Maximum PC external RSS Feed

Toshiba Introduces New Portable Hard Drives For Added Protection

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:20:39 -0500

Toshiba has taken note of the importance of digital security these days, and with that thought in mind they’ve released several new external hard drives for those that are hoping to keep their tracks thoroughly covered.

With the introduction of their new portable external hard drives, they’re hoping to make data security something that’s easily accessible to everyone (just so long as they have one of their drives). The drives will feature NTI BackupNow EZ software (for Windows users), which will allow the backup of an entire system with a click. It’ll also be able to scan your computer, and provide a personalized recommendation on the best way to cover your files.

There will also be password protection with up to 256-bit encryption. All of this will be accessed through a graphical interface, which Toshiba expects will make “backing up digital data easier than ever.”

“We’ve increased the level of protection offered by our personal storage products, while making them easier to use,” stated Manuel Camarena, product manager for consumer storage at Toshiba Storage Device Division. “Data backup usually isn’t a consumer’s first thought, but it is the most important consideration for preserving a lifetime of digital memories, entertainment libraries and the entire computer system. Enhanced backup features combined with password-protected encryption create a true digital safety net that any consumer can use to protect against system failure and unauthorized access to their digital content.”

These drives are available now in 500GB and 320GB flavors, and will run you $149.99 and $119.99 respectively.

Image Credit: Toshiba

Western Digital Announces 4TB My Book External HDD

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:31:08 -0500

Just this week Western Digital announced their 4TB My Book Studio Edition II.

The 4TB My Book sports two gigantic 2TB HDDs in RAID 0, and will work with both Macs and PCs. You’ll be able to connect this bad boy to your machine using eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 all while consuming up to 30 percent less energy. There’s also a fancy capacity gauge on the front that lets you see how much storage is available at a glance

It’s available now for $649.99.

Image Credit: Western Digital

Freecom Releases ToughDrive Sport Hardrive

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:30:56 -0500

Freecom recently released their 2.5-inch ToughDrive Sport hard drive that has been built to endure “even the toughest conditions.” What exactly entails the toughest conditions though? We have no idea.

The ToughDrive comes in three different flavors, 250GB, 320GB and 500GB. To make sure that the drive is kept safe from hackers (and the occasional tech-savvy tribal woodsman) it comes with secure 256-bit password protection MD5 hardware. The drive can also transfer data at up to 480Mbit/sec through its built in USB 2.0 connection, and will weigh only 9.2 ounces.

“Business-user or consumer… we all carry our data with us and we all require it to be there when we need it," wrote Freecom in a press release. "Imagine what can happen when you’re on the move, for example biking, commuting to the office, running to catch a flight …. and suddenly your external hard drive accidentally falls from your notebook case or jacket pocket… it breaks, and hundreds of hours of video’s, music, your work, gigabytes of spreadsheets, documents, photo’s are all gone. Not anymore!”

Well played Freecom, well played.

Image Credit: Freecom

Buffalo Releases Diminutive USB Display

Paul Lilly — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:54:02 -0600

If all you want a secondary display for is to keep track of your IM conversations, stock quotes, emails, and other tasks of that nature, Buffalo may have just what you're looking for with its new 7-inch display.

As the model number suggests, the FTD-W71USB LCD display plugs into a USB port and offers an 800x480 resolution, 300 nits brightness, a 500:1 contrast ratio, 25ms response time, and a wide viewing angle (vertical: 120 degrees, left and right: 140 degrees). Buffalo says you can rotate the display for either vertical or horizontal viewing, and can also be attached to a tripod stand for use with digital cameras by removing the stand.

If you really want to go hog-wild, Buffalo says you can use up to six units at the same time, making it possible to devote an entire display to every Skype conversation you might have going or, well, whatever else you might require six pint-sized displays.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Buffalo

OCZ Prepares to Launch eSATA Flash Drives

Justin Kerr — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:26:35 -0600

eSATA ports are starting to become more mainstream in mid to low end motherboards, and OCZ thinks the time is right to start adding on non hard drive based peripherals. Its new lineup of memory sticks will do just that and come in 8, 16, and 32GB capacities. The new drives will both communicate and receive their power from the eSATA port. To ensure backwards compatibility they have also included a rear mounted mini USB connection which will allow users to plug the device into laptops or other USB only machines.

No official benchmarks are have been taken by us, but the company is reportedly boasting read speeds of up to 90MB/s, and writes speeds as fast as 30MB/s. No comment has yet been made on pricing, but it will likely be in the same ballpark as its USB brethren.

It certainly is an interesting idea, but I can’t help but wonder if this type of device is really necessary with USB 3.0 right around the corner. USB 3.0 has a maximum theoretical throughput of 4.8Gbps which would easily max out most flash memory keys several times over.

Would you be interested in an eSATA flash drive? Hit the jump and let us know.

Buffalo Technology Announces First 8X External Blu-Ray Burners

Paul Lilly — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:10:02 -0500

Notebook vendors appear to cooling off towards the Blu-ray format, but can the high definition format attract more customers on the desktop? Buffalo seems to think so, who today has released not one, but two new 8x Blu-ray burners, one internal and one external.

