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LaCie announces 2big and eSATA hub Thunderbolt options, adds to high-speed arsenal
Back in November, we took the pricey LaCie Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD for a spin. The outfit has just outed two more Thunderbolt storage solutions at CES: the 2big and eSATA hub Thunderbolt series. Boasting blazing transfer rates of up to 311 MB/sec, the Lacie 2big is housed in its signature solid-aluminum casing while featuring RAID security, hot-swappable disks, daisy chain compatibility and storage capacities of up to 8TB. Looking to make use of those eSATA drives you've got lying around? The eSATA Thunderbolt series connects the latest Mac to an external hub outfitted for two of the aforementioned drives. If two storage units won't suit your workload, the hub also packs a secondary Thunderbolt port that allows up to 12 eSATA drives (six docks) to be connected to your machine -- all while sporting 3 Gb/sec speeds. You'll have to wait until later in Q1 2012 to get your mitts on either of these, though, which gives you a bit of time to get your piggy bank in order. Update: Our pals over at Engadget Spanish snagged a hands-on.
Hitachi outs a pair of 4TB HDDs for your storing pleasure
We here at Engadget believe that, while keeping data in the cloud is certainly convenient, one can never have too much local storage space. Hitachi shares our enthusiasm for commodious HDDs, and has rolled out a pair of 4TB drives to keep all your movies, music, and photos close to home. For those wanting to up the ante in their desktop machine, the Deskstar 5K4000 should do the trick with a SATA 6Gb/s connection and 32MB buffer. Its stablemate, the Touro Desk External Drive, brings the same HDD in an onyx enclosure and connects to your computer via USB 3.0 -- plus you get 3GB of cloud storage free from Hitachi. (Who says you can't eat your cake and have it too?) The 5K4000 is available now for a penny under $400, while the Touro will cost $420 once it hits the market in January.
Holiday Gift Guide: External Disk Drives
Welcome to TUAW's 2011 Holiday Gift Guide! We're here to help you choose the best gifts this holiday season, and once you've received your gifts we'll tell you what apps and accessories we think are best for your new Apple gear. Stay tuned every weekday from now until the end of the year for our picks and helpful guides and check our Gift Guide hub to see our guides as they become available. For even more holiday fun, check out sister site Engadget's gift guide. One of the most popular accessories for any Mac is an external disk drive. Whether you're using a Mac Pro to edit video professionally or a MacBook Air as an email and web-browsing tool, an external drive is useful for backups or providing additional storage for files that would overwhelm the internal drive in your Mac. In this edition of the Holiday Gift Guide, I'll describe some of the choices you may wish to consider when thinking about purchasing an external drive. Sizing An External Drive If you're using an external drive for Time Machine backups, you need at least 1.2 times the maximum amount of space on your primary drive for Time Machine to work. As a rule of thumb, I've always recommended buying a drive at least twice the size of your primary drive. If your primary disk drive can provide up to 1 TB of storage, get a 2 TB external disk drive. That will be large enough to store a bootable clone of your drive plus a good number of Time Machine backups. My personal rule of thumb is to get us as much hard drive as you can afford, and the recent bump in drive prices due to the Thai floods means that you're going to pay more for the capacity you need. What this means is that a 2 TB drive that was available for about US$60 back in the summer of 2011 is now pushing $170. Be sure to check the prices for any drive before you make your purchase, as pricing is very volatile at this time. Portable Drives Owners of MacBooks -- Airs, Pros, and the regular old garden variety MacBook -- are probably more in need of external drives than desktop owners. Laptops have a higher probability of being dropped or stolen, so keeping them backed up is important. If you happen to buy the low-end MacBook Air with a built-in SSD, you only have 64 GB of storage, so an external drive might be a necessity to store media files. Portable drives should be light, durable, and bus-powered to be truly useful to the MacBook owner. The last thing you want to have to do is carry around an AC power adapter for your hard disk drive; you should be able to just plug it in and use it. Fortunately, most of these drives are bus-powered USB 2.0 or FireWire 400/800 models, so you're in luck. Some of my personal favorites at this time include the Iomega eGo Helium Portable Hard Drive ($149.99 for 1 TB, $99.99 for 500 GB), the OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini ($265 for 1.5 TB, $119.99 for 320 GB), and the LaCie Rugged Hard Disk ($159.99 for 500 GB). Desktop Drives Have an iMac or a Mac mini? A desktop disk drive is the answer for your storage and external backup needs. Desktop drives are characterized by larger physical size, external power requirements, and generally lower prices than portable drives. The least-expensive desktop drives are connected to your Mac through a USB 2.0 cable, while more expensive drives will also include a FireWire 400 or 800 port. You can also purchase Thunderbolt-equipped desktop drives, which are included in the next section of this gift guide and work with most new Macs. For iMacs, one of the best-looking and relatively fast drives is the Iomega Mac Companion ($239.99 for 2 TB, $369.99 for 3 TB). Western Digital's MyBook Studio is another large-capacity drive at a bargain price -- the drives originally retailed for $249.99 for 3 TB of storage, although the hard disk shortage at this time is driving prices much higher. Performance Desktop Drives and RAID For those who are using their Macs for video editing or who need mass amounts of storage, performance desktop drives and RAID arrays are a good idea. When I'm referring to performance desktop drives, I'm talking about those that are generally fast drives with a fast interface. