Seagate 3TB drive is first on the block.

Seagate has announced it’s shipping the industry’s first 3TB hard drive, the FreeAgent GoFlex Desk External Drive.  The external only is selling for $250 right now which is only $0.08 per gigabyte, compared to the $0.09 for the current 2TB drive.  I need.. wait, I want one.

The GoFlex Desk external drive gives you plenty of storage capacity and it’s easy to upgrade to any interface you choose. Simply pair the desktop hard drive with a GoFlex USB 3.0 or FireWire® 800/USB 2.0 adapter to increase your performance by up to 10 times. Works interchangeably between a PC or a Mac® computer.

• Features USB 2.0 plug-and-play connectivity
• Ensures automatic continuous backup and protects your privacy with powerful encryption software
• Lets you upgrade to a faster interface to increase your transfer speeds when paired with another GoFlex Desk desktop adapter
• Includes an illuminated capacity gauge

Firewire 800/USB 2.0 GoFlex Adapter

Update on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 12:46PM by Jon Arnason

CrunchGear has tested the drive.  Hit this link for the review.

Seagate upsizes FreeAgent for Mac drives

Seagate today upsized its external hard drive line for just the Mac versions of its disks. Highlighting the launches is the FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac: the storage is one of the few wholly portable 2.5-inch external drives to include a FireWire 800 interface and also supports both FireWire 400 and USB. Every drive also spins at 7,200RPM and behaves more like a 3.5-inch drive in spite of its size. 250GB, 320GB and 500GB models ship this month at prices of $130, $150 and $190 respectively.

The FreeAgent Desk for Mac now tops out at 2TB, up from the 1.5TB maximum before. It continues to have both FireWire 400 and 800 interfaces along with USB and sits on top of the existing range with a $340 price point.

Intel drops 2.5" SSD pricing

Intel will soon lower prices of its X25-M series of 2.5-inch solid state drives and boost production of its 1.8-inch SSDs. The 160GB X25-M, which uses mulit-level cell flash memory, is now priced at $630 after launching for $945 last December, and is due to get another $100 price cut soon, while the 80GB version of that drive will fall to $270, down $50. Street prices are even lower, as retailers try to make the Intel drives appealing compared to OCZ’s Vertex SSDs.

Mac compatible Hive desktop mini-RAID system launched in uk

I guess we can always hope that this product hits the US as well.  Or if this technology seems to be getting old, check out the holographic scene.

Hive Tech, an off-shoot of UK storage specialist United Digital, has launched a new Mac compatible desktop mini-RAID system aimed at creative freelancers and studios, including designers, film-makers and photographers.

The Hive 4-disk desktop mini-RAID systems utilises energy-saving disk drives from Western Digital and holds up to 6TB of data and includes an eSATA connection option for fast data transfer. 

Fully pre-configured, the Hive can seamlessly rebuild 1TB of data within just three hours if one disk fails; ensuring that zero data is lost and no downtime occurs says Hive Tech.

The Hive comes with a 2-year onsite warranty; with local UK support a phone call away and onsite repairs carried out for free.

“No professional can afford to lose their work, so we developed the Hive to offer desktop RAID customers the same heavy-duty, ultra-reliable protection that we supply for multi-national companies, without the big-company price-tag,” said Hans-Henrik Enoksen, CEO of United Digital and Hive Tech.

The Hive comes with USB 2.0, eSATA and FireWire 400 and 800 connectors. Available in 2TB, 4TB and 6TB configurations, the Hive will be available from selected resellers from 1 May. Introduction prices are £585($859), £825($1210) and £1095($1607) respectively. All prices exclude VAT.

source:macworlduk

OCZ Vertex 120 GB SSD review

This is an excerpt from a full review by guru3d of the OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD.  If you have been wondering about the durability of these new solid state drives, you will either be pleasantly surprised, or not so convinced that this is the new “holy grail” of storage.

The difference between SLC and MLC

All flash memory is not created equal. There are 2 main types, SLC and MLC:

SLC and MLC (single and multi level cells) SLC stores one bit per cell, MLC doubles it. MLC -we see a lot in flash-memories used for example in your digital camera. If we break it down:

• SLC is faster, and has around 10,000 up-to 1 million write cycles
• MLC is somewhat slower but cheaper, unfortunately also less reliable (sometimes as few as 10,000 write cycles).

And that’s where we land at limited write cycles. The reality is that you purchase a SSD drive on borrowed time. By its very nature, flash memory cells can resist only so many write cycles before they are prone to failure.

Click to read more ...

Swap out your laptop's hard disk for a spiffy new SSD

There is a nice article on TUAW that describes the steps you need to make to have a smooth migration from your lame  20th century spinner, to a new 21st century SSD.  Even though they cost a lot more, it can bring to life an older laptop that would love to have a new heart transplant.  Giving it many more years of life.

