Intel’s SSD 520 represents the fastest solid state drive they’ve brought out to date, packing in fully 25 nanometer memory, a SandForce memory controller, and a top speed of 550 MB/s reading, with a near match at 520 MB/s for write speeds. Just to round it out, it can even generate up to 80,000 I/O operations per second, with the normal rate being a bit over half that at 50,000. You’ll need SATA3 connectivity to get the full speed out of these, and if you need to keep the contents quiet, then you’ll be happy about the 256-bit AES encryption scheme that this sucker comes standard with.

Intel figures that these will improve performance significantly in the storage sector, and even has a bit of a professional testimonial coming from id Software’s own John Carmack, who spoke to the SSD’s faster performance in moving gigabytes around.

Yet at the same time, the Intel SSD 520 will demonstrate the two main problems of SSD ownership: comparatively tiny storage and big prices. The 60 gig version, for example, will sell at a fairly reasonable (for an SSD, anyway) price of $149, while the 120 gig version will sell at $229, the 180 gig version will bump that up to $369, the 240 gig version will reach $509, and the 480 gig version, which is actually pretty fair-sized storage, will top out at a nightmarish $999. Intel hasn’t said just when these will launch, but hints at imminent launch dates.

There’s no denying that the speeds are impressive, and as long as you’re not putting a whole lot on them, they’ll likely serve you pretty well. But for any kind of serious data storage, you’ll likely want a much bigger and much less expensive hard drive on hand instead.

But what do you guys think? Anyone out there interested in dropping some big bucks on high speed and low mass? Or do you think you can wait the extra second or so to get your data via a good old fashioned hard drive? No matter what you think about this one, head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!

Of course, looking at the Brookstone Wi-Fi Cufflinks is something of a refined experience in and of itself, with the cufflinks themselves boasting a nice polished silver finish in an oval style. But while that by itself would be impressive enough for many, it’s not worth our time to cover in a tech blog. Until, of course, you consider that both cufflinks have detachable fronts that offer up extra bonuses.

Detaching the front reveals that the cufflinks are actually a very small USB thumb drive offering fully two gigs of storage space.  And, once you’ve plugged the USB connector into a computer’s USB port (and downloading some accompanying software), you’ll be able to use said cufflinks as a wi-fi hotspot for other computers. Better yet, Brookstone says that smartphones, iPads, and most every other wireless device out there will actually work with these, giving you the flexibility to access media servers and the like.

Brookstone bills these as terrific for travelers and business meetings, as well as tech-heads who want to look sharp but still keep their access near to hand, not to mention for those times when you need a little extra storage on the road, or want to keep your favorite files or programs on you where ever you happen to be.

Brookstone’s looking to get $249.99 for a pair of these, and they do look nice, sure enough, but it may be a bit of a stretch to ask people to shell out that kind of money for fancy storage and wi-fi dispersal in a down economy. Of course, being as this is Brookstone we’re talking about, that may not be a consideration at all.

So what do you guys think of this one? Figure that there will be some interest for sharp-looking storage that gives your cuffs some extra fancy bling besides? Or do you figure these will go the way of other high-priced toys that don’t do much? No matter what you think, head on down to the comments section and fill us in!

A Tesla coil, for those not familiar with the legendary inventor, basically serves as a transformer that can deal in high voltages. While it was used commercially for a while back in the 1920s in various devices, it and its ilk lost ground to alternating current devices, and today it’s primarily used as a way to throw lightning bolts around. And that’s exactly what it was used for in this demonstration, when ioSafe subjected its Thunderbolt drive to substantial amounts of high-voltage current from a Tesla coil.

Interestingly, the drive only somewhat survived–the drive only survives the testing two times out of three–and this was one of the ones where it didn’t. However, once the CEO got involved, and pulled the storage part out of the drive, and snapped it in a new casing, the drive fired right back up to life as though nothing had happened. Apparently only the controller board had been taken out by the demonstration; the contents of the solid state drive had survived unharmed.

It’s an impressive demonstration, sure enough, as I don’t think anyone’s going to use their Thunderbolt drive as a lightning rod, but it likely will survive a bit of a blast from a power surge in normal use pretty well. That makes this one a pretty good alternative if you want to protect your data as well as most anyone can.

There’s no word on when the solid state drive version will be released, or how much it will cost when it’s released, but you can already pick up the Rugged Portable hard drive version from a variety of places for prices varying with storage size.

So what do you guys think here? Want an external Thunderbolt drive that can go toe to toe with a Tesla coil and keep your data safe? Or are you okay with lower protection and possibly better storage? No matter what you think, head on down to the comments section and fill us in!

The specs, admittedly, aren’t anything truly spectacular, offering up a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 on the processor end, backed up by an ARM Mali-400MP GPU, wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity, a USB plug and a microSD card slot as well as its own Android operating system. But when you consider that it’s all encased in a device that’s the size of a basic key chain, well, suddenly the whole picture looks a lot more interesting.

What this is designed to do is hook into much larger displays, thanks to that HDMI plug, and allow you to perform many of your basic computer functions. You’ve got Bluetooth for the peripherals, microSD for the storage, cloud access from the Android app…it’s a very simple, very basic, but extremely portable setup. And, you can even hook it into another computer with the USB plug included, which in turn will let you borrow the peripherals hooked into that computer (great if you needed to print something, I’d say) to do the various jobs you want done.

And if you want an ultra-small computer to take with you most anywhere you go, Cotton Candy should be on hand in time for Christmas 2012, and the pricing is expected to land at the $200 mark, which isn’t half bad. Though it does make me wonder why most wouldn’t just buy a full on laptop for not too much more, especially if they buy used.

Still though, an ultra-small PC for an ultra-small price tag is in the offing, so what do you guys think? Will the Cotton Candy catch on? Or will we be seeing these go for half that or less just to clear them out? No matter what you think, we love hearing from you, so head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!

The Plextor M3S will come in your choice of three flavors: a 128 gig model, a 256 gig model and a 512 gig model, though that one will be coming out early next year as opposed to being available right now. All three are set to offer up SATA III and a Marvell controller, plus will offer up 445 meg per second write speeds as well as 525 meg per second read speeds, all backed up by the company’s proprietary True Speed systems, which is said to preserve the drive’s original rapidity even as data gets increasingly fragmented within the device itself.