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are in this category, as are Thunderbolt drives. RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives) uses two or more drives to provide either speed or redundant mass storage that can withstand the loss of a drive. Solid State Drives are getting bigger and faster, and for many newer Macs, they're a built-in feature or configure-to-order option. External SSDs are silent and fast, making them popular with a growing number of Mac users. OWC's Mercury Elite Pro mini drive can be configured with a 480 GB for $899.99 -- expensive, but very fast. Drives using the fast new Thunderbolt interface are still rare, but are starting to appear from many mainstream drive manufacturers. LaCie's Little Big Disk Thunderbolt series comes in 1 TB ($449.95), 2 TB ($549.95) and 240 GB SSD ($899.95) editions to fill your need for speed. Two RAID drives that I tested in 2011 were the WiebeTech RTX220-QR ($499 with no drives, $1099 with two 3 TB drives installed) and the CRU-DataPort ToughTech Duo QR ($429.99 with no drives from some retailers, price varies on size and use of HDD or SSD in the array). The latter drive is quite portable. The RAID products from Drobo remain popular despite being somewhat slower than traditional arrays, with the traditional FireWire 800 / USB 2.0 4-bay Drobo available empty (bring your own drives) for $399 and the 8-bay DroboPro for $1,499 (empty, supply your own drives as needed). The Cloud Alternative If your needs for backup space and storage aren't huge, and if you have a relatively fast broadband connection, then maybe you should consider the cloud alternative. There's no need for a physical external drive; you're just sending bits to a drive somewhere on the Internet. For backups, there are several very good services that work seamlessly with Mac OS X. Some of my personal favorites are Backblaze ($50 a year for unlimited storage), Dolly Drive ($96/year for 250 GB of Time Machine-compatible cloud storage), and Carbonite ($59 annually for unlimited storage). I like to work with documents in the cloud, since it's easy to collaborate with co-workers and also use files between devices. Apple's iCloud (free for 5 GB of storage, $100 a year for 50 GB), Dropbox (free for 2 GB of storage, $99 a year for 50 GB), and Box (free for 5 GB of storage, 50 GB for $19.99 per month) are all well-known and respected cloud services for Mac and iOS. Conclusion An external disk drive is a gift that remains useful for a long time. Although prices are a bit higher this year than before, there are still some bargains to be had if you shop around. In this gift guide, I've just named a few drives that I'm familiar with, but you can find many other models by perusing the websites of the manufacturers.
ioSafe Rugged Portable external hard drive takes a bullet for your data
Last October I told you about the ioSafe SoloPRO fireproof external hard drive. It's one of the best options for protecting your data from physical harm. However, since the drive weighs 18 pounds, it's not ideal for those who need portability. That's where the ioSafe Rugged Portable comes in. Weighing little more than one pound, it's considerably lighter and smaller. And although it's not fireproof like the SoloPRO, it is almost everything-else-proof. The ioSafe Rugged Portable comes in two connection flavors, USB 3.0 or a USB 2.0/Dual Firewire 800 combo with options for a 500 GB or 1 TB 5400 RPM hard drive. As you can see from the image above, the drive looks pretty slick, made from a single billet-machined aluminum enclosure. However, what sets this drive apart from almost any other is that its bullet proof. You can literally take a shotgun to it without harming the drive and, more importantly, your data. I don't own a gun, so I didn't test out the bullet resistance, but The Wall Street Journal did in this entertaining video. However, I did test out some of its other protections (including water and drop protection) and the drive worked perfectly afterwords. Besides being bullet proof, the ioSafe Rugged Portable is also crush proof up to 5000 lbs; water proof for up to 3 days in 30 feet of water; UV ray, blowing sand, blowing dust, rain, salt fog, icing rain, and freezing rain proof for up to a continuous 24 hours; drop proof up to 10 feet; and chemical proof from diesel fuel, oils, hydraulic fluids and aircraft fuels for up to an hour at 12 feet. The drive also features a built-in Kensington security slot and "any reason" data recovery, even if the data loss was your fault. Thanks to its superior data protection capabilities, it's no wonder the ioSafe Rugged Portable is used by huge companies and the US Navy. But because of the specialty nature of the drive, you will pay a premium to own one. The 1 TB model I tested is US$299.99 with 12 months warranty/data recovery service, while a 500 GB model is $199.99. Currently the ioSafe Rugged Portable isn't sold in Apple retail stores, but you can pick it up at Apple's Online Store, on Amazon, or from ioSafe directly.
