Archive for the ‘Hard Drives’ Category

Quick Test: Seagate’s 1TB Portable FreeAgent Go [Hard Drives]

The season of the 1TB bus-powered USB drive is upon us. WD was first; now Seagate is shipping the FreeAgent Go, a chunky SOB—three platters worth of storage powered and connected by one skinny cable.

The good news is that these things work well, despite the larger drive and lower power. They’re not about performance—5400 rpm only—but when I tested moving a 1GB file to and from, I got it in under 30 seconds, just a hair slower than the same file moved to and from faster FireWire 800 drives. I didn’t do any real benchmarking, but I am convinced that the USB is going to be the bottleneck, not the bigger drive (shown below with a 320GB USB-only and a 500GB FW800/USB combo). The FreeAgent was even designed to fit the USB dock and FreeAgent Theater+, though not subtly.

That brings us to the bad news, which many of you already know: Despite being portable bus-powered 2.5″ drives, the three-platter HDDs inside these casings are not capable of being ripped out and stuck into your laptop, at least, not without some hackery I am not qualified to endorse. So, in lieu of a full review, I offer this: It works, it’s not noticeably sluggish given the added weight, and it feels really good to be able to carry a whole terabyte wherever I want. [Seagate]

Philippe Starck Partners With LaCie To Design Line Of Hard Drives

By David Ponce

We’ve written about Philippe Stark a few times before. He’s an influential French industrial designer who’s gotten involved in the design of an endless stream of consumer products from juicers, to teddy bears and now hard drives. Partnering up with LaCie, he’s helped develop these drives with an interesting design. The desktop drives have a customizable touch-sensitive surface allowing you to launch preselected applications based on how you touch them. They comes in 1TB or 2TB sizes ($129 or $249) , and also feature the Starck Signature LED (a “+” sign, since the man likes to spell his name S+arck) which glows green or orange based on activity. There are also portable versions of these drives in sizes 320-500GB, with prices starting at $99.

[ Desktop Drive Product Page ] AND [ Portable Drive Product Page ] AND [ Interview With Starck ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

Buffalo’s HD-HU3 Poised To Be The First USB 3.0 Hard Drive [Usb 3.0]

Buffalo is set to cross the USB 3.0 finish line first with their HD-HU3 hard drive. They also plan on offering NEC’s IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI Expressx1 host controller with the drive so you can, you know, use it.

The drives will be available this month—although it appears to be a Japan-only release for the moment. The drives will run around $250 and $284 for 1TB and 1.5TB models respectively (a 2TB model is also in the works.), and the controller will run an additional $60. It’s probably a bit early to jump on 3.0, but chances are we won’t have to wait long before the technology goes mainstream. [Buffalo Japan via Engadget]

The Silver Surfer Probably Uses these Touch-Sensitive LaCie Starck Drives [Hard Drives]

I like the new LaCie Starck drives. I look at its surface and all I want is to dunk carrot cake into all that melty chrome and eat it. It’s hard to find storage that you actually want to lick.

The looks are great—with a chrome blob encased in a 3mm sharp-angled box of resistant aluminum casing—but it also has some really cool features. One of them is the LED indicator in the shape of Starck’s sign that is projected onto the table. The other, which is my favorite, is that the surface is touch sensitive, so you can assign actions to different kinds of touch. Example: A short tap will trigger the launch of an application, while a long caress can initiate an automatic backup.

In the words of Philippe Starck:

Technological genius explodes exponentially, each time with incredible power whose limits are yet to be known. The power remains, never abating, symbolically characterized by the sculptural magma that one attempts to cleave, to master within this geometrically perfect strongbox. A symbol of strength mastered, of freedom guided, of incandescent magma heeding to the form of its cast. The interpretation is free. But the mystery remains.

See? He wants to lick and dunk a carrot cake in his drives too. Maybe a Krispy Kreme doughnut. OK, Philippe, for $130 (1TB) and $250 (2TB) for the LaCie Start Desktop Drive—my favorite—and $100 (320GB) and $140 (500GB) for the LaCie Starck Mobile Drive, I’m game. [LaCie]

WD Puts E-Labels on My Book Elite and Studio, Includes Dock With My Passport Elite Portable Drive [Hard Drives]

Hard drives have become so generic and commoditized, manufacturers are always trying to draw attention to their products in new ways. WD’s My Book desktop drives now get an ebook-like screen, while the portable My Passport Elite gets a dock.

As cool as the e-labels concept is—soon to be found on My Book Elite (USB only, up to 2TB for $280) and My Book Studio (FW800 and USB, up to 2TB for $300)—I don’t know how profound a single 12-character label on the face of such a massive drive can be. Then again, maybe you’re supposed to buy them in identical pairs. The label, which, like the E-Ink found on Amazon’s Kindle, stays visible when there’s no power going to it, could in that case save you from embarrassment, possibly even job loss/misdemeanor charges/etc. Below the label is a status indicator—how many GB are left, plus a rough visual estimate.

The My Passport Elite line gets a visual refresh that first appeared in the less feature-bestowed Passport Essential. Slimmer and more rounded at the edges, the Elite line gets a metallic red, blue or charcoal finish and a dock—top price is $170 for a 640GB 2.5″ USB 2.0 bus-powered drive. The dock thing makes sense in one particular situation: You have a laptop and a desktop that you regularly shuttle between. The Elites will show capacity status on an LED indicator, and will indicate encryption with a light-up key icon on the side, so you feel extra safe. Speaking of safe, all of the hard drives also come with 256-bit hardware encryption. [WD]

« Older Entries    Newer Entries »