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TDK breaks the Hard Drive density limit, could go on to develop super-sized storage
While the old-fashioned hard drive isn't as fast or slender as an SSD, it can still lord its greater capacities and cheaper price over its upstart rival. TDK thinks it's extended the mediums lead in that area by tweaking the magnetic heads and recording medium of the hardware -- increasing the areal density of a unit to 1.5 TB per square inch. It means that we could see 1TB platters arriving in 2.5-inch laptop drives and 2TB platters in desktop modules, meaning even your commuting machine can store all of your heftiest data with ease.
Hard drive shipments recover from floods in Thailand, expected to reach record high
Last year's floods in Thailand caused hard drive shortages after wreaking havoc on a number of electronics manufacturers, but new stats from IHS iSuppli indicate that the HDD market for PCs has fully recovered and is poised to hit an all time high. The firm expects 524 million units for internal use in PCs to ship this year, besting the previous record by 4.3 percent. What's giving the recovery an added boost? According to the analytics group, the extra demand comes courtesy of Windows 8 and Ultrabooks. Unfortunately for deal hounds, the company noted in a report earlier this year that prices aren't expected to dip below the pre-flood range until 2014. If IHS iSuppli projections hold true, total annual hard drive shipments could reach 575.1 million by 2016.
LaCie's Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt: fast portable storage that can take a beating
LaCie's no stranger to kicking out portable HDDs that are a-okay with getting kicked around, and the Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series is no exception. As the extended title implies, this one is equipped to transfer files via USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, and it'll play nice with Mac and Windows platforms. The LaCie Rugged SSD offers up transfer rates as high as 380MB/sec -- a feat we came darn close to hitting ourselves in testing -- and the HDD variants claim up to 110MB/sec. The bantam drive is entirely bus-powered, and it's engineered to shake off drops of up to four feet. Interesting? Both models should be shipping shortly, with the 1TB HDD edition going for $249.99 and the 120GB SSDer for $199.99.
Toshiba outs Canvio Slim portable drive: 500GB, $115 and just 9mm thick
It turns out that if you take an Ultrabook-style 7mm hard drive and put it in a sleek enclosure, you end up with a portable HDD that's barely any bigger, thicker or heavier than a smartphone. Toshiba guessed this might happen, and so it came up with a new addition to its Canvio range: the Canvio Slim, which sports 500GB of PC- and Mac-compatible luggage room, uses a single USB 3.0 connection for data and power, and is encased in either "graphite-black" or silver brushed aluminum. Look for it in stores from October priced around $115, including a three-year warranty.
Nintendo Wii U expandable memory explained, TiVO hardware not built in
The Nintendo Wii U may only have 8 to 32GB of internal memory, but the company's taking a decidedly open approach to expanding that memory: add your own. "You can plug in a full-on three terabyte hard drive if you want. I'll love you as a digital consumer," Nintendo America CEO and president Reggie Fils-Aime told us during a post-press conference investor Q&A. Much like Sony's PlayStation 3, the Wii U allows for expansion of memory via USB, whether that memory be Flash or otherwise. Fils-Aime explained that, with the continuously dropping price of memory, there was little reason to offer pricing for the Wii U -- available in $300 and $350 -- tied to an evolving hardware model. "The reason we did it that way is that the cost of that type of storage memory is plummeting. What we didn't want to do is tie a profit model to something that's gonna rapidly decline over time. We'll let the consumer buy as much as they want, as cheaply as they want," Fils-Aime said. Fils-Aime also confirmed that the Wii U doesn't have TiVO hardware built into it -- functionality will require an existing TiVO box. The same goes for DVR functionality, which Fils-Aime said Nintendo doesn't want consumers to bear the expense of.
Western Digital brings wafer thin 5mm hard drives to IDF, we go hands-on (video)
We're a jaded bunch here at Engadget sometimes, and with most of us using SSD-based systems these days it's hard to get too excited about good old spinny disks. Still we're also suckers for impressive technology, so our interest was piqued when Western Digital announced its 5mm thin 2.5-inch hard drives the other day. Luckily, the company saw fit to bring samples of its skinny new WD Black hybrid drive and WD Blue HDD to IDF 2012 and let us handle both briefly. The verdict? These are impossibly thin -- perfect for all those nice Ultrabooks we're expecting to see hit the market in the next few months. Details on performance, availability and pricing are scarce since these drives are intended for OEMs. Take a look at our gallery below, which includes thickness comparisons with WD's upcoming 1TB 7mm thin HDD and a standard-sized loyalty card -- then peek past the break for our hands-on video.%Gallery-165180% Update: yes, the loyalty card was demagnetized in the making of this video, and you now owe us all coffee.
