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LaCie 2big, 4big Quadra drives hop the USB 3.0 bandwagon, give Macs 12TB of speedy storage
LaCie has been sprucing up its smaller drives to handle a new crop of Macs that support USB 3.0. It's now turn for the big boys to play. Updated versions of the 2big Quadra and 4big Quadra (not yet shown here) use the faster port to reach the potential of their high-capacity RAID arrays, peaking at either 210MB/s for the dual-drive 2big and 245MB/s for its quad-drive cousin. We're not seeing a fundamental shakeup of the design apart from the higher speeds, although that's not necessarily a problem given the FireWire 800 to catch legacy users and hot-swappable bays for future upgrades. Video editors and other storage mavens should just prepare themselves to pony up. The upgraded Quadra models will start at respective $499 (4TB) and $1,099 (8TB) prices when they ship in October, and they're only poised to get more expensive when LaCie sets the costs for the higher-end 6TB and 12TB models.
LaCie's Thunderbolt-equipped Little Big Disk sees apparent shipping delay (update: false)
Update: As it turns out, the site linked was for Australia and listed the region's Winter season 2011, which is summer in the US. LaCie has informed us that the drives are still set to ship on-time and has updated the Australian page -- which consequently looks identical to the US page -- to reflect "Australian Winter" rather than "Winter" as previously seen. Apologies for any confusion. Remember way back in February when Thunderbolt was unveiled? Shocking as it may be, a 10Gbps interconnect is useless without peripherals, and thankfully Promise and LaCie also announced compatible drives touting Q2 / summer availability. As promised, Promise's wares released as expected alongside Apple's T-bolt cable, but LaCie's Little Big Disk has been curiously absent. As it turns out, the company's website has been quietly updated and now reflects a winter 2011 release for these Intel 510 SSD-packable drives, which is just about enough to force a FOF onto even the happiest of faces. Still antsy to pick one up? Better plan to avoid Santa's naughty list -- at this point, waitin' and wishin' is about all you can do [Thanks, Mikhail]
PopDrive backs up your backup, gets your hard drive poppin'
A hard drive that backs up your hard drive isn't exactly a groundbreaking concept, but a mirror drive that goes pop? Now, that's something special. PopDrive, weighing in at just over a pound and measuring a touch larger than a wireless mouse, uses two stacked laptop hard drives, encased in an aluminum shell, to guarantee that your backed up data stays that way. So where does the pop come in? Well, if one of these little hard drives crashes, you just pop in a new one like you would a CD. It does RAID-0, RAID-1, JBOD, and connects via eSata. We still haven't seen a price on it, but the company's website suggests that it won't take too much to get this thing poppin'. PopDrive will announce pricing and availability at CES later this week.
DC-MCNAS1 Movie Cowboy NAS will wrangle your torrents, herd your HDDs
Having a box sitting on your network and offering up terabytes of storage is a lovely thing, but it's even lovelier when that box can kind of take care of a variety of other problems as well. Such is Digital Cowboy's DC-MCNAS1, a case with dual 3.5-inch SATA bays into which you can slot whatever volume of storage your budget allows. Once connected to your network (over gigabit Ethernet) it can serve up MySQL instances, accept files over FTP/SSH, manage your printers, and of course handle however many torrents you can throw at it. The box ships to Japanese buckaroos next week and, while there's no price set on this one yet, hopefully it won't break the bank. %Gallery-91537%
ACARD's dual 2.5-inch RAID enclosure is slim, hungry for power
If you're looking for an odd, yet usable storage solution, perhaps ACARD's Mirror Smart Mini is the thing for you. The device uses two 2.5-inch SATA drives side by side in a small enclosure; the drives can be mapped as a hardware-based RAID 1 array, or can be used as separate devices. The aluminum casing plugs into your system using USB 2.0, but unfortunately requires an AC adapter for power, thus making it slightly less awesome than we want it to be. Regardless, if you're moving around a lot and need a backup option, you might have found your $69 answer.[Via Everything USB]
Norazza PocketRAID takes data redundancy on the road
Prebuilt RAID arrays are pretty mainstream now, but they're usually massive in size and focused on sheer storage volume -- two qualities Norazza's PocketRAID eschews in the name of portable data redundancy. The 1.5-inch thick PocketRAID contains what we're assuming is two 1.8-inch hard drives in a permanent RAID 1 configuration, allowing you to work with up to 320GB of data on the road without fear. The eSATA / USB 2.0 drives are shipping now, if you've got the coin -- prices range from $439 for 120GB to a whopping $929 for 320GB of storage.
Buffalo DriveStation Duo stores files, can't grate cheese
Although fashionably late to the party, Buffalo's new DriveStation Duo does stack up nicely against Fantom Drives' recent cheese grater-style storage device, and comes in a more understated traditional black instead of that brushed metal-look that all the kids are going for these days. The DriveStation Duo sports USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces and ranges from 500GB to 1.5TB in capacity, and the 7,200RPM SATA drives that it's packin' can be set up in a RAID-1 configuration-- for either mirroring or full capactiy modes, depending on your persuasion. Oh, and you'll take a $250 to $1,000 hit sometime later this month for the pleasure of taking 'em for a spin.
Seagate goes 1TB with Maxtor Shared Storage II
Seagate knows that you can never have too much storage space at your disposal, which is why the company's just bulked up its well-received NAS line with the 1TB Maxtor Shared Storage II. Like other products of the same ilk, the SS II allows up to 20 connected Mac or Windows PCs to send and receive data to and from the two 7,200RPM 500GB hard drives, which can also be configured in a RAID 1 array for an extra level of protection. A high-speed Gigabit Ethernet connection should ensure rapid file transfers, and two built-in USB ports allow you to connect a printer or other peripheral device for sharing among multiple users. You're also getting UPnP support here, so with the proper adapters you can stream tunes, vids, and pics to compatible networked A/V gear throughout your pad. The Shared Storage II is scheduled for release sometime this month, but such a capacious device doesn't come cheap: expect to throw down around $900 if you're interested in this whole-house storage and backup solution.