Pretty nice, of course, and it only gets better when you consider they’ll be offering up a full five year warranty on these when you buy in. It’s been well established that data archiving over the long term has been one of the biggest draws of the solid state drive concept in general, and happily, having a half-decade warranty will back that perception up nicely.

Though the comparatively high prices will also be in attendance here, with the 128 gig model selling for $200, the 256 gig model going for $350 and that sweet 512 gig model will set you back fully $700, though you’ll have until early next year to save up for that one.

Still though, it’s a good step in the right direction, though it’ll have quite a ways to go before it’s on par with a proper hard drive. But what do you guys think about all this? Figure you’ll be interested in one of Plextor’s new solid state drives to keep your data safe? Or do you think you can do better buying a set of hard drives for the same price? No matter what you think, we want to hear from you down in the comments section below!

Thailand has experienced the worst floodings in 50 years, and hardware companies that have production outfits in the country have been affected. in particular, Western Digital has been badly hit, and the company was forced to suspend production in its Thailand facility amid the flooding. Other manufacturers — like Seagate — don’t have production facilities in the country, although they also expect supply chain issues as component suppliers are also affected by floods.

Computer-makers are taking note. Apple CEO Tim Cook says “an overall industry shortage of disk drives” is expected, and a Dell representative says th company is “working with [their] hard drive suppliers to address potential impact for the remainder of the year.” IHS iSuppli estiamtes that about 25% of the world’s hard drives are made in Thailand, and the production stoppages can badly affect prices and supply. CRN reports that distributors are already stockpiling on hard drives to ensure steady supply, although this will ultimately have an effect on prices.

Western Digital President and CEO John Coyne admits that the company was among the most badly hit.

Since WD has greater direct manufacturing exposure to the flooded areas, we believe the impact on our business in the short term will be greater than to other HDD manufacturers.

Both Seagate and WD admit that it will take several quarters before supply normalizes, and so this is likely to have an effect on the prices of computers and other products that use hard drives — such as smartphones, tablets and media players that use both spinning-disk and solid-state technology made by either company.

The Seagate GoFlex Cinema offers you what amounts to a storage medium and a media player all in one convenient package, letting you hook it up directly to your television or projector of choice by way of an HDMI output built into the device. Don’t despair if your display hardware is a bit older, as it will also offer up composite outputs as well, and a bundled remote for extra ease of use. But it only gets better from there: it offers a variety of storage capacities up to three full terabytes, and supports full 1080p playback, as well as a USB 2.0 connection that lets you not only dump your data onto it, but also directly hook in things like camcorders and digital cameras for ease of access. It will be able to handle a variety of formats, including the standards like MPEG-1, -2, and -4 as well as WMA, WAV, MOV and some lesser-known stuff like MKV.

Now, the key points: these have already started coming out in stores in Europe, with the one terabyte model running at 99 euros (around $136 US), the two terabyte model stepping up to 129 euros (about $177 US) and the full three terabyte version going for 179 euros ($246 US), which are some pretty good prices indeed considering the storage and extra features. There isn’t word yet, sadly, on when this will make the jump to other markets, though hopefully it will be on the order of soon.

They sound pretty good to me, but what do you guys think? Can you see a Seagate GoFlex Cinema joining your standard array of home theater hardware? Or do you have something better to keep your programs straight? Either way, we want to know what’s on your shelves, so head on down to the comments section and tell us about your setup!

The Plextor M2P is set to come in your choice of 128 gig or 256 gig varieties, and come to us in the standard 2.5 inch model. They’re geared toward desktops and laptops alike, and use the proprietary True Speed technology for enhanced overall performance, which is actually one of the high points of a solid state drive as it is. In fact, the current reports say that the M2P solid state drives offer up a read speed of 70,000 IOPS, and a write speed of just slightly slower than that at 65,000 IOPS. Plus, both will support SATA III interfaces to give you the best shot of putting one in your hardware of choice, and both drives will come with both free upgrade software and a matching 3.5 inch bracket in case you want one of these in your desktop.

The 128 gig version will sell for 200 pounds sterling (about $307 US) starting in the UK in the next couple weeks, while the 256 gig version will step that up to 383 pounds sterling (around $591).

I’m all in favor of the solid state drive in general; they have excellent stability, the lack of moving parts means that the drive is less likely to fail, and they’re quite a bit faster than their hard drive equivalents. But the real problem preventing widespread acceptance of the solid state drive is two-fold, at least from where I’m looking: price and storage size. You’re seeing excellent examples of this right here–almost $600 for a 256 gig drive is a bit tough to swallow when you can get entire terabytes for around a sixth of that if you go the hard drive route.

But what do you guys think? Does the Plextor M2P solid state drive appeal to you? Or are you waiting for the prices to get to more reasonable levels before you get on board like I am? Either way, we’re waiting to hear what you think, so head on down to the comments section and fill us in!

The patent application (number 20110238887 in case you want a look at it yourself) details a kind of hybrid storage system in which users will get a hard drive with a small amount of solid state backup.This is set to accomplish a number of useful tasks like avoiding hard drive errors caused by sudden changes in temperature or vibration or even acceleration (which itself would probably produce more than a little vibration in its own right), but this may provide unexpected helps in data access speeds or even protecting the hard drive itself.

Basically, the hybrid drive allows for a quick storage of data to the much more resilient flash memory in the event that something should happen to cause the hard drive to need to lock down its platters, like, say, a sudden fall or an increase in temperature. It would actually be almost like a microcosmic cloud storage system, in which the raw data is stored in the huge and inexpensive storage of the hard drive, but regularly transferred to the faster and more stable solid state storage.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a solid state / hard drive hybrid, though–Seagate brought one of these to market back in 2010 with the Momentus XT, reportedly, and pictured above–but what differentiates Apple’s version (at least, to Apple) is that Apple’s version offers protection for the hard drive by allowing an immediate backup with the solid state.

This would be a useful addition to most any lineup, I’d say: if you could keep the basics in the much more stable solid state drive and keep your occasionally-used archive files in the hard drive, you’d likely get a system with even more longevity than the ones we currently see.

So what do you guys think? Will Apple’s patent application go through? Or will they just decide to start adding tiny solid state drives to regular hard drives on their products? Either way, the comments section awaits, so head on down and have your say!

