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WiebeTech UltraDock v5: A marriage of Macs and bare drives
There are some Mac users who just keep piles of bare hard disk and solid state disk drives around. By bare drives, I mean that they're not in any sort of external drive enclosure. This can be handy, since bare drives are inexpensive -- you don't need to pay for the enclosure or power supply. WiebeTech's UltraDock v5 (US$249.00) is the latest in a series of docks that provide a way for you to easily use those bare drives with your Mac. As you'll see later on in this review, this device is primarily aimed at IT professionals. The UltraDock v5 improves upon its predecessor, the UltraDock v4, by adding an upgraded chip set and faster connections. WiebeTech says that the UltraDock v5 was clocked at a throughput of 211.9 MB/second when used with an eSATA SSD. This small (4.3" x 2.95" x 0.87" -- 110mm x 75mm x 22mm) blue box now comes equipped with two FireWire 800 ports, a USB 3.0 port, and an eSATA port in addition to a single FireWire 400 port. That's just on the host side. The drive side has a SATA drive port, a power out port, and an IDE/PATA drive port. You can also buy WiebeTech's Combo Adapters to connect to a variety of other oddball drives, like 1.8" drives or PCCard drives. To give the UltraDock v5 a try, I gathered up a few drives that had been collecting dust around my house. There was an old LaCie 160 GB hard drive that I kept around, even though the power supply had failed years ago. Hmmm ... I wonder what's on that drive? I plugged in the rugged (and pretty darned large) power brick and ran the power cable to the UltraDock, then pulled out the necessary cables from the box. For this old 3.5" drive, I used the IDE cable (about 4" long) to connect the UltraDock. The drive also needed power, so I used the included standard 4-wire power connector. %Gallery-152570% Powered up, the UltraDock's two-line LCD displayed "View Drive Info." Using the four-way pad on the front of the UltraDock, I was able to pull up a ton of data about the drive -- the disk temperature, capacity in MB, manufacturer, model number, serial number, firmware revision, starts/stops, power cycles, and more. That information can be critical for IT types who might be wondering if they can reuse an "old" drive or not. Other top level commands from the two-line display include viewing info about the dock itself, HPA/DCO auto and create HPA/DCO. Those last two settings are for Host Protected Area and Device Configuration Overlay, both methods of creating hidden areas not normally visible to an operating system. After exhausting those commands, I decided to connect the UltraDock and iMac through USB just to see if I could mount it and view the data on the drive. The drive mounted quickly, and I was able to find that I had last used the drive back in 2007 to back up a client's computer. That information was deleted and I now have a nice naked 160 GB drive to play with at some point. The next drive I tested was a 2.5" laptop drive. Fortunately, the proper cable was included with the UltraDock to connect to both drive power and the dock's SATA port. Once again, I used the USB cable to connect the bare drive to the iMac, and I was able to see that I had 160 GB of capacity on this drive, and had erased it at some point. Who's the target market for the UltraDock? I'd think that IT repair departments would love to have something like this on hand to connect a hodgepodge of old bare drives to a Mac or PC for troubleshooting or to remove data contained on them. At $249, it's a bit more expensive than most Mac owners will want to spend unless they have a real need to work with a variety of drives. I personally use a $29.95 Universal Drive Adapter from Newer Technology to connect most oddball drives to my Mac -- it only has a USB connection, but can connect to most 2.5", 3.5", and 5.25" hard drives. Likewise, Newer Technology's Voyager dock ($79.99) is a great way to swap out bare drives. I know a number of podcasters who use bare drives and the Voyager to archive old episodes of their shows. The UltraDock v5 definitely takes bare drive docks to a higher level than either of the Newer Tech solutions and fits a niche market that definitely needs a dock with the ability to connect to almost any drive ever made. If you also need to install HPAs or DCOs, there's no other product I know of that will do this. Finally, the UltraDock v5 can be used with WiebeTech's Encryptor to encrypt or decrypt bare hard drives with 256-bit AES encryption; perfect for government IT shops that may need to install encrypted images.
WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra provides super-secure drive wiping
For Mac repair shops, enterprise tech support teams, and consultants who need to wipe all data off of hard drives before selling or recycling old Macs, there's now a fast way to erase those drives without tying up a machine for a long time. WiebeTech has a new device called the Drive eRazer Ultra (US$249) that promises to make cleaning those pesky drives a fast and easy process. WiebeTech provided a Drive eRazer Ultra to TUAW for testing and review, and the device does an amazing job of wiping all of that private or corporate information off of hard drives. In this review you'll read about what makes the Drive eRazer Ultra such a useful device. To start off with, erasing a computer's hard drive completely usually means that you remove the drive from the computer. Sure, you can boot a computer off of an external drive and then run a utility to do the dirty work on an internal drive, but that ties up the computer for the entire time that the drive is being erased. Using a multiple-pass erase to ensure that your drive is completely unreadable can literally take days if you're using Apple's Disk Utility to do the job, and other software-based erasure methods take equally as long. The Drive eRazer Ultra erases drives at their maximum write speed, so the job is done faster. WiebeTech says that new drives are erased at 7 GB/minute while older drives will putt along at 7 GB/minute. No computer is required -- you just remove the hard drive, then use the included cables to connect it to the Drive eRazer Ultra. The device has a rocker switch and two-line LCD display for selecting the erase mode and showing how long it will take to the erasure to complete. %Gallery-146705% There are ten different erase specifications that are supported by the device: a quick erase that just does a single pass writing all zeroes on the drive, a custom erase that can run 1 to 99 passes overwriting with zeroes or a user-selected pattern, Secure Erase N or E that initiates a drive's built-in Secure Erase normal or enhanced function, US Department of Defense "Clear" or "Sanitize" standards, NIST special publication 800-88 "Clear" or "Purge" standards, the Canadian CSEC ITSG-06 data sanitization standard, Great Britain's HMGIS5 "Baseline" or "Enhanced" drive erasure standard, and the Australian government's DSD ISM 6.2.92 data sanitization standard. If your job requires you to print out labels that describe the details of the erasure (for audit reasons, for example), there's a serial port for Zebra brand label printers. Those labels can then be attached to the drives or to a box or bag used for disposal of the drive. The Drive eRazer Ultra supports 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives, 3.5" IDE/PATA drives, and other drives using optional adapters. If you're erasing a 3.5" drive, there's a metal protective plate included that you can screw onto the drive to protect the drive electronics and help dissipate heat. For my testing, I grabbed a 160 GB Hitachi drive that had previously resided in a MacBook and that was loaded with about 100 GB of video backups. To use the Drive eRazer, you need to plug in a power brick that's about the same size and weight of the unit itself, grab the correct cable (SATA in this case), and make both power and data connections to the drive. Flipping the power switch on the box powers up the drive, and the display shows a command for doing a quick erase. I chose to look at the drive information screens first, which provide data on the capacity of the drive, the number of bad sectors on it, the number of times that the drive has been powered on and off, the number of times the drive has been stopped and started, and an estimate of the time to do a Secure Erase (enhanced or normal). The user interface is really quite simple to use, and it took very little time for me to set the default erase specification to "DOD Sanitize." The device warns the user that it will erase all data -- which I thought was silly since that's what the device is supposed to do -- and then estimates how long it will take to perform the erasure. Sanitizing is "the removal of sensitive data from a system or storage device with the intent that the data can not be reconstructed by any known technique," according to Wikipedia. The DOD Sanitize specification (DOD 5220.22-M) recommends that you "Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify" to sanitize information on writable media. To complete this process, the Drive eRazer Ultra took about 2 hours and 16 minutes. As soon as that was done, I took the same drive and ran it through the "Most Secure" erase option in Disk Utility, which also complies with DOD 5220.22-M. That method took slightly over 8 hours to complete. This isn't a device that most Mac owners are going to rush out and buy, but for those who are constantly erasing drives, the Drive eRazer Ultra can pay for itself quickly in terms of sheer convenience and time saved wiping data. For those teams and individuals, this is an indispensable device.
WiebeTech RTX220-QR RAID: SSD speeds at HD prices
If you're looking for a 2-bay RAID setup for doing either mirrored (RAID 1) or striped (RAID 0) storage or backup, what do you want? Something pretty and shiny, or something that looks like it can withstand a direct attack by a squad of Marines who are having a bad day? My guess is that you'll want the latter, and the WiebeTech RTX220-QR fits the bill perfectly. It comes in an black aluminum enclosure with a sturdy handle on top, and could easily be mistaken for a car battery charger instead of a RAID array. Inside the black box are two shock-absorbing TrayFree drive bays; these are SATA (1 and 2) bays that you simply insert a drive into and close the door. The drive clicks into place, and you're ready to roll. I had an opportunity to try out an RTX220-QR for a few days, and what I found was a solid, fast, and incredibly configurable array. Read more to find out what I liked (or not) about this WiebeTech device. %Gallery-118444%
WiebeTech gets rugged with ToughTech Secure mini HDD enclosure
It's been a (blazing) hot minute since we've heard a good word from the folks at WiebeTech, but lo and behold, it's hitting back with a new portable hard drive case here at CES. The ToughTech Secure mini is described as a 2.5-inch encrypted external HDD enclosure, and with four interfaces to choose from (FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA), you should be set when it comes time to connect it. 'Course, we wish SuperSpeed USB 3.0 were represented here, but we guess that'll have to wait until next year. The case ships with a USB encryption key that's meant to keep your information safe from prying eyes, and the rugged aluminum chassis should protect it from most bumps and bruises. There's no mention of a price, but the full specification list awaits you just past the break while you wait for a February ship date.