Seagate GoFlex Cinema puts up to 3TB of media files at your TV's disposal
Seagate's latest addition to its GoFlex line of hard drives is dubbed the Cinema and, as you've probably guessed, it's designed to hook up to your home entertainment system. Inside is a set of spinning platters up to 3TB in size, and around back are HDMI, composite, and S/PDIF hookups. This isn't just some hard drive with a marketing gimmick though. The hardware itself is capable of pumping out 1080p video in a slew of different formats (including MKV and MP4 amongst others), and even comes packaged with a remote for perusing your media collection from the comfort of your milk crate couch. The GoFlex Cinema is available now in Europe, starting at €99 ($136) for the 1TB version and climbing to €179 ($246) for the 3TB model. No word yet on US pricing or availability.
Buffalo adds super secure DriveStation Axis Velocity and rugged MiniStation Extreme USB 3.0 storage lineup
The MiniStation Extreme and DriveStation Axis Velocity aren't exactly ground-breaking products, but they're certainly nice additions to Buffalo's lineup of USB 3.0-packing storage solutions. The Axis Velocity is a pretty standard external drive for a desktop, with platters inside it spinning at 7,200 RPM. What sets it apart from a good chunk of the crowd is the 256-bit AES hardware encryption, which is tough enough to meet even the government's stringent security standards. The MiniStation Extreme goes truly portable and rugged -- for those who have a tendency to drop things or hit them with a hammer. The MiniStation ships in 500GB and 1TB capacities for $95 and $130 respectively, while the Axis Velocity starts at $95 for the 1TB model and goes up to $135 for 2TB and $180 for three. Check out the gallery below and the complete PR after the break. %Gallery-134915%
Western Digital rolls out My Passport, My Passport Studio hard drives for Mac users
No rainbow of colors or stylized designs here, but Mac users do now have a pair of fairly sleek and streamlined new portable hard drives to consider from Western Digital. That includes the latest My Passport and My Passport Studio (pictured above), the latter of which boasts an all metal enclosure and a pair of FireWire 800 ports in addition to the standard USB 2.0 connector. Otherwise, both are available in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities, and they are of course fully compatible with Apple's Time Machine. Look for the standard My Passport to run between $100 and $130, while the My Passport Studio starts at $130 and tops out at $180. Update: Storage Review has already taken a look at both drives, and is particularly impressed by the pricier My Passport Studio. Hit the links below for a closer look at them.
G-Technology demos dual-drive 8TB G-RAID HDD, with a dash of Thunderbolt
Not to be outdone by Seagate's 4TB GoFlex Desk, Hitachi's G-Technology unit has now unleashed a jumbo-sized external HDD of its own, with the 8TB, dual-drive G-RAID. Demoed at this week's IBC conference in Amsterdam, the company's new storage house consists of two 4TB drives nestled within an aluminum enclosure, each of which clocks in at 7,200 RPM. Configured for OS X, the G-RAID also sports a Thunderbolt port that offers transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, though it can also support Windows with some simple reformatting. G-Technology will begin shipping its 4TB drives in October (with eSATA, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 ports), whereas its "4TB-based" Thunderbolt-equipped drive won't hit the market until Q4 -- though it's still unclear whether either model will ship as single drives, or as a two-headed, 8TB beast. Pricing remains a mystery for the moment, but you can find more details in the full PR, after the break.