Western Digital outs My Passport Edge portable hard drives, offers both PC and Mac varieties
New portable storage options from Western Digital are breaking cover once again. This time around, the outfit has announced the My Passport Edge and My Passport Edge for Mac. These external hard drives tout USB 3.0 connectivity and 500GB capacities for packing those work files or carrying that Springsteen collection with you at all times. As the name of the Apple-labeled option suggests, it's well suited for your MacBook and works alongside Time Machine right out of the box -- all from the comforts of an aluminum shell. The premium exterior and Mac-friendly tech will cost you a bit more, though, as this version is priced at $119 while the regular offering will set you back $109. If you're looking to save a few bones and don't mind a plastic housing, you can take solace in the fact that the PC unit features an automatic backup function thanks to WD's SmartWare. The pair is available now, but if you're looking for a bit more info, consult the full PR below. %Gallery-164494%
Western Digital MyBook VelociRaptor Duo: Thunderbolt, 2TB capacity, and a whopping $900 price tag
If you fancy Western Digital's MyBook Thunderbolt Duo, the outfit has just announced a new external storage offering that also sports the aforementioned connection. The MyBook VelociRaptor Duo packs two 1TB 10,000 RPM WD drives that carry the same prehistoric moniker -- as the name suggests (in both cases). These dual heavy-hitters create a 2TB repository for HD video, 3D rendering and the like while boasting SSD-like speeds of up to 400MB/sec and both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. Of course, if one of these drives isn't taxing enough on your savings account, you can daisy chain a few for a more robust storage setup. Time Machine compatibility? You betcha. The unit works with Apple's backup system immediately and is user serviceable should the need arise. For those ready splurge on a couple of VelociRaptors of their very own, the Duo is on sale now. If you're not quite ready to commit your funds, consult the full PR below for the nitty gritty.
Facebook to backup its servers with low-power storage devices at 'Sub-Zero' data center
Data backups come in all shapes and sizes. For some, they take the form of external hard drives or a slice of the amorphous cloud. As for Facebook, its upcoming solution is low-power deep-storage hardware contained within a 62,000 square-foot building in Prineville, Oregon near its existing Beaver State data center. Unofficially referred to as "Sub-Zero," the facility will store a copy of the social network's data in case its primary servers need to be restored in an emergency. Rather than continuously power HDDs that are only occasionally used, the new setup can conserve energy by lighting-up drives just when they're needed. One of the company's existing server racks eats up around 4.5 kilowatts, while those at Sub-Zero are each expected to consume approximately 1.5 kilowatts once they're up and running. Tom Furlong, Facebook's vice president of site operations, told Wired that there are hopes to create a similar structure alongside the firm's North Carolina data center. Since the Prineville project is still being planned, Zuckerberg & Co. have roughly six to nine months to suss out all the details before your photos are backed up at the new digs.
SSDs kick up performance for developers and users alike
I'm a developer. One of the things we devs do to pass the time is complain about how long it takes to compile and brag about the power of our development systems. Hot-rodding your system isn't just limited to development, though. There are lots of people out there who sit and wait as their systems limp along from the start up chime to the login screen. You probably already know that adding RAM generally makes your Mac more responsive, but do you know how much of a boost you might get from a solid-state drive (SSD) versus a conventional hard drive? TUAW friend Maurice Sharp decided to test it out. He got down and dirty with his Macs and timed how long it look for HDD and SDD based systems to perform various operations. Here are the results he achieved, comparing solid state response times to hard drive response times. 1 MacBook Pro 2.3GHz i7, 16GB RAM 2 Project build folders were cleaned before each compile 3 Build phase only. 2000 C++ and 400 Objective-C files 4 Mac Mini 2GHz i7, 8GB RAM 5 MacBook Pro 2.4GHz i7, 8GB RAM 6 MacBook Air 1.8GHz i7, 4GB RAM 7 21296 lines of code Look at the typical differences he experienced. Although this chart is focused on code-based tasks, his day-to-day startup times also massively decreased. Sharp writes, "There is one caveat. To switch over to SSD, you have to clone your current hard drive to the new drive. For a 500GB drive, this took about 4.5 hours (thanks Carbon Copy Cloner). Plus another 15 minutes to install the drive. Of course this can be done out of hours, or by an IT department if you have one. [But] now you can generate the numbers you need to show your boss, or even yourself, why an SSD drive is a good investment." Don't expect miracles, however. Another TUAW dev buddy Matthias Ringwald reports, "I replaced the HD in a 2009 Mac mini in 2010 with an Intel 160 GB SSD. While it got more snappy/faster boot times etc, the compile time for our Dybuster Dyslexia C++/Qt project decreased only from 7 minutes to 6 minutes." That said, a 17% decrease in compile time is nothing to sneer at. What's behind the difference? Sharp proposes "There are obvious things like the speed of accessing information on a the drive comparing a rotational system where the sector may or may not be at the head, and may or may not be cached, versus no reliance on mechanical rotation. But there are other things that may account for the lack of gain that Matthias was seeing. That is related to using the disk for virtual memory paging. "As you probably know, the OS uses part of the disk to swap out parts of RAM that are not in use, especially when the memory needed is greater than the physical RAM. If there is a lot of paging, that will suck performance, even with an SSD, as the system dedicates cycles to swapping RAM contents on and off disk. This is why I boosted my RAM first and got a sense of how that worked. Using something like iStat menus, you can see how much memory is being used and how it is allocated (as well as the processes that are hogging it!)" If you've gone to an SSD-equipped system on your development machine, has it made a dramatic difference? Or have the improvements been more subtle? Join in the conversation below.
