When I first heard of hdd docking station, I was thrilled and excited about the simplicity of accessing an internal 3.5-inch form factor hard drive with plug-n-play ability. Forget the external enclosure unit, a bare drive docking unit is the best hdd accessory ever invented and you better believe it. The increasingly popular hard drive docking station is everywhere now, and even OWC has joined the bandwagon.
Today’s external backup drives aren’t simple as it used to be, many are trying too hard to incorporate as a media server, or media hub with remote sharing as a networked-attached storage. A straightforward and affordable one-click, plug-n-play achieve solution has turned into a high dollar multimedia server with complicate setup. If you know your way to around t a backup scheduling and don’t mind extra steps to attach an external drive, there are plenty of cheap solution available; otherwise, check out this newest WD’s MY-BOOK World edition NAS server with many promises to deliver simple setup at reduced power.
Green storages are in higher demand in consumer market, evidence can be seen from Western Digital coughed up its first 2TB single disk device in a much eco-friendly Green Caviar, instead of the Black Caviar performance series. So does Hitachi GST, their 4-gen CinemaStar now packed an EcoTrac classification, halogen-free design with 22-percent lower operation power requirement than previous model.
The newest CinemaStar C5K500 family is a 250GB per disk design consumer electronics hdd with capacities start from 160GB to a dual-platter 500GB 2.5-inch form factor mobile drive. The drive spins at 5400 RPM, and only requires a low power of 1.4 watts to get data out and written on its disks. It’s targeting digital video applications such as DVR recording, digital video streaming or surveillance.
Hitachi has not made pricing available for the CinemaStar C5K500, but shipment is expected to deliver worldwide in the second quarter of 2009.
External drive caddies have been a boon for anyone wanting to switch one hard-drive between several systems. Start playing with more than one drive, however, and opening up the caddy gets tiresome: instead, take a look at the “toaster” style drive dock. iStarUSA’s xAGE902-SAUF accepts both 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives in an easy-access top-loading slot. More than that, it offers no less than four different connection types – eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 – to suit all but the most stubborn of systems. Is this the last drive dock you’ll ever need? SlashGear set to finding out.
Sony Korea have announced a trio of new hard-drive based ultra-compact camcorders. The DCR-SR47, with a 60GB hard-drive, and the DCR-SR67 and DCR-SR87, both with 80GB hard-drives, each weigh around 300g, and are intended as entry-level models with an “Easy mode” suitable for beginner users.
The PSP makes for a great multimedia player, but unless you’re willing to buy into Sony’s UMD format then you’ll be looking at quite a few Memory Sticks in order to keep all your media and game save data to hand. Hard-drive case manufacturer Witchain claim to have a solution, in the shape of their 2.5-inch battery-powered drive enclosure that supposedly hooks up to a PSP via USB.
Video demo of the Witchain drive in action after the cut
So the timing was off, the much-rumored 2TB Caviar didn’t arrive two weeks ago as suggested from the leaks; but it’s here nevertheless. Western Digital has let the cat out of bag, announced the staggeringly huge 2TB Caviar Green storage, claiming world’s highest capacity single disk drive in an industry-leading 500GB per platter (400 GB/in2 areal density) design with its Perpendicular Magnetic Recording technology.
While competitors are still promoting their half Terabyte DVR add-on external storage, Apricorn is one Terabyte ahead; packing their DVR Xpander series external drive with a 1.5TB single disk storage device, adds an instant recording capacities for up to 843 hours of Standard format TV, or 187.5 hours of HD programs, to your favorite DVR set-tops.
Seagate’s largest 1.5TB bare drives have had it share of random freeze and raid array dropping problems in the past. Solution was provided with firmware issued to resolve the problematic drives, according to the tech Report last week. That was not the end of an epic that’ve been plaguing globally. Recent report are much critical. Drives manufactured from December 2008, which includes few members of the 7200.11, ES.2 SATA and Diamond Max 22 series storage are having a much serious data lock-up glitch. Affected disk drive becomes inaccessible to user when the host system is powered. A lengthy 30 plus pages of the much-heated topic is being discussed at company’s community forum here. The manufacture has today responded to the issue, a potential firmware related bugs were isolated, offering free firmware updates and data recovery services to calm the angry mob.
Leak hints Western Digital is set to unveil its 2TB version Caviar Green, the WD20EADS, possibly by the end of the week. We are taking about a 3.5-inch format hdd with 500GB per platter design here, squeezing 2TB of capacity onto one single disk drive, not the raid version of My Book external drive with multi drives device.
SlashGear Japan