Seagate plays the 4TB card with its GoFlex Desk external HDD, shipping now for $250
That tangled mess of a backup solution feeling a little cramped? Yeah, join the crowd. Seagate's looking to give you a dash of capaciousness -- a dash that you could desperately used -- with its newest desktop HDD. The GoFlex Desk line is about as sleek as it gets for a non-mobile drive, with 1/2/3/4TB options being made available. The stock model ships with USB 2.0 / 3.0 support, a required AC power adapter (blah) and support for OS X and Windows platforms. The entire unit weighs but 2.38 pounds and checks in at 6.22- x 4.88- x 1.73-inches; true to the GoFlex name, the lower base can actually be swapped out for those who'd prefer a different interface (you know, like FireWire or Thunderbolt), and there's a four-LED capacity gauge on there as well. In our limited testing, we consistently saw USB 3.0 burst rates top 100MB/sec, while sustained transfers hovered closer to 60MB/sec. When used on a USB 2.0 rig, we saw reads and writes hover between 30MB/sec and 40MB/sec. As for pricing and availability? The 4TB flagship can be found right now at Seagate's site for $249.99, while the GoFlex Desk for Mac -- which touts both Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 -- will be available in Apple stores by the end of the month. We're told that Thunderbolt will be supported once that GoFlex adapter is let loose, but an ETA isn't quite ready for public eyes. %Gallery-132801%
Toshiba updates STOR.E external hard drives for PCs and TVs
Toshiba's STOR.E line of hard drives just got a bit of a refresh, and a dash of color, at IFA. It's CANVIO models come in sizes up to 1TB and sport one those spiffy USB 3.0 connectors, while weighing in at under half a pound in your choice of black, green or red. The BASICS line sports all the same features and options, except the pre-installed backup software, but only comes in black. The STOR.E PARTNER is another basic external drive with a USB 3.0 connection, but it's designed to match Toshiba's NB500 series of netbooks and has the color options to match (black, blue, lime green and orange). Much more interesting are the STOR.E TV 2 and STOR.E TV PRO -- a pair of devices with HDMI ports and a GUI all their own that will blend in with most home theater setups. While the TV 2 sticks with a traditional hard drive in sizes up to 2TB, the PRO opts for 8GB of flash storage. Both sport SD card readers, USB 2.0 and support for a broad range of codecs, but the PRO adds a Bluetooth remote with a QWERTY keyboard and full fledged web browsing capabilities. The STOR.E TV 2 and TV PRO will land in Europe during Q4 alongside the PARTNER, BASICS, and CANVIO lines. Check out the pile of PR after the break.
Engadget's back to school guide 2011: accessories
Welcome to Engadget's Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we're here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we've got a slew of accessories -- and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back -- at the end of the month we'll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides -- and hit up the hub page right here! Fall's slowly, but surely creeping back in, and we bet you've already started to gather up the necessary gear for your return to the residence hall. Sure, you've got the basics covered, with a computer, smartphone, MP3 player and even a tablet at the ready. But wouldn't it be nice to start the school year off in style with some handy accoutrements to trick out those digital crutches? Let's face it, you're going to need a lapdesk buffer zone between you and your laptop's scorching heat for those countless hours spent churning out term papers. Or, an external hard drive, so you can store those full seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and bring the late night funny to your stressed-out friends. However you manage to make it through the year and snag that 4.0 GPA, we've got a selection of accessorized aids to match your collegiate budget. Oh, and don't forget, we're giving away $3,000 worth of essential back to school gear to 15 readers, and you can be among the chosen few simply by dropping a comment below! Click on past the break to start browsing.
ADATA's SH14 hard drive packs a stylish yet rugged punch
Always thought ruggedized storage had to look tough and utilitarian? Think again, because ADATA's latest looks more like a fashionable disco-futon than the outwardly brawny externals we're used to. Buried somewhere under all that style is a 2.5-inch, 5400RPM drive that's IPX4 water-resistant and "military grade shockproof." It'll come in red or black and in 500GB, 750GB or 1TB capacities, which'll set you back €59.90, €71.90 or €92.90, respectively. The chic but virile drives also tote USB 3.0, equating to a relatively speedy 90MB/s transfer rate. No word on pricing for yanks yet, but they'll probably show up before long at the "select agents and distributors" at the source below.