WiebeTech's standalone Drive eRazer does what it says
If you've already got the optical media wiper you need to rest easy, you'll probably be able to escape insomnia altogether after picking up WiebeTech's Drive eRazer. Granted, we've seen more elaborate solutions to this problem before, but this little bugger is compact enough to lug around and enables users to erase sensitive data from 2.5- / 3.5-inch IDE, PATA and SATA drives without requiring any PC intervention. The company claims that it can write data at a "sustained rate of more than 35MB/s," which means that your 250GB HDD would be clean as a whistle in under two hours. Best of all, the Standard flavor checks in at just $99.95, and if you're still nervous about someone finding something in nothing, a Pro model -- which is "capable of more than one pass with random characters" -- is available for $50 more.
WiebeTech HotPlug lets cops move desktops without shutting them down
We've seen some interesting computer forensics gear from WiebeTech before, like the Mouse Jiggler USB key that prevents a system from locking the screen or going to sleep by subtly shaking the mouse cursor, and the company's latest addition to the investigator's toolkit, the HotPlug LT, solves an equally basic problem: how to move a desktop without powering it down. The HotPlug allows cops to seize machines without powering them down by switching power to a UPS, using some interesting power-management voodoo. The investigator simply plugs the HotPlug into the computer's powerstrip, and then unplugs the strip and plugs it into the UPS -- and takes the whole system away. If the machine is plugged directly into the wall, WiebeTech also has options for directly piercing the power cable or hijacking the outlet itself. Bottom line: the Man's getting your machine, like it or not. Peep a vid of the HotPlug in action after the break.
WiebeTech's RT5, RT5e enclosures provide portable RAID solutions
Nah, WiebeTech's latest RAID enclosures can't quite offer up the internal storage capacity seen on Novac's iterations, but the RT5 and RT5e still pack an awful lot of capacity with a handle on top. The RT5 packs a nice variety of connection options, as users will find twin FireWire 800 ports along with one eSATA and USB 2.0 connector to boot, and there should be enough room in there to cram "up to 2TB" of HDDs for on-the-go redundancy. The RT5e differs ever-so-slightly by giving us the means to stuff five 750GB IDE drives in the case, leaving you with up to 3.75TB of space to read / write on via the sole eSATA jack. The enclosures sport five reloadable, lockable drive trays, a rugged exterior that shouldn't suffer from minor bumps and bruises, and while an empty rendition will run you $1,699.95, WiebeTech will gladly sell 'em pre-populated for anywhere from $2,259.95 to a steep $4,149.95 depending on drive selections.[Via Macworld]
WiebeTech's Mouse Jiggler USB stick prevents sleep
We've certainly seen crafty methods of keeping humans from dozing off when alertness matters most, but WiebeTech's latest actually does a number on your exhausted computer by refusing to let those power savings settings kick in. The admittedly clever Mouse Jiggler rocks a diminutive USB design, and once plugged into your Mac or PC, it takes over your motionless cursor and shakes it all across the screen, effectively denying the machine its heartfelt wish to fall asleep when idle. Of course, this may not do the average user a whole lot of good, but for those locked-down corporate workstations that frustrate IT heads on end by dozing off just before a download / installation is complete, here's your hero. Notably, the Mouse Jiggler comes in "Fast" and "Slow" flavors to suit your cursor-dementing needs, and each can be snapped up right now for $29.95.[Via MetaFilter]
WiebeTech CD/DVD Imager a godsend to pirates, forensic analysts
Because we can't seem to get enough of robots, so how about we show you one that actually does something useful? Too boring, you say? What if we handed you a stack of 50 DVDs and CDs and told you to rip the image, archive 'em and, while you're at it, take a picture of each label. Now you want a robot to lord over, don't you? Lucky for you, our favorite Kansas hard drive maker and friend of forensics analysts everywhere, James Wiebe has come to your rescue with the WiebeTech CD/DVD Imager. So remember kids, this new bot may not be as fun to say as the robotic "welly wanger", but it's probably a bit more practical if you're about to fire off a few hundred copies of your latest tape (on CD) and can front the $2399 one of these will set you back.[Via MacMinute]