The MiniStation Extreme is your traveling buddy, offering up your choice of 500 gig or full terabyte capacities, as well as some interesting portability boosts like a wraparound USB cable and shock protection, It’s got 256-bit AES hardware encryption to keep your data safe from any but the most determined hackers, as well as USB 3.0 capability (it’s backward compatible with USB 2.0, in case you don’t quite have the hardware for the faster transfer rate) to make sure you don’t break something while you move it from place to place.

Meanwhile, the DriveStation Axis Velocity is the homebody version, offering up your choice of one, two or three terabyte versions and that same 256-bit AES hardware encryption, as well as 7200 RPM spinning and that same USB 3.0 connection that will work with USB 2.0 as well.

And they’ll even offer these up at some nice prices, with the MiniStation Extreme going for $95 for the 500 meg level, stepping up to $130 for the full terabyte. The DriveStation Axis Velocity, meanwhile, will offer you a lot better deal, asking $95 for one terabyte, $135 for two terabytes, and letting you up that to three terabytes for $180.

It’s a pretty nice set of storage options, and depending on your circumstances you’ll do pretty well here either way. You might need something portable, or you might need a lot of storage, and either way you’ll be abundantly covered no matter what.

So what do you guys think? Which one of these drives would you rather have? Me, I prefer big storage over portability, so I’d be sticking with the Axis Velocity. But which ever drive you’d go with, tell us which your preference is in the comments section below.

The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt external drive not only packs in the first Thunderbolt connection for LaCie, but also, at last report, it represents only the second drive yet to offer the high-speed connection. Better yet, it offers up support for JBOD, RAID 1 and RAID 0, as well as speeds ranging from 190 MB/s with hard drive models (yes, some of these will be available in hard drive for bigger storage capacities!) to all the way up to 480 MB/s if you go the solid state route. And you’ll even be able to chain several of them together, which will allow you to reach truly impressive speeds of–get this–800 MB/s.

They weigh 1.4 pounds each so moving them will be a snap, and they’re available starting today, though Apple’s shop is listing them as a one to two week wait, so you may have to hold out just a bit for shipping. And the prices aren’t even too rough considering what all you get: the one terabyte version is set to land for $399, and its two terabyte cousin will step in for $499. The solid state drive version, packing 240 gig, is yet to be defined price-wise, but is set to land in stores this October.

Sounds like a pretty sweet piece of hardware, I’d say. A little more expensive than the ordinary, but considering that you’ll get some positively blistering file transfer speeds, not half bad at all, really, especially if you’ve already got a Thunderbolt port needing something to occupy its time.

So what about you guys? Think you’ll pick up a LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt or two to give your hardware some extra space? Or do you already have all the storage you can possibly use? Either way, we want to hear from you, so hit the comments section below and tell us what you think!

The STOR.E is now a complete series from Toshiba, offering up a variety of different models and features, as well as a whole lot of names that favor the caps lock key. For instance, the STOR.E CANVIO models will offer up a full terabyte of storage space as well as USB 3.0 connectivity for extra-fast file transfers, included backup software, and will come in your choice of colors: black, red, or green.

The STOR.E BASICS model, meanwhile, offers up much of what the CANVIO does, but ditches the fashion sense in favor of basic black and drops the pre-installed backup software.

Next, the STOR.E PARTNER offers up a lot of what the CANVIO does–including the USB 3.0 connection–but also has some extra features for those who have a NB500 netbook from Toshiba. It even offers the same color schemes in blue, orange, black and lime green for those who want to color-coordinate their drive and their netbook.

And lastly, we’ve got the STOR.E TV 2 and the STOR.E TV PRO, both of which are geared more towards working with televisions directly. They both offer up HDMI ports and a customized interface so that they can, from the look of it, serve as media players to boot. Both of them offer up SD card readers to supplement your storage and USB ports, but the STOR.E TV 2 offers hard drive sizes up to fully two terabytes, while the STOR.E TV PRO gives up just eight gigs of flash storage, along with a Bluetooth remote (which itself boasts a full QWERTY keyboard) and a complete web browser.

They’ll all be hitting Europe first and at about the same time–sometime in the fourth quarter, which suggests holiday availability–for as yet unknown pricing.

So what do you guys think about the STOR.E lineup? Think you can do better with your current setup? Or does this look like the only way to keep your video and music in order? Either way, tell us what you think in the comments section!

A petabyte, just for reference, is 1024 terabytes. Assuming that your standard DVD takes up around five gigabytes (it takes less than that, but this is just for simplification), you’re talking about just over 200,000 DVDs worth of storage. And IBM’s data storage system offers up a whopping 120 petabytes in storage space.

You’re probably wondering just how IBM managed to pull this off, and it turns out the answer is more brute force than anything else. IBM took a series of drives and aligned them in horizontal drawers, like most data centers already do, but then widened the spaces to allow for more disks in smaller spaces, letting them get more disks overall into the system.

They also put in a new kind of data backup system, where dying drives send out their data to other drives, which in turn replicate and store the data until the dying drive can be replaced to take back the data from the dead drive. And a file reading system called GPFS spreads parts of files over different drives, which improves read speeds.

The clearest application for something like this is cloud computing, and considering the size of this cloud it will be sufficiently viable to store and allow streaming on most anything out there. Nothing will be out of range here, from movies to music to most anything you can think of: a system like this has sufficient storage to hold the Library of Congress (averaging about 20 terabytes by some reckoning) about a few thousand times over.

So what do you guys think of this? Wondering when IBM will get one of these to your desktop? Or is this actually the first time you’ve seen overkill in hard drive sizes? Either way, let us know what you think down in the comments section.

The SH14 offers up a USB 3.0 port for fast file transfer–oh, and don’t worry if all you have is USB 2.0 ports, as this will work just fine with those too–and gets both power and file transfer alike from the USB, so there’s no need to worry about not having an extra electrical plug-in handy.

And it actually gets better from there; the SH14 also offers up military-grade protection against water and shock, which means if you spill something on it, or drop it, you probably aren’t going to lose the data unless, say, your drop is off a several story building or into a major body of water. It also boasts some included software like a 60 day trial of Norton Internet Security as well as the OStoGO tool that lets use convert your Windows 7 DVD to a digital format, which lets you install Windows elsewhere, and then boot from the USB hard drive, sort of like a pocket OS to go.