The MediaStation 8x external Blu-ray drive holds promise for its obvious portability, and comes ready to connect via USB 2.0 or eSATA. The new drive measures 6.4 x 1.9 x 11 inches and weighs less than four pounds. In addition to 8x read and write speeds for BD-R media, Buffalo rates both the internal and external models at BD-RE 2x, DVD RAM 5x, DVD-R 16x, DVD+R 16x, DVD-RW 6x, DVD+RW 8x,CD-R 48x, and CD-RW 24x.

MSRP has been set to $400 for the external version and $350 for the internal model, both shipping with a suite of CyberLink software.

Image Credit: Buffalo

Toshiba 320GB Portable Drive

David Murphy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:40:00 -0500

Toshiba’s 320GB portable drive is so plain it doesn’t even have a real name. It’s just the Toshiba 320GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive, which doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well as Western Digital’s My Passport Elite, the Toshiba 320’s primary competition in terms of size, speed, and software (see our review of the Elite here).

Toshiba’s middle-of-the-road drive would benefit
from additional backup and synchronization features.

The USB-only Toshiba 320 posted the slowest real-world read speeds of any drive we’ve tested. However, these lapses represent only a four percent difference in real-world performance when compared to the fastest non-proprietary drive we’ve tested, Western Digital’s My Passport Elite. Four percent is four percent, but it’s not enough to make a significant difference.

Fortunately, the Toshiba 320’s poor read speeds were ameliorated by quick write speeds—the second-fastest we’ve seen from our write benchmark. It’s a great accomplishment considering that the write-speed victor, Buffalo’s DriveStation Combo 4 (reviewed September 2008), uses a proprietary TurboUSB utility to squeak even more speed out of its connection.

Portable USB storage devices tend to post similar read and write speeds in our benchmark tests, so we use the drives’ included software as a way to further distinguish between them. We dinged the My Passport Elite for offering too many redundant software options, including no less than three backup and synchronization programs. Toshiba’s drive solves this issue by including only two programs.

NTI Shadow 3 is a simple application for backing up your files. It comes with both synchronization and scheduled-backup options. That’s it. The other piece of software, NTI Ripper, attempts to fill a void that iTunes already filled long ago. Turning CD tracks into digital audio files lost its complexity five years ago—and that’s being generous.

As a drive, the Toshiba 320 is competitive. As a backup solution, it ignores some of the more exciting possibilities in the storage space, such as file encryption. Somewhere between the software-bloated My Passport Elite and stripped down Toshiba 320 lies the perfect backup/storage device. We’ll keep searching for it.

Western Digital My Passport Elite

David Murphy — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:29:22 -0500

Here we go again: Western Digital has launched yet another line of portable USB hard drives. The four drives in the My Passport Elite series don’t vary by size, just color. You’re free to select a capacity of 250GB or 320GB in gunmetal gray, old-shoe brown, a soft blue finish, or a sandy red. And as far as we can tell, that’s one of the few differences between this line of devices and Western Digital’s “normal” My Passport Essential drives—the latter having 11 different colors and four different capacity points to choose from.

The 320GB My Passport Elite drive performs nearly identically to its 250GB My Passport Essential cousin. The two are so neck-and-neck in our real-world benchmark that it would be silly to award the Elite major accolades for churning out a PCMark05 score that’s only 30 points ahead. Both of these drives completely fill the USB pipeline--they're the fastest we've seen, but at this point in portable storage, a number of drives are hitting up against this throughput wall. Rest assured, you’ll see no discernable difference between file transfers on an Elite-branded drive versus an Essential drive.

The Elite’s significant difference is that it comes bundled with MioNet, a handy little program that allows you to remote-access the various computers it’s installed on via a single software interface. Gone are the days of having to fire up VNC connections and finagle IP addresses. MioNet makes file-sharing but one word: easy. It’s a great solution for those who want to be able to access their files without having to continually copy up-to-the-minute chunks of a hard drive to the portable device.

While we appreciate the other software bundled on the My Passport Elite, it’s the same-ol’ same-ol’ that we’ve seen from Western Digital for awhile now. The WD Sync utility lets you access your documents, settings, and Outlook files on multiple computers when you plug in your optical drive. It's extremely handy if you regularly use multiple computers, but this software also comes with Essential drives--where's the innovation, Western Digital? On the backup front, the drive's Anywhere Backup application is showing its age: we can name a number of freeware applications that offer increased functionality with less graphical annoyances.

Another major downside with the My Passport Elite is the sheer number of applications it dumps on your system with a standard installation. After we installed all the drive’s bells and whistles, we were left with three auto-loading applications on startup—MioNet, WD Sync, and WD Anywhere Backup. That’s a bit much for a single drive, and makes us wonder why Western Digital just doesn’t consolidate the features of its programs into a single application. It would be a far more elegant solution than the current approach: firing up each program’s interface to see if this, that, or the other was the backup solution we were thinking of.