For the step by step, hit the source link below.

source:tuaw

OWC ANNOUNCES MERCURY ELITE-AL PRO Qx2 raid solution

Other World Computing (macsales.com), a leading PC and Mac technology company, announced today the new Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 for the ultimate in flexibility and convenience in a Plug and Play desktop hardware RAID storage solution. Featuring a Quad Interface of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA ports; 4 Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive bays; and 4 user selectable hardware RAID settings, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 offers up to 8TB of total storage capacity and data transfer speeds up to 300MB/s for the ultimate professional grade RAID storage solution.

Professional Performance With User Conveniences

Built for performance-intensive applications, such as A/V, HD-video, digital photography, professional music, graphics, and redundant backup, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 is beautifully designed for both Mac and PC with a shock resistant, heat dissipating aircraft-grade brushed aluminum housing preconfigured with up to 8TB of storage capacity. Its front panel LEDs gives quick, at-a-glance system status, while the removable key lock ensures the installed hard drives remain secure.

Selectable Hardware RAID Flexibility

An easy to access front panel selector switch provides simple configuration of the 4 Hardware RAID settings: 0, 1, 5, 10, as well as a Span (NRAID) setting, for the best level of speed, capacity, or redundancy; or any desired combination of the three operations.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 is Available in 7 Configurations:

Click to read more ...

Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green Power Hard Drive

This is the second posting of the Western Digital 2TB drive on this site. This review is from HotHardware and has nice performance comparisons with 4 other drives.  The noise levels seem low and it runs cooler than the competition.

Western Digital’s Green Power 2TB drive performed above average in our tests and did so while running very cool and quiet. It excelled at disk writes and delivered results at or near the top in all benchmarks when compared to the other consumer drives. The WDGP 2TB also ramped upquickly and performed well in the ATTO benchmark. This is impressive from a drive with a variable spindle speed that also provides the added benefits ofusing “Green Technology”and consuming less power.

The Western Digital Green Power 2TB performs as promised and is part of a larger movement towards energy efficiency in technology. We like products that are good for the environmentand perform as expected, whether you’re simply a cool and quiet computing type or more concerned about your carbon footprint. It’s our belief that”green” technology should be applied whenever possible in computing architectures. Western Digital is at the forefront with their Green Power drives for now but expect offerings from other drive vendors to follow soon.

The WDGP 2TB will fit certain applications very well. Home Theater PC’s for example, with only one drive slot, can use it to provide 2TB of quiet, cool,energy efficient storage. When you consider the fact that you traditionally would have topair upat least two drives to equal the 2TB storage space, the energy efficiency features of the Western Digital Green Power 2TB drive become even more of a factor.

With a street price of $299 it may be a little more costly considering you could get two Western Digital 1.5TB Green Power drives at almost the same price. Butasexpected there is alwaysbit of a premium(at least temporarily)for the largest capacity harddrive available on the market. We’re willing to bet the masses will ante up however and feel that price premium isn’t completely unjustified.

For the complete review, hit the source link below.

source:hothardware

Ultra-fast 256GB Corsair SSD coming soon

Corsair is set to release an ultra-fast 256GB solid state drive, according to a Tuesday HotHardWare report. The move would effectively double the company’s current number of SSD offerings and would share Samsung technology. The new SSD has a new controller, however, and and integrated 64MB of cache that improves performance significantly. When the new SSD arrives in stores, it is likely to be called P256, and will sport a SATA 3.0Gbps interface and be housed in a heavy-duty aluminum enclosure. Double-stacked MLC flash memory chips from Samsung are used in the drive. According to some benchmark testing from HotHardWare, the drive has average read speeds of just over 200Mbps, while average write speed performance was 169.1Mbps at 0.1ms random access times and burst speeds as high as 248.2Mbps.

While no release date has been given, the Corsair P256 is expected to cost $749.

Update on Monday, May 11, 2009 at 6:54PM by Jon Arnason

Corsair this afternoon said it had started shipping the P256, its fastest and also most capacious solid-state drive. The 2.5-inch SATA II drive holds its namesake 256GB thanks to multi-level cell storage but has a fast Samsung  controller that lets it read data at 220MB per second and writes at an equally quick 200MB per second. A 128MB cache and native command queuing further add to the practical speed.

OCZ intros Mac Edition SSD, notebook RAM

OCZ has swung its attention towards Macs by launching storage and memory specifically geared towards iMacs, MacBooks and Mac minis. The Vertex Series Mac Edition is specifically validated in Apple’s testing centers to work in the MacBook and MacBook Pro and provides much faster speeds than the stock rotating hard disks, reading data at 240MB per second and writing it at up to 170MB per second (100MB sustained). OCZ vows not only faster load times but also the improved battery life and impact resistance inherent to most SSDs.

The drives come in the same 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 250GB capacities as regular Vertex models and should be available soon, though any pricing differences between the Mac Edition and regular models aren’t made clear, nor are whether the drives will be pre-formatted for HFS+ or support firmware updates through Mac OS X.

OCZ’s memory kits come in the form of DDR2-667 and DDR3-1066 versions intended both for older (with DDR2) and current-generation (DDR3) Macs. Both are again tested in Apple labs; bundles come designed with Apple’s normal configurations in mind and will be available in either individual 2GB sticks or 2x2GB bundles. Prices and exact availability aren’t mentioned.