It’s set to release in your choice of three flavors: 500 gig, 750 gig, and a full terabyte, and are currently available. The bad news is that they’re priced in pounds sterling, so finding them where you are may be a bit of a struggle. The 500 gig model sells at 59.90 ($99.38 US), the 750 gig sells for 71.90 ($119.29 US), and that whopping great terabyte will set you back 92.90 ($154.13 US). A bit pricey, sure, but with all those extra protections, it may be just what you’re looking for if you find yourself working in rugged terrain and require extra protection for your data.

So what do you guys think here? Think those prices are too high for what you get? Or do the extra protections and the USB 3.0 speed make the Adata SH14 a worthwhile buy? Either way, we’d love to hear what you think about these, so hit the comments section and let’s talk external hard drive!

The problem, being referred to as the “Bad Content 13X Error”, caused a variety of problems almost from the drive’s release. Everything from power losses to drives crashing and losing data were reported, along with strange errors that caused the system BIOS to report that, somehow, sizable solid state drives only had a meager eight meg of storage capacity left to their names.

Intel, for its part, only recently acknowledged the existence of the Bad Content 13X Error and announced that a firmware fix would be forthcoming in the next few months in a bid to fix the problem. The good news is that the firmware update can be applied without performing a secure erase, reportedly, but the bad news is none of the data lost before the update will actually be recovered.

Intel took more than a little flack over this, with users affected by the Bad Content 13X Error saying that Intel took way too long to actually get an update together. But Intel, for its part, said that the bug only affected “a small number” of users and passed the problem off to customer service as replacement drives were being issued. Worse for Intel, though, is that this is reportedly not the first time they’ve had firmware issues with their solid state drives; back in 2009 the X25-M drives had issues, and Intel’s firmware update reportedly didn’t help matters much, crashing several drives itself.

So how about you guys? Anyone having trouble with the solid state drive on their Mac, or regular PC if you have one? Anyone dislike Intel’s handling of the resultant situation? Either way, we always like hearing from you, so head on down to the comments section and let’s talk Intel solid state drives!

The new MacBook Air solid state drives from Samsung, dubbed the PM830, offers up a whole slew of speed and size enhancements. They now come in 512 gig capacity, and boast impressive read speeds of 500 MB/s and write speeds of an equally impressive 350 MB/s. Plus, they’re also set to offer a six gig SATA3, which all told will bring the performance up to about 150 percent of current capability, and makes the PM830 a much more attractive option than even its previous iteration.

Under normal circumstances, you’d think that this would be met with wild cheering from the general public followed by high expectations that the PM830 would be installed in the next refresh of MacBook Airs. The problem, of course, would be that there’s more than a little bad blood between Apple and Samsung right now–though in retrospect that’s probably a pretty profound understatement–which means you may not actually see these hit. At least, maybe not for MacBook. If for some reason Apple were to turn these down, I could envision a few PC makers (especially that new lineup of Ultrabooks we keep hearing about) that might be interested with a bit of retooling….

So what do you guys think here? Will Apple be willing to bury the hatchet long enough to get the PM830 line in the next set of MacBook Airs? Or will Samsung be looking to provide hardware for other computer makers? Whatever your opinion, we welcome it down in the comments section, so head on down and tell us what you think!

Being that Android just happens to be the most popular mobile operating system out there right now, it just makes sense not to snub its users. Android runs all sorts of phones and tablets nowadays and its fine customers should be overjoyed to be included in the use of this media streaming HDD.

The Android app is free in the Android Market however you’ll have to be willing to part with almost $200 for the HDD itself. Not too bad.

Every Samsung 470 solid state drive, you see, is now set to come with a copy of Norton Ghost, a utility that allows you to easily migrate your entire system onto a new hard drive (or in this case, a new solid state drive), thus meaning you don’t have to do any of the particularly unpleasant parts of swapping out drives, like, say, reinstalling your operating system.

This move removes one of the biggest hurdles involved in getting customers to buy new hard drives (and, of course, new solid state drives): the difficult process of moving everything from one drive to another. Plus, considering that the ease of use now comes bundled with a solid state drive, those buying in will also get access to better speeds, lower energy use, and a generally lengthened lifespan of the drive itself.

However, there are still downsides to this: perhaps the runner-up downside is the comparatively lower storage sizes. While we’re often seeing hard drives with multiple terabytes of storage, the Samsung 470 comes in just three flavors: 64 gig, 128 gig and 256 gig. And of course, the king downside here is expense. The 64 gig, for example, retails at $119.99, while the 128 gig version is $229.99 and the 256 gig version will set you back almost as much as some entire computers at $459.99.

Still, though, some major hurdles have been removed with the addition of Norton Ghost, and so I call it a smart move on Samsung’s part.

And what do you guys think? Is Samsung making a smart move that will end in more drives sold? Or would you not buy a solid state drive no matter what they were offering? Either way, the comments section is waiting, so head on down and tell us what you think!

The obvious key point here is that it’s geared specifically for the Mac, specifically designed to not only slip right under your standard iMac screen, but it will also charge your iOS devices at the same time.

And as if that weren’t good enough in its own right, the Iomega Mac Companion offers up your choice of two or three terabytes of storage space, runs at 7200 RPM, and can hook up by your choice of USB or a FireWire 800 port if you happen to have one. It also boasts Iomega’s QuikProtect software which lets you schedule drive backups (and you can never back up your drive often enough; just ask anyone who lost their gear on the bad end of a thunderstorm and see what they think), an extra two gig of MozyHome online backup storage, and 12 months of free subscription to the Trend Smart Surfing protection system, which is good if you do a lot of shopping online. Plus, you’ll even get four LEDs on the front of the drive which will show you at a glance about how much room you have left on the drive, though with two or three terabytes, it will likely take you some time before you need to wonder how much you have left.

The two terabyte version comes your way for $195, but stepping up to the three terabyte version will take you $295. Both are expensive for hard drives that size, of course, but considering all the extras you’ll get, this isn’t exactly a bad deal on the surface.

So what do you guys think of the Iomega Mac Companion line of hard drives? Think they’re a great addition to your Mac hardware array? Or are you being overcharged for the whole Mac experience? No matter how you feel about it, head on down to the comments section and fill us in.

