cargo pockets on the market today. The 6-ounce drive is available in “Electric Blue and Black” (pictured) as well as Carbon Grey, Hot Rod Red and Gecko Green, and while pricing has yet to be revealed, those looking to size it up can chew on these dimensions: 0.65- x 3.19- x 5.0-inches. Not too shabby, huh?

[Via Electronista]

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Filed under: Storage

Iomega went out of its way to make sure you really, really understood that this here external hard drive would go nicely with your MacBook Air, but we’d prefer to see it as something that could slip right into just about any traveler’s briefcase. The anodized aluminum shell measures in at just 0.63-inches thick, weighs 7-ounces and packs a 320GB 2.5-inch hard drive within. Additionally, the unit comes formatted with Apple’s HFS+ file system, features the company’s own Drop Guard design to protect it from falls of up to 1.3-meters (and not a nanometer more), and gets all the juice it needs from a spare (or only, in the MBA’s case) USB 2.0 port. It’ll be available across the globe next month for $149.99.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

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Filed under: Storage

Addonics is good for providing über-secure storage options, and this one does a fine job of keeping that legacy alive. The Ruby Cipher hard drive kit shows lots of love to any 2.5-inch SATA drive that you’ve got laying around, and once you slip it in there, you can rest assured that only you (and maybe your ghost) will see what files are within. The enclosure itself comes with inbuilt eSATA / SATA connectors, and there’s also a SATA direct bridge to “isolate the SATA hard drive power and data connectors from the wears and tears incurred in some other removable SATA hard drive systems.” Of course, you’ll also find 256-bit AES hardware encryption, with a bundled flash key included to unlock the doors to your deepest, darkest secrets. Shame there’s no price listed, but you know this level of security won’t run you cheap.

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Filed under: Storage

If you’ll recall, a slew of prohibitively expensive SSDs were pit against one another last summer in a battle royale of pricey HDD replacements. Fast forward a year and change, and the barrier to entry for one of these heralded devices has dropped significantly. That being the case, we’ve a feeling HotHardware’s latest shootout will be a whole lot more relevant for the average joe / jane. The aforementioned test simultaneously reviews the OCZ Core Series 64GB MLC, OCZ 64GB Standard SLC, Super Talent MasterDrive MX 64GB MLC and the Mtron MSP 7500 32GB SLC. Interestingly, the writeup didn’t conclude with a medal ceremony, but rather, it elaborated on the merits of each and where it would likely fit best. You know what that means — time to bust out the spectacles and get to readin’. Chop chop!

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Filed under: Storage

We’ve been around this stuff long enough to know that hard drives just keep getting bigger with time, but if you were eager to know exactly when a 1TB unit would be prepped and ready for your notebook, try 2010. According to those infamous “undisclosed sources,” both Western Digital (which started shipping a 500-gigger today) and Fujitsu are looking to pump out 750GB 2.5-inch HDDs by mid-2009 and 1TB variants in 2010. Keep the faith, brethren.

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Filed under: Gaming

According to our main homeboys / homegirls at GameDaily, Microsoft has confirmed that it’s dropping the price of that big, delicious Xbox 360 hard drive from the dizzingly high $179 to a totally thrifty $149. According to a Redmond rep: “We reduced the price of the Xbox 360 120 GB Hard Drive to $149 in conjunction with the recent Xbox 360 console price drop. We believe this offers consumers even greater value when selecting accessories that meet their individual gaming and entertainment needs.” Hey, no need to explain — we like things to be cheaper.

[Via Joystiq]

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Filed under: Storage

Samsung was pretty boastful about its high-capacity SpinPoint N2 1.8-inch drives when they launched back in June of 2007, and now the company’s decided to show them off a bit — check out this hot new credit-card-sized external model in glossy black with a flip-out USB connector. Specs are the same as before — 4200rpm, 27MB/s read and 23MB/s read — but sadly the most important spec is that it’s China-only for now and pricing is in the stratosphere, with the 120GB version clocking in at RMB1999 ($293). Yeah, we’ll stick with saving our pennies for an SSD.

[Via Everything USB]

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Filed under: Gaming

This one isn’t quite as dodgy as they come, but the very notable limitations really keep this from being the whiz-bang hack that it appears to be on the surface. Hacker StreetskaterFU had no trouble getting confirmation from others that his method of running Blu-ray games from the PlayStation 3’s hard drive was indeed legitimate, but it is only confirmed to work with select “older titles” including Warhawk, MotorStorm and Call of Duty 3. To make matters worse, instructions are sketchy at best, but at least there’s a video of the process working after the break. Let us know how things go should you give this a whirl.

Continue reading Hacked PlayStation 3 reportedly runs Blu-ray games from HDD

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Filed under: Laptops, Storage

Oh sure, you’re pretty 1337 if you can say you’ve got an SSD within your laptop, but if you’ve a need to store more than, say, 8GB of files, a bit more room may be desired. tnkgrl’s Aspire One mods began earlier this week with the addition of Bluetooth and extra RAM, and today she’s showing the world how to swap the built-in SSD with a 1.8-inch 60GB PATA drive. As expected, this one’s remarkably easy to complete once you’ve torn the thing open, but she also explains how to best put it all back together once you’re done. But you’re not, because she’ll be producing a how-to for adding internal 3G in the coming days / weeks.

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Filed under: Gaming

We’ve already seen walkthroughs of the new Xbox 360 Dashboard, but this is the first look we’ve had at a feature we’re sort of stoked on: the ability to install games to the internal hard drive from DVD. From the looks of things, it’s an extremely simple process to get the data moved over (despite the long waits for multiple GB files being copied), though it looks like you’ll still need the DVD on hand to actually play the game. Don’t believe a word we’re saying? Take a look at the video after the break and see for yourself!

[Via Xbox-Scene News]

Continue reading Xbox 360’s new Dashboard game install demoed on video

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Filed under: Storage

It’s hard to say if we’ve ever laid eyes on a family of portable hard drives with less vigor and pizazz, but Memorex isn’t kidding around when it calls these things “essential.” Boasting nothing more than the bare necessities, the new line of TravelDrives arrives with 2.5-inch HDDs that pack 160GB, 250GB or 320GB of space. You’ll find a USB 2.0 port and a flashing LED to keep you from dozing off, and there’s even a few color options to choose from in case you’re partial to Spring Blossom, Tropic Green, Caribbean Blue or Cool Silver. At least they start at just $89.99, right?

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Filed under: Storage

Hitachi sure does love some perpendicular recording, and in between making trippy videos about the tech, it seems like it’s busy improving it — the company just announced that it’s increased the max storage density of magnetic recording to 610Gb per square inch. That’s far denser than current techniques, and it could lead to a 2.5x increase in capacity for hard drives — and what’s more, Hitachi says it shows that hard drive capacities have the ability to increase at a rate of 40 percent annually for the foreseeable future. Looks like the Tera Era might actually be here, eh?

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage

Brando’s SATA HDD Stage Rack doesn’t stay the same for very long, as it seems a new iteration keeps popping up every month or so. The latest (and greatest, might we add) is the SATA HDD Multimedia Dock, which enables users to slap in any ole 2.5- / 3.5-inch SATA hard drive and access it via USB. That’s not all, though. This one also provides an SD card slot, S-Video / composite / component outputs and a bundled remote — what for, you ask? So you can play back MPEG1/2/4, XviD and DivX (among others) files, of course. This takes multifaceted to an entirely different platform, huh?

[Via Coolest-Gadgets]

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Filed under: Storage

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