Toshiba's new 2.5-inch AL13SE hard drives: up to 900GB of 10,500RPM storage
A 2.5-inch drive spinning at speeds up to 10,000RPM? Sure, we've seen it before, but only with enough room for 600GB worth of data. Toshiba, however, has trumped its forebears by upping the capacity to 900GB with its new 2.5-inch HDD, dubbed the AL13SE. 300GB, 450GB and 600GB flavors are offered as well, and all of them spin at up to 10,500RPM and promise a 32% increase in sustained transfer rates over previous-gen drives. Additionally, the AL13SE sends and receives data via a 6Gbps SAS 2.0 connection to make life easier on IT guys than those SATA drives most of us use. Unfortunately, Tosh isn't telling how much the new drives will cost, nor when they'll be available for purchase, but you can dig into all the drive details you can handle in the PR after the break and at the source link below.
WD Red HDDs aim to improve company's NASty reputation, bolster reliability in networked homes
Ever heard a story involving Western Digital Green hard drives within a NAS? It probably didn't end well. For whatever reason, the aforesaid outfit's Green portfolio never has been a hit in the network attached storage world, but the company's (in)directly addressing precisely that with its new line of WD Red HDDs. Specifically, these are called out as being "NAS hard drives" -- SATA interfacing spinners engineered to hold up under the continual pressures of serving information to home and small office NAS users. They're destined to end up in homes with "one to five drive bays," with the units available in 3.5-inch 1TB ($109), 2TB ($139) and 3TB ($189) capacities. WD's trumpeting the Red line's NASware technology, which is said to "reduce customer downtime and simplify the integration process." Those taking WD at its word can find 'em on store shelves this week; everyone else can hang tight for the eventual flood of torture test reviews.
Hands-on with G-Technology's Mac-friendly, USB 3.0-packing G-Drive slim
When we set out to get hands-on with a hard drive, of all things, you can bet we're going to do more than just pick it up and marvel at how lightweight it is. Here at a gdgt event in New York City, we spotted G-Technology's new Mac-friendly USB 3.0 drives on display and immediately got to work running some speed tests on the thinnest of the bunch, the G-Drive slim. Though transfer rates varied, both download and upload speeds tended to hover around 95 MB/s, and that was after ten or so runs in the Blackmagic benchmark. (Next time we'll bring a USB 2.0 cable to test a backward-compatible setup.) According to a company rep staffing the event, the other drives in the lineup, the G-Drive mini, mobile and mobile USB 3.0, should deliver similar performance. Really, the differences here are in the specs: the G-Drive mobile and mini have FireWire ports, and all three offer more storage (750GB to 1TB, as opposed to 500GB for the slim). Design-wise, all the drives on display here seemed fairly impervious to scratches, and that rubberized band around the edges also makes the devices feel a little less delicate. On that point, you can check out the hands-on photos to see what we're talking about, though you'll just have to take our word on the speed testing.%Gallery-159095% Zach Honig contributed to this report.
Drobo debuts a duo of Thunderbolt drives: the 5D for desktops and the Mini for road warriors
Drobo's been delivering quality desktop storage for businesses and prosumers for awhile now, but previously, the company hadn't dipped its toe into Thunderbolt waters. But that's about to change with its two new units. The 5D is a BYOD desktop offering with two Thunderbolt ports and one USB 3.0 socket for connecting up to five hot-swappable, 3.5-inch drives to your Mac or PC. It also has an mSATA SSD for data-caching quickness and a variable-speed fan to keep things cool and quiet. We don't know exactly when the 5D will go on sale -- Drobo's not telling until July -- but it'll cost under $850 when it does, and that price includes a Thunderbolt cable.%Gallery-158786% Meanwhile, the Mini is the first Drobo meant to be taken on the road. It packs up to four 2.5-inch drives in its front bays, plus, like the 5D, there's an mSATA SSD nestled in its underside that serves as a caching tier to speed up your main storage -- all in a 7.3 x 1.8 x 7.1-inch package weighing three pounds when fully loaded. All the drives are hot-swappable, a process made simple and easy with a trick, spring-loaded mechanism (patent pending) that lets users swap drives as they would SD cards. As for connecting the thing to your computer, dual Thunderbolt ports (for daisy chaining) and one USB 3.0 port reside round back along with the power plug and two vents for the Mini's variable-speed fans. Ringing the front face of the Mini are five LED strips that serve as drive indicators and capacity meter to let you know when a drive has failed or you're running out of space. Intrigued? Well, we got a sneak peek at the Mini and a little history lesson about its origins at Drobo HQ, so join us past the break for more.