The Rugged Mini from the folks at LaCie is a line of portable, and surprisingly small, hard drives that come in a variety of sizes. You’ll be able to get them in your choice of flavors, including 500 gig, one full terabyte, or get the best of both worlds with the 1.5 terabyte version. They offer USB 3.0 connectivity for extra speed, password protection capability, a variety of software tools to help you use them to the fullest, and they even come equipped with a layer of orange material that makes it resistant to shock, drops, and of course, water.

These are actually smaller, portable versions of the earlier released Rugged drives from LaCie, the key difference here is the Mini aspect of things. And you’ll be able to pick one of these up soon for your choice of prices: the 500 gig model goes for $99, the terabyte for $159, and the terabyte and a half will be coming out next month for an as yet undeclared price.

A little on the pricey side, I know, but if you find yourself traveling a lot and you need extra storage in tow, then you’ll probably want something like this on hand. I know from painful experience how easy it is to drop a portable hard drive, and though one blow isn’t usually enough to knock them out of commission, who wants to take the chance?

Any of you guys planning to lay hands on a LaCie Rugged Mini? Or do you think that adding rugged protection to a portable hard drive smacks entirely too much of pointlessness? Either way, we love to hear from you, so hit the comments section and tell us what you think!

The reports from industry insiders like IHS Suppli suggest that iCloud, which serves as a cloud storage system for music, photos, and the like, will reduce the need to depend on local storage. And this by itself may not be so bad, except for some short-term numbers that supplement and drive home the point.

See, Apple is projected to make up roughly one third the world’s market for NAND flash chips by the end of this year. That basically makes world demand for NAND chips into something like a three legged stool, with one leg being Apple and the other two legs being the rest of demand, to use a metaphor. Cut one of the legs in half, and suddenly, what is created is a stool that I wouldn’t want to be sitting on unless I had a taste for sitting on the ground in rapid fashion.

It’s important to note that no one really thinks that Apple’s implementation of the iCloud is going to kill flash memory; no one would really want to depend solely on the cloud for storage, especially after the Playstation Network outage that went on for months. But what they do think is that it’s going to cut back on demand for chips, and this makes some sense. After all, with cloud storage, you can send the stuff you only occasionally watch, read, or listen to off to the cloud for later recovery while you keep only that which is the most vital or often used stored locally. But it does seem possible–even likely–that the NAND chip market could be looking at tough times ahead as one of the biggest demand sources cuts some orders.

So what do you guys think about this one? Will cloud storage result in lower memory storage on your local devices? Or will cloud storage become a supplement rather than a replacement? We love hearing from you, so head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!

We’re talking here about the Sony HD-PG5, a USB 3.0 hard drive that provides some blistering speeds (at USB 3.0, there isn’t much faster to talk about yet except for Thunderbolt), and come in one size: 500 gig. If that sounds a bit disappointing, well, it disappointed me too until I found out the really exciting part behind the whole thing.

See, where most USB hard drives are geared toward desktops and laptops, or sometimes some brands of media player, the Sony HD-PG5 will play nice with computers of all sizes, as well as Bravia televisions and Handycam camcorders. I do find myself wondering if they’ll work with other televisions and camcorders that offer USB drives, but of course, Sony made it something of a point to show how well they work with Sony gear. Interestingly, they also made it a point to say that it works with both Windows systems and Mac OS X systems, so it’s definitely not just Sony.

And, for you travelers who take the phrase “portable hard drive” seriously, the HD-PG5 is scratch resistant and weighs just over a third of a pound. There’s no word yet on just how much these will cost, though, but if they can keep it under $100 they should be able to compete pretty effectively. If they go much over that, they’ll have people wondering how much extra to go through a media player or the like.

So what do you guys think here? Think you could get behind the Sony HD-PG5? Or are you finding this one a poor value in comparison to the others out there, even without knowing the price tag? Either way, head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!

See, what OWC (Other World Computing)’s Data Doubler allows you to do is, like the name suggests, double the amount of data currently being stored on your MacBook and MacBook Pro (your MacBook Air, meanwhile, appears to be somewhat behind the curve on this one). It comes with a conversion bracket and a one terabyte hard drive, which you can use to swap out your optical drive, and then replace it with your choice of products, including a RAID array, a two terabyte drive, the one terabyte drive it comes with, or something similar.

As you might expect, installation of each of these devices is somewhat different based on your particular model, and you’ll have to order based one what you have, from a MacBook 13 inch late 2008 unibody and later up to a MacBook Pro 17 inch early 2009 unibody and later. But you’ll also get a detailed instruction guide geared to your model, as well as a five piece toolkit and a variety of videos geared toward getting you installed.

They’re all available right now, in prices ranging from $117.99 to $174.99, depending on what all you get in them.

It sounds like a clever idea, especially for those who’d rather have more storage over, say, a DVD-ROM drive or the like, and the prices aren’t exactly terrible though I’d wonder about just getting a portable USB hard drive. They may not be as big or quite as convenient in some cases but they do still do the job reasonably well and at probably a better price.

So what do you guys think? Do you like the Data Doubler’s idea for getting more storage onto a Mac laptop? Or do you think better options are out there for better prices? No matter how you feel about it, hit the comments section and fill us in!

It’s been a while since we last heard from the crew out at Clickfree–so long, in fact, that we were last talking about the C2 back in 2009–and this one seems to carry on in their original vein of really, really simple backup functions.

Not only will it play nice with most Windows PCs, including Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP devices, it will also run from just a USB port, meaning you don’t have to find another power outlet in your already overloaded surge protectors or make any unpleasant, vaguely medical-drama-show style decisions about what’s getting their plug pulled. Plus, you’ll be able to select the types of files you want backed up, so you can determine just how much data’s getting dumped into that box and how often. Plus, should you need to restore your files, you can have the option to only restore the personal stuff.

Portable versions of the Clickfree C6 Easy Imaging are already on shelves in the US and Canada, and though there’s no word yet on wider releases I can’t imagine that won’t happen soon. You’ll have your choice of flavors with this, though, including the portable 500 gig version for $140 and the full terabyte for $180. Desktop versions will also be available with $150 for the one terabyte and $180 for two terabytes.

Hefty storage, no doubt there, but the prices aren’t exactly in line with what I’d expect to see those go for. The Clickfree stuff is a bit pricier than I’d want, though that ease of use factor is one that can’t be easily ignored.

So what do you guys think here? Overpriced hardware, or does that ease of use factor make things a little better for you? Hit the comments section and let us know what you think!

