WD launched the new My Passport Essential USB hard drive today with a new glossy look created to go along with the design of the company’s popular My Book hard drives. Like the My Book, the small new Essential drives have that “book” look to them with a bull-nose “binding” on one side.
But, aside from the new glossy digs this drive is still pretty much the same small pocket-sized portable drive that’s powered solely from its USB connection. It comes in sizes of 160GB, 250GB and 320GB with the largest capacity launching with a price tag of a penny under $200. They also come with some software to automatically sync up and store data from your computer along with some Google tools.
Western Digital has the new drives available now from their site and already out in some physical retail locations.
WD My Passport Essential Drive
Written by Darrin Olson on January 30th, 2008 with no comments.
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Everyone knows you shouldn’t play with your food. But sometimes you have to defend your dinner! Now there’s a new (more…)
Written by Michelle on January 26th, 2008 with no comments.
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LaCie is now taking pre-orders for a new small portable hard drive designed by Sam Hecht called the LaCie Little Disk. The Little Disk comes in a black rectangular shape no larger than the size of your palm. It has a protective removable cap which reveals an extractable USB connector on the inside. Simply plug the Little Disk directly into an available USB port - no cables or power adapters needed. LaCie also provides LaCieSync software which keeps your important data secure.
Pre-order the 30GB model now for $129.99 with units shipping in February.
Specs include:
- 30GB storage capacity
- USB 2.0 connectivity
- 3600 RPM
- 2MB cache
- Up to 480Mbits/second
- Measures 2.64 x 1.69 x .67 inches
- Weighs 85 grams
[Check it out]
Technorati Tags: LaCie, Little Disk, Sam Hecht
Written by flung on January 18th, 2008 with no comments.
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For those that don’t know, eSATA is a version of the SATA connector that works externally, allowing you the same speeds of an internal drive with all the hassle of USB, except it requires a separate power cord. Bus powered refers to ability to transfer the necessary amount of power to operate the drive over the single connection, much like a lot of the newer bus-powered external USB hard drives.
But all that is soon to change as there is a new eSATA standard in the works that would make eSATA a bus-powered connection as well. There are more and more desktops and motherboards coming with eSATA built in, and I’ve even seen a few laptops with the connection integrated, so SATA speeds with the convenience of USB is something I like the idea of a lot.
The standard was announced by the SATA-IO or Serial ATA International Organization and the standard is being called Power Over eSATA. They expect it to provide enough power to power a 2.5” HDD and they say the technology could be integrated into products as early as the end of this year.
eSATA to shed the power plug [via crave]
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Written by James Allan Brady on January 15th, 2008 with no comments.
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We’ve seen some pretty handy adapters to connect your internal drives, externally to your computer with things like the Stage Rack and this USB to SATA adapter but none of them match the convenience of the USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter from NewerTech. This adapter not only connects SATA drives to your computer’s USB port, but it will handle ATA/IDE drives as well.
Anytime I upgrade computers or just upgrade my drive I always keep the old one because inevitably a day will come where I want something off of it that I thought I would never need again. Opening up the computer case is a real pain and adapters like this are well worth the money in the time it saves alone. The adapter works with all 2.5″ laptop drives, 3.5″ desktop drives and will connect any existing 5.25″ drives such as CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs or removable Iomega Zip drives.
The drive works equally well with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and NewerTech is debuting the drive at the MacWorld Expo 2008 starting Tuesday, with a very acceptable price tag of just $29.95.
[Thanks to all that sent this in!]
NewerTech USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter
Written by Reuben on January 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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I’m a Drobo user and it is one of the best storage systems I’ve seen today. Drobo is not without shortcoming, it is lack of network storage support. Data Robotics has stepped up to fix that by introducing DroboShare, an add-on for Drobo that adds NAS capability to the unit.
It features Gigabit Ethernet connection with dynamic or static IPs, Auto-mounting using SMB authentication, official support for EXT3 file system, and two USB 2.0 ports to extend capacity by linking more than one Drobo. You can still switch Drobo to USB mode by making your Drobo off the network.
The add-on will cost you $200, which I personally think its quite reasonable for the convenient NAS brings. Having seven computers at home makes NAS very important to me.
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Written by Ewdison Then on January 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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So I stumbled upon this at one of the shows surround CES and thought it was pretty cool and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it or anything like it before. It looks like a fairly run of the mill external, pocket-sized, bus-powered hard drive, but its not.
Well it can be bus powered, and is powered by some sort of mini-USB connection, but you can connect to it via WiFi or Bluetooth. The reps at the booth didn’t seem to know much about it, but one of them said it will work with your cell phone.
The tag didn’t offer up much info either, but it says it goes up to 60GB and has an open development platform. I want one, I have cell phones and laptops and all sorts of things like that that could connect to this thing and it would be a lot easier than have to try and find the right cable and then having to physically move it closer to whatever I was trying to connect to it, like I said, I want one. I couldn’t get any details on price or availability, though it seems from their website that its one of their OEM products and is designed to be re-branded by whatever company wants to use it, but I want to buy just one, slap a SlashGear URL and logo on it if you have to, but I just want one.
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Written by James Allan Brady on January 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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As solid-state drives (SSD) continue to move from PMPs and into notebook computers, manufacturers are pushing the limits so as to give picky customers as much room as they’d get on a traditional hard-drive. Samsung is leading the charge, having announced a whopping 128GB SSD at CES 2008.
The drive will be produced in 1.5-inch and 2.5-inch versions, suitable for even the most compact ultraportable laptops (and PMPs, too), and boasts a data writing rate of 70MB/s - the industry’s highest for MLC-based SSDs. The data reading speed is even higher at 100MB/s, helped by the 3 gigabit-per-second SATA II interface and some nifty controller processing.
Road warriors keen on eking out as much battery life as possible will be pleased to hear that the 128GB drive consumes just 0.5W when active.
Samsung will start mass-producing the SSD in the first half of 2008.
Samsung
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Written by Chris Davies on January 7th, 2008 with no comments.
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