Seagate Backup Plus hard drive: one-click backup with a social twist
Quick: what's more important? Your entire My Documents directory, or your Facebook / Flickr galleries? The answer seems fairly obvious, but for those too proud to admit it, Seagate's got a new hard drive that'll delicately handle both. The outfit's latest line of 2.5-inch mobile HDDs goes by the name Backup Plus, aiming to give consumers one-click backup and the ability to save and share your content on Facebook and Flickr. They'll work interchangeably with both Windows and Mac platforms, and they ship with a new Seagate Dashboard interface that makes all of that "one-click magic" possible. The company's proclaiming that these guys are the world's first external drives to "provide backup for content on social networks, such as Facebook and Flickr," with a single-click path to Save (download) and Share (upload) personal videos and photos. Backup Plus drives can be snagged in the US starting today, with Amazon, Best Buy and other reputable dealers offering 'em in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities for portable drives and 1TB to 4TB for Backup Plus Desk drives. Pricing and color details are spelled out in the presser just after the break. %Gallery-157730%
Buffalo's HD-PATU3 HDD packs USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, plays nice with Macs and PCs
Buffalo's new glacial lump of a HDD looks set to offer data speeds that are anything but. The HD-PATU3 is Buffalo's first HDD to share its storage goodness across USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt -- and it's compatible with both PCs and Macs. The external hard drive forgoes the need for any separate power supply and is set to arrive in both 500GB and 1TB iterations, but the company's Japanese arm isn't revealing any detail yet on precisely how much we can expect the duo to set us back.
Toshiba made $898.8 million profit, could manage to lend you twenty bucks
Toshiba isn't going with the flow this financial season, bucking the trend and posting a healthy (albeit reduced) net profit of 73.7 billion yen ($898.8 million). Whilst down from $1.7 billion in 2010, the company points to the European debt crisis, Japanese Earthquake and high oil prices as the barriers to further success. Unlike its local rivals, Tosh branched out early into "social infrastructure," building everything from radiation detectors, power plants and LED light bulbs -- businesses that made a stack of cash while its computer and TV businesses slumped. Unencumbered by these crises in the future, the company is projecting to make $1.68 billion across the next 12 months -- at which point it might treat itself to a spa day, or something.
G-Technologies' G-Raid with Thunderbolt drive now on sale, yours from $700
Thunderbolt-equipped RAID options from the likes of LaCie and Promise not satisfying your desire for a 10Gbps storage option? Good news, as Hitatchi's G-Technology is finally ready sell its G-Raid with Thunderbolt, which might just throw a smile on your face. We now know that you'll pay $700 for 4TB or storage, $850 for 6TB and $1,000 for 8TB. If you'll recall, the unit features a duo of T-Bolt ports for daisey-chains and two 3Gbps 7,200RPM HDDs that can be configured in RAID 0 for extra pep or RAID 1 for redundancy. That said, it'll require plug-in power, so don't expect to go mobile. Looking for more details in the meantime? Move your cursor over to the links below.
WD's 1TB VelociRaptor HDD gets reviewed: substantial gains, moderate price
Western Digital has expanded its line of desktop-grade VelociRaptors to include a 1TB model that's available now for $320, but those kidding themselves with that whole "250GB is enough" thing can get in for as little as $160. Top-level specs include a 10,000RPM spindle rate and a SATA 6Gb/s interface housed within a 3.5-inch heat sink -- useful for lessening the burden of the drive's thermal output on the rest of the machine. Storage Review's tests reveal that sequential read and write transfer speeds top out around 206MB/s, thermal dissipation is excellent with low power consumption, and that random access has improved compared with its 600GB predecessor. They consider the new HDD to be a "very appealing value proposition" and "a blend of high performance, storage, capacity, and low cost." Hot Hardware discovered virtually identical numbers with their tests, but wasn't quite as forgiving when it comes to the cost-per-GB versus 7200RPM hard drives. However, they call this VelociRaptor the "fastest HDD yet" at "nearly double the capacity of previous" model. You can find even more stats and impressions to chew on at the sources below.
IRL: Blue Mics Yeti, Western Digital My Passport and Razer's Naga Hex gaming mouse
Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment. It's been a busy week for tech writers. Capping out a week populated by not one, not two, but three smartphone reviews, we're happy to take a breather and return our attention to life's littler pleasures. Like USB mics and portable 2TB hard drives. And also, gaming mice.