Phase-change memory is a way to encode data for storage on a solid state drive that makes it significantly more stable, operating on a physical level to change the phase (hence the name) of matter from crystalline to amorphous when voltage is applied to it. Sounds a little dense, but the end results are astonishing.

Currently, your normal block of flash memory can be overwritten between 3000 and 10,000 times. Clearly that’s more than enough for most normal people, who may never overwrite a chunk of flash memory (or their devices may completely wear out before they’ve overwritten the memory sufficient times to be a problem), but with phase-change memory, that upper limit goes up fully 1000 times, topping out at 10 million.

This isn’t the first time phase-change memory has been used, interestingly enough–CDs have been using something like it for some time–but it does represent the first time that it’s been used in something like flash memory.

Obviously no one’s really been having problems with the current lineup of solid state drives, and that’s a good thing, because Apple doesn’t expect to get this to market until some time around 2016. But when it does hit, it’s going to make flash storage even more stable.

Though if you ask me, I think IBM is solving the wrong problem here. We all know that flash memory is sturdier than hard drives, but we need to get them cheaper and bigger like hard drives, not more secure. If it’s already the shiniest car on the lot what’s the point in adding another coat of wax, to use a metaphor?

But what do you guys think? Do you like that IBM may have a way to make solid state drives even more long-term stable than they are? Or do you wish they’d go after the bigger issues of price and size? Head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!

Not only does the Delkin Elite633 SDXC offer a pretty robust 64 gigs of storage (and considering that a lot of these memory cards fit on a fingertip, that’s saying something), but they also offer it up at some pretty nice read and write speeds. How nice? Try a read speed of 95 meg, and a write speed at 45 meg.

For those of you who had this vague premonition that you’ve seen this article before, you’ve got a great, but not perfect, memory. We actually did tackle a similar card not too long ago (back in April, actually) from Delkin, but this was for the SDHC card version of the Elite633, and that one letter means a world of difference when it comes to memory cards.

This is a fantastic tool for those who shoot a lot of video or photos in a stretch (you could actually get, some estimate, around 17,000 pictures onto one of these) and don’t have the time to stop and dump the results to a hard drive. And of course, if you’ve got a big name camera that handles the higher definitions or outright 3D, this will be a godsend for you.

Of course, as is generally the case with this sort of thing, it’s going to cost like a godsend too, forcing you to shell out fully $539.99 for one of these.

So how many of you like the thought of having that kind of storage space in your camera? 17,000 photos is a whole lot of pictures; based on the commercials, it takes Ashton Kutcher like a whole half hour to shoot that many pictures. Or do you think the Delkin Elite633 is a chunk of overpriced overkill? However you feel about it, we want to hear from you, so head down to the comments section and let’s talk storage!

First, there’s the Porsche Design Mobile P9220, a version designed for the laptop crowd or those who don’t want their external hard drives taking up a whole lot of space. You’ll be able to get these in your choice of 500 gig or a full terabyte.

Second, there’s the Porsche Design Desktop P9230, for those who want more storage than form factor. These come in your choice of one or two full terabytes.

Both of them, meanwhile, will offer some really impressive looking aluminum casings (you can see them in the pic above), and they’ll even pack on USB 3.0 connectivity to give them a whole lot of extra speed, at least until Thunderbolt comes into its own.

Sales on these two should start pretty soon, with them set to arrive in a variety of online stores like Amazon and Best Buy. Prices will start at $104.99, which isn’t exactly terrible for a hard drive that size, but if storage size is your primary consideration you’ll do much better elsewhere. And if you’re into the oddball sizes, you’ll reportedly be able to lay hands on a 750 gig model if you go through Porsche Design stores.

They sound pretty good to me, with some great looks, but the realization that I can do better price-wise with a variety of others continues to ring in my head. But what about you folks? Would you pay a little extra for that cool metal styling on the Porsche Design drives? Or are your hard drives just there to store and access data as opposed to being fashion accessories? The comments section is waiting for you, so head on down and have your say!

As you can see from the picture, it’s a rather stock Western Digital Caviar Green drive, save for the cool Apple logo printed on the label. Unfortunately, this “WD20EARS” is rather stock as far as hard drive go. A “server-grade” drive has a MTBF (mean time between failures) of about 1 million hours, and there’s no indication that this WD20EARS meets these requirements.

According to website SlashGear, the last revision of the Apple Time Capsule also promised “server-grade” drives, but the drives were just, off-the-shelf regular Hitachi Desktsar drives. However, with that revision, Apple said that the Deskstar drives used in the Time Capsule had a higher MTBF than a consumer drive. Apple also apparently used the same Hitachi Deskstar drives in their (now discontinued) Xserve servers, so that makes them “server-grade”, right? (Western Digital recently made a bid to acquire Hitachi’s storage division, ironically)

The new Apple Time Capsules are pretty pricey, with Apple asking $299 for the 2TB model and $399 for the 3TB model. There are definitely cheaper (and safer) ways to back up your data, but as we’ve seen time and time again, people are proud to have everything Apple in their house (MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad), which means they’re willing to overpay for the Time Capsule backup box and the AirPort WiFi hub.

The LaCie Cloudbox offers the best of both worlds at once: it’s a 100 gig “hybrid” hard drive that offers just one Ethernet port, and once a day, it takes the contents of your Cloudbox and fires them off to your personal cloud by AES encrypted copy, even if your computer is off at the time. And, should your Cloudbox ever fall prey to one of the inevitable slings, arrows, or malfunctions a device is generally prone to, you can use LaCie’s Online Restore software to go back as far as ten different volumes to restore your files to you.

When you buy one of these, and they’ll hit store shelves this July for a fairly hefty $200 plus an as yet undefined subscription fee for all that cloud access, you’ll even get a year’s worth of cloud storage gratis.

It’s a clever idea, in a way. So many things could go wrong with a hard drive, so it’s not hard to see why people might want a remote backup. Though $200 is quite a bit for a 100 gig hard drive–you could actually buy a bigger solid state drive for less and get better protection that way. That and if you actually used all the space, you’d burn through your bandwidth cap in a matter of days, unless it only uploaded new arrivals.

So what do you guys think about all this? Like the thought of the LaCie Cloudbox, or does it not offer enough for its expanded price tag? Hit the comments section and tell us what you think!