Seagate's GoFlex Turbo portable hard drive touts USB 3.0, built-in SafetyNet
Another week, another external HDD from the folks at Seagate. This go 'round, it's the GoFlex Turbo taking the stage, positioned somewhere between the GoFlex Slim and Satellite in terms of depth. It's the outfit's first drive to ship with two free years of SafetyNet, which nets you a single data recovery attempt should something go haywire during the honeymoon period. Tucked within, you'll find a 500GB / 750GB drive (7200RPM), a USB 3.0 port and support for eSATA / FireWire 800 connectors via an optional interface adapter. Per usual, it'll hum along just fine on both Windows and OS X, and can be snapped up today at Best Buy for $119.99 / $139.99, respectively. Full release is after the break, and if you're curious, we managed to see consistent USB 2.0 rates of 30MBps to 40MBps (read / write) during our brief time with it. %Gallery-129709%
Verbatim Store 'n' Go USB 3.0 hard drives add color to your otherwise drab storage needs
Our parents always taught us that it's what's on the inside that counts -- and that's why we don't ever take them hard drive shopping with us. Sure these Store 'n' Go drives are pretty standard 500GB HDDs, but hey, they come in Caribbean blue and hot pink, so they should fit in nicely with that neon fanny pack we just picked up to haul around our computer peripherals. The drives sport USB 3.0 and come loaded with Nero BackItUp software. You can pick them up for $100 from Verbatim's site -- they shouldn't be too hard to spot. Decidedly less colorful press information after the break.
Western Digital Nomad case protects your My Passport drive from falls, spills, and curious lizards
It's possible -- likely, even -- that you're reading this while jumping out of a plane, wrestling a mountain lion, or having some equally hardcore adventure. If so, you're just the type of active consumer Western Digital's courting with its Nomad case. Designed for the My Passport external hard drive line, it combines a hard polycarbonate exterior with an elastomer interior that keeps the drive snug and secure, and provides another option if you'd rather upgrade your existing drive than spend the clams on a rugged one. It includes a USB port, making your data accessible even when the case is closed, and will set you back $30 according to WD. Lizard not included.
Clickfree C2 Rugged hard drive can fall down, backup
There's just something about the phrase "built to strict U.S. military standards" that makes us want to go positively medieval on a rugged device. Sadly, the aforementioned qualifier doesn't mean that Clickfree's new C2 Rugged Back-up Drive is capable of withstanding, say, a hail of gunfire, but the rubberized disk will continue to work after being dropped from four feet. The peripheral also features the company's Easy Run software, which will start automatically backing up your PC when you're done showing that storage device who's boss. The 500GB C2 is available now through Clickfree's site for $140 -- or $100, if you're one of the lucky 100 first people to buy, so maybe buy two, in case you go a little overboard.
Seagate's GoFlex Satellite portable hard drive streams content over WiFi (review)
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. %Gallery-123635%
FCC reveals Seagate GoFlex Satellite, a WiFi-capable battery-powered external hard drive
For a purportedly doomed manufacturer of magnetic storage, Seagate sure is spinning some interesting ideas these days -- last year, we got modular, upgradable cables, and now the company's testing external hard drives that don't need pesky wires to function. According to filings, the Seagate GoFlex Satellite not only plays the network-attached-storage card with built-in 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, it's also got a 3.7V battery inside its case... making the product's name somewhat apt, don't you think? According to a leaked description, Seagate's also planning a companion iOS app called "GoFlex Media" to let your iDevices stream content directly from the device. Mind you, none of that means you won't be able to dock with your Satellite the old-fashioned way -- FCC docs also mention a USB 3.0 cable that delivers data and power simultaneously.
I-O Data's HDCA-UT3.0K drive offers USB 3.0 and 3TB of storage
If you've been on the hunt for the biggest, fastest hard drive around, it seems your options are expanding. I-O Data just introduced the HDCA-UT3.0K external hard drive, which offers USB 3.0 support and 3TB of storage, which, as the company notes, makes it an ideal companion for TVs with a USB recording mode. Struggling to resist the charm of its blue LED and the possibility of owning more storage than you'll ever need? Look for it in mid-May with a price of ¥26,400 ($324).
Verizon FiOS TV 1.9 software update adds an HD guide, DVR enhancements
Originally projected to launch in Q4 of 2010, Verizon has finally started pushing out version 1.9 of its Media Guide software to set-top boxes in Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and Harrisburg. Other regions can expect to be upgraded over the next couple of months, but just in case you've forgotten what's coming here's a few of the new features: a widescreen HD guide as shown above replacing the old 4x3 SD one, support for switching 3DTVs into the correct mode automatically, native passthrough, 1080p, external hard drives, DVD-style chaptering on DVR recordings, an all new search function and access to DVR recordings from other boxes in the house. Those are just some of the features included in this massive upgrade (not all of the boxes support all of the new features, doublecheck to see if yours is supported first -- this could be a good time for an upgrade), check out the release notes on Verizon's forums for more details, or check out the press release and a trailer for the new software included after the break.
