MacBook Pro confusion this weekend, as some owners of the new unibody 13- and 15-inch notebooks are reporting that their machines are apparently limited to 1.5Gb/s SATA connections rather than the faster 3.0Gb/s SATA-II. Full details are unclear, but it seems that Apple have either switched to SATA hardware or used firmware for the newest MacBook Pros that limits hard-drive connections to the slower speed.
Hard-drive based media players aren’t anything new, but hifi equipment actually built from old drives are somewhat rarer. At Hifiduino they’re using an Arduino microprocessor to construct a DIY preamp, and they’ve salvaged a deceased hard-drive to form the base and the top.
Can we have too many glossy, glowing boxes? LaCie don’t seem to think so, hence their latest toppled-obelisk design, this time housing a hard-drive media player. The LaCie LaCinema Classic Bridge can be used with any existing 3.5-inch hard-drive, outputting upscaled 1080p video via HDMI, but it also has a USB port for external, removable drives.
Storage may not be as glossy or as exciting as a new netbook, MID or Smartbook, and as such we didn’t see as much hard-drive coverage from Computex as we did mobile devices; still, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some deuced impressive hardware lurking at the show. OCZ brought along their Colossus, a 3.5-inch SSD-based drive which boasts 1TB of capacity and sustained read/write speeds of 265MB/s.
A-DATA have announced what they’re saying is the world’s slimmest portable hard-drive, the NH92. Based on a 2.5-inch HDD, the A-DATA NH92 measures 12mm thick and weighs 152g, despite offering capacities from 250GB to 500GB.
Brando have unveiled a useful hard-drive adapter, which turns any 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drive into both an external USB drive and a mediaplayer. Connecting to a TV or other display via HDMI, the SATA HDD Multi-Media Player Adapter can funnel up to 1080i resolution content through its own on-screen mediaplayer app.
In the rush to grab “world’s best” titles, companies will do just about anything. If you’re OWC, you’ll grab a Seagate 500GB 7,200rpm hard-drive, slap it into a cheap looking acrylic caddy and brand it “the largest capacity, fastest bus powered portable storage solution on the market.” Heady words indeed, but once you’re past the hyperbole you’ll probably be more interested in the fact that the OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro offers a choice of USB 2.0, FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 interfaces.
Iomega have announced their updated range of eGo USB portable hard-drives, now available in four colors and with up to 500GB of capacity. Based on 2.5-inch 5,400rpm HDDs clad in anodized aluminum cases just 16mm thick, the 200g drives feature Iomega’s Drop Guard to protect data from drops of up to 51-inches.
Other World Computing, more often referred to as OWC, released a new enclosure for a 2.5-inch SATA I/II drive called the Express USB 2.0. It can hold hard drives that are up to 9.5mm tall and looks pretty sleek.
Most reviewers of the Viliv S5 MID have said that the one thing that would make it the perfect mobile internet device would be integrated 3G. While such a model is available in some areas, US importers are yet to offer it; that leaves adding your own WWAN in, which is just the tricky task jkkmobile is attempting in his latest guide video.
Video overview after the cut
SlashGear Japan
