Archive for category Hard Drives
Toshiba Highest-Capacity HDD
Posted by admin in Hard Drives, computers on February 19, 2010
Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD) is one of the pioneers in the industry to bring small form factor enterprise-class and mobile hard disk drives (HDDs) to the market, and they relied on their expertise by unveiling a new high-capacity, high-performance, power-efficient small form factor product line which will target enterprise applications. Capable of holding up to 600GB of storage space in its high end range, the new MBF family will represent the industry’s highest-capacity 2.5″ enterprise-class HDD which boasts Toshiba’s first enterprise-class self-encrypting drive (SED) offering. We will see more about it right after the jump before you come to a conclusion on whether you would want to make a purchase decision or not.
The new MBF series is capable of demonstrating the successful integration of Toshiba and Fujitsu’s HDD business last year, where it underlines Toshiba’s capability and commitment to consolidating their leadership in the enterprise segment. This series is more than capable of meeting the exacting standards of the enterprise market with 10,025 RPM spin speed and a 6Gb/s SAS interface which is great for action in mid-range volume servers, mainstream storage arrays, blade and rack-mount servers and other business-critical, power-conscious, data-intensive applications. Apart from that, Toshiba has not forgotten about being green, thanks to its inherent lower power consumption which reduces power consumption up to 28%, thanks to a new enhanced power condition state that allows the hard drive to spin at a lower RPM when it remains idle.
Selected models of the MBF series do come with an option of drive-based encryption that was specially designed to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Enterprise Security Subsystem Class specification. Basically, it means that you don’t have to worry (too much) about your data being hacked into, leaving you with peaceful nights of sweet slumber whenever you are away from work. The MBF product line will come in 300GB, 450GB and 600GB capacities as they ship in volume this April 2010, where samples are already available for design development.
Seagate’s USB 3.0 External Hard Drive
Posted by admin in Hard Drives on February 11, 2010

This external hard drive looks very much the same as the USB 2.0 version we reviewed last year: It’s slim, well-designed, and very portable. The only difference, and also the most significant one, is the fact that it now uses the USB 3.0 connection, instead of USB 2.0. USB 3.0 has a top speed of up to 5GBps, and Seagate accommodates this by equipping the BlackArmor PS110 USB 3.0 with an internal SATA II 2.5-inch hard drive that spins at 7,200rpm (as opposed to 5,400rpm in the USB 2.0 version). The result? In CNET Labs’ testing, the new drive is by far the fastest USB external hard drive to date, consistently trumping even the fastest USB 2.0 external hard drive by at least twice the speed. This is the first USB 3.0-based external hard drive I’ve reviewed, so there’s no real way to determine how fast the BlackArmor PS110 USB 3.0 is compared with other USB 3.0 external hard drives.
The Hottest Networking & Storage Products
Posted by admin in Hard Drives on January 11, 2010

As there’s no motherboard with built-in USB 3.0 controllers yet, all of the new USB 3.0 external hard drives come optional with a controller card. This will change soon as VIA also announced at CES the world’s first integrated USB 3.0 controller. It’s safe to expect other hardware vendors, such as Intel and AMD, to follow suit, and motherboards as well as computers with built-in USB 3.0 support will be available later this year. USB 3.0 promises to be the fastest peripheral connection, with a speed of up to 5Gbps and less overhead than USB 2.0. Seagate demoed an external USB 3.0 solution with a RAID 0 external hard drive that was actually faster than the demo machine’s internal SATA II hard drive. USB 3.0 is backward-compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1. Secondly, there will be more features for digital content players. Seagate announced the new upgrade for its FreeAgent Theater+ that will be able to play more Internet content such as Mediafly and potentially (rumor has it) Netflix. LaCie announced its new Internet-connected digital content player, the LaCinema Mini HD, which is compact and has 500GB of built-in storage, and D-Link announced the Boxee Box, which, apart from local sources, focuses heavily on streaming media from a variety of Internet sources.