The new Time Capsules, which we’d been wondering about since we heard about them being out in the FCC’s hands, are offering up three terabyte hard drives, which is a whole lot of space no matter how you slice it. But pretty much everything else you know and love (or don’t, depending) about the Time Capsule is still right here. You’ll still get three ethernet ports, a USB host for your printers and other hard drives, wireless encryption and backup functions via OS X Time Machine.

The interesting thing is, where before you were paying $499 for a Time Capsule that boasted a two terabyte hard drive and all of those aforementioned features, now you’ll be paying $499 for the same Time Capsule but with an extra terabyte of storage. This is what I was referring to before when I said you may be turned off; it’s almost the exact same Time Capsule, with no extra innovations or anything like that, but now you’ll get an extra terabyte. To make matters worse, by way of comparison, you can actually find three terabyte hard drives in the $150 range right now if you shop around, which means you’ll pay better than three times that for the Apple branding and the Time Machine utility, among others.

I wouldn’t call that a good deal myself, but then, I’m more of a PC user anyway. But what about you guys out there? Does the new Time Capsule sound like a good buy to you even at $499? Or will you be looking for some basic USB hard drives instead? Either way, we’d love to hear what you’ve got to say about this, so head into the comments section and drop us a line!

The SSD 710, or Lyndonville, is looking to come in three different flavors: 100, 200, and 300 gig, offering up 270 meg read speeds and 210 meg write speeds on a SATA 3Gbps interface, and use fully four watts of power while active, all on a significantly more durable 25 nm HET MLC.

But the SSD 720, or Ramsdale, is where things get interesting. See, there are only two sizes on this one, a 200 and a 400 gig size, with a 34nm SLC using fully 25 watts of power while active, but the read and write speeds suggested by the leak is almost beyond belief. They’re suggesting read speeds of 2200 meg and 1800 meg write speeds, and on a PCIe interface.

Some are already suggesting that there’s a typo going on somewhere, and it seems to make some sense. But still though, we’re talking about some pretty fast pieces of hardware here, and in steadily climbing capability.

The one thing that’s not being leaked, though, is pricing. However, considering how solid state drives have been priced previously, I’d look for the starting level on this one to kick off at “expensive”, followed all the way up to “your first-born male child” and “your immortal soul”. Still though, it’s great to see the gradual improvement in solid state drive performance and capability, and I look forward to the day when you can go into Best Buy and buy a one terabyte solid state drive for the same price you can get its hard drive equivalent for today.

So what do you guys think? Think these specs are too good to be true? Think they’ll be way out of your price range, accurate specs or not? The comments section is waiting for you to have your say, so head on down and do just that below!

The Samsung Spinpoint M8 is a 2.4-inch hard drive meant for use on notebook computers. At 9.5 mm thick, the Spinpoint M8 is ideal for use on thin and light laptops and other devices that require this thin form factor. The hard drive uses two spinning plates, with 500 GB each, in contrast to previous 1 TB hard drives by Samsung, which use three spinning plates of 333 GB each, such as the MT2 released July last year.

Samsung says it uses an advanced format technology to increase storage density per unit area, thereby reducing the number of spinning plates required on this hard disc. With reduced components, the Spinpoint M8 also gets a 7% speed improvement and 8% reduction in power use. The Spinpoint M8 connects at 3 Gbps via SATA and has an 8MB buffer. The hard drive also has Samsung’s EcoSeek and NoiseGuard for reduced noise. The M8 also features increased shock resistance to reduce the risk of data loss.

Samsung has started mass producing the Spinpoint M8, which will retail soon or $129.

Kingston‘s Wi-Drive addresses the need to expand tablet or smartphone storage without necessarily connecting it via USB or other wired interface. This external storage device connects through Wi-Fi and uses flash-based storage, so there are no spinning parts. Unfortunately, this also means space is not as big as disc-based hard drives.

Still, at $130 for 16 GB or $175 for 32 GB of extra wireless storage, the price might be good enough to augment your tablet’s storage needs, especially if you’re using an iPad or iPad 2–which don’t have external storage capability via microSD or SD. The Kingston Wi-Drive can also be a good way to share files and content across different devices, and can be used as a networked storage device. Kingston says the device can stream 720p quality videos to up to three devices simultaneously.

Kingston will launch the Wi-Drive with an iOS app, although an Android app will soon be available.

First out of the gate is the impressive U100 solid state drive, which offers up–and you’ll probably want to be sitting down for this–a read speed of 450 MB/s and a write speed of 340 MB/s. They’re coming in at fully 256 gig, and use a SATA III interface, all of which has combined to get Asus’ attention sufficiently to put U100′s in their upcoming UX notebooks. These actually do a number on a lot of their competitors, so if you’re looking into a UX notebook you’ll be pretty happy for that additional chunk of data.

And, even better, the i100, which may have a lower-case name, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to skimp on the capability. Geared specifically for tablet PCs, the i100 is looking to top out at 128 gig and offer up a read speed of 450 MB/s just like its larger counterpart, but only offer up a 160 MB/s write speed, which is still pretty fast in its own right.

I’ve personally been looking for tablets to step up their game for some time now, and while it’s still a new form factor, it’s got a good ways to go yet before it can truly compete with the big name in mobile computing, the laptop. Sure, it’s portable, but spec-wise it gets chewed up and spit out most every time. Things like this, though, will offer a serious boost to the concept, and it can really only get better from here. One day, tablets may well take over for laptops, but that day is most certainly not yet.

So what do you guys think? Is this the beginning of the end for the laptop? Or will tablets always be stuck behind their more substantially spec-ed out brethren? Head on into the comments section and tell us what you think!

WD‘s newest hard drive comes in two sizes, a 2.5 terabyte model and a full-on three terabyte version, both of which are internal, and are geared toward folks who do a lot of work with video, whether it be editing, surveillance, or you just can’t get enough of buying your video through Amazon or the like.

They’re SATA drives, so they pack quite a bit of capability in their systems, but there’s a distinct problem here, in that if you’re running a Windows XP PC, it doesn’t support anything larger than a 2.19 terabyte drive. Meanwhile, if you’re packing a 32-bit version of Windows Vista or Windows 7, anything over 2.19 terabytes is recognized as a secondary drive instead. There are reports of workarounds for this, such as partitioning, but still, you’re going to want to do your homework and make quite sure that this drive is right for you, and will in fact work on your computer before you shell out the cash to get one  of these.

Three terabytes is a whole lot of hard drive space–it wasn’t so very long ago we thought it was a pretty big deal to see one terabyte of drive space come with a computer, and many of us still do. It’s somewhat dismaying to see that it doesn’t necessarily work with the hardware package a lot of people actually have, but still, with PCs costing what they do these days an upgrade may well be in order anyway.

Anyone out there thinking about getting a WD AV-GP for their own PC? Will your hardware be able to handle it? Head into the comments section and tell us what you’ve got in mind for your piece of hardware.

See, the GoFlex Satellite isn’t really that impressive on the surface; it’s a 500 meg portable hard drive, and while they aren’t a dime a dozen they are pretty commonplace. It helps that it’s USB 3.0, which gives you quite a bit of extra speed to boot. But this isn’t just a USB 3.0 portable hard drive, which by itself would be worth noting. The GoFlex Satellite comes with a battery powered wireless option, which provides fully 25 hours of life (only four hours, though, if you’re using it to stream video to your devices) and allows it to communicate with other devices via wi-fi, including those that don’t have USB 3.0 ports. Like, for example, your iPad, your iPhone, and your iPod Touch.

The GoFlex Satellite also offers up the GoFlex Access app for iOS that allows your iOS gear to take advantage of the communication functions, and transfer your files from your various devices to the GoFlex Satellite.

It’s almost, but not quite, like having your own tiny data center with you for microcosmic cloud storage, as you’d be streaming your media from the Satellite onto your device. And it’s hard to deny the value inherent in a device that basically gives your iPad 500 gigs of storage.

The Satellite is currently in tests out at the FCC, and Seagate has reportedly asked the FCC to keep mum about the device until June 30th, which means you likely won’t be seeing this on shelves before then. We do have reports of pricing, though, and you’ll be shelling out $200 for one of these. But for a USB 3.0 portable hard drive with respectable storage space and a wi-fi option, that’s really not too bad.

Short recap – what’s an SSD? A traditional hard drive (or hard disk drive, HDD) has spinning magnetic disk inside of it where data for your computer is recorded and recalled. It has tiny moving parts, is rather slow, technically complex and can consume a lot of power. A solid-state drive (or SSD) uses NAND flash memory, like your computer’s RAM or the memory in an iPod Nano. It has no moving parts, is silent, and in theory should consume less power than a HDD (although I’ve seen some benchmarks saying that some high-end OCZ SSDs use more power than HDDs, the jury is out).

But, SSDs are still expensive, and you’re paying an arm and a leg for them. Companies are constantly improving their manufacturing processes, and Gartner believes that the anticipated $1/1GB mark will be hit by 2012. There’s a method to their madness – Intel current uses the 50nm fab process to manufacture their SSDs and when they move to 25nm later this year, that’s expected to drive the cost of SSDs down across the market.

A lot of people think that an SSD is only good for a laptop because you have to give up so much storage space. I recently dropped in an SSD in my desktop as a boot drive, using my older hard drives as mass storage, and it’s make a noticeable impact in performance. If you can stomach the cost, I can’t encourage SSDs enough, either for desktops or laptops.

Unsurprisingly, SSDs make up a small minority of what NAND memory is used for. Gartner reports that just 7.9% of flash memory went to SSDs in 2010. But, with the decreasing cost of SSDs, the expect that percentage to boom to 15.9% in 2012.

Are you rocking an SSD in your desktop or laptop?

The Agility 3 and the Solid 3 both are 2.5 inch solid state drives that run on the SATA III interface, and pack a SandForce SF-2200 processor. Interestingly, not a whole lot of capability separates the two, with the Solid 3 having a 500 meg read rate and a 450 meg write rate, while the Agility 3 has a slightly faster 525 meg read rate and a 500 meg write rate. The Solid 3 comes in your choice of 60 gig or 120 gig flavors, while the Agility 3 offers both of those, but also adds on a 240 gig version, which is a bit of a surprise, but what really tipped me off to these in the first place.

Thankfully, OCZ is managing to hold the prices down on these, which gives a lot of credence to the solid state drive as a potential replacement for the hard drive. It’s still nowhere near what a hard drive provides in terms of value, but the better the solid state drives do in terms of numbers like price and total storage size, the closer they get to taking over on the strength of their other advantages like durability and speed.

You’ll be able to pick up the Solid 3 at either $130 or $230, depending on your choice of storage sizes, and the Agility 3 will weigh in at $135, $240, or $480, and they’re available now, at last report, making this a good place to start for solid state drives.

The new solid state drive from Other World Computing runs at a pretty speedy maximum of 275 Mbps, and offers a variety of storage sizes, including 180 gig, 240 gig, 360 gig and, in the biggest shock of all, fully 480 gig. That represents, at last report, a storage size equivalent to fully four times the largest factory-available drive, and that puts a whole lot of credence into the solid state drive concept. All of the drives in question are compatible with either the 11 or 13 inch MacBook Air systems, and Other World Computing will also provide all the tools necessary to install your new solid state drive with each drive.

And this goes a long way toward making the solid state drive a fully credible system in the face of its hard drive competitor. However, there is still one significant barrier to entry remaining: the cost.

The 180 gig unit costs $479.99, the 240 gig unit will run you $579.99, the 360 gig unit will clear $1,179.99 and, as if those three weren’t painful enough, that beautiful 480 gig drive will set you back a whopping $1,579.99. And with those kinds of prices, added on to the already substantial cost of a MacBook Air, is likely to keep the Mercury Aura Pro Express out of a lot of people’s MacBook Airs. Still though, this is how progress starts, and hopefully one day, a one terabyte solid state drive will cost around a hundred bucks, much like its hard drive counterpart.

Both LG XE1 and XE2 have the same functionality and feature set, and will come in 500 GB, 750 GB and 1 TB capacities. LG’s new portable hard drives support USB 3.0 for fast data transfers, but will work with USB 2.0, as well (unlike other drives that don’t have backwards compatibility).

The 2.5-inch external hard drives basically have the same dimensions and weight, although the difference is in the finish. The XE1 comes in a glossy finish, while the XE2 has a matte design. Both models have initially launched in South Korea, and are priced at 100,000 to 160,000 won or $92 to $148, depending on storage capacity. No word yet when the XE1 and XE2 will be released in the US, but we’ll keep an eye out for this one.