SlashGear » portable drive

Toshiba outs Canvio Slim as world’s thinnest 500GB hard drive

Cory Gunther — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:02:19 +0000

The folks from Toshiba look to continue the trend of packing tons and tons of storage into an extremely small space. Today they’ve outed their latest Canvio Slim portable hard drive and are stating it’s the “world’s thinnest” portable hard drive. Coming in at just 9mm thick offering 500GB of storage for only $115 — lets take a look.

Essentially they are using an Ultrabook class leading 7mm portable HD, packed it into an ultra-sleek enclosure like most portable hard drives, added a few ports and are offering it for an excellent price. This new Canvio drive is extremely small and will fit in nearly all pants or shirt pockets — basically being the size of most smartphones these days.

As a comparison the new iPhone 5 is just 7.6mm thick, and the Galaxy S III is 8.6mm in size. Making this new 500GB portable storage option pretty sleek. Not only is Toshiba’s latest drive sleek and cheap, but it’s also quite fast being operated and powered by USB 3.0, with full compatibility with both PC and Mac. Here’s what Maciek Brzeski, VP of Product Marketing had to say:

As consumer electronics continue to get thinner, lighter and more portable, we recognized a huge demand to create a storage device that is in line with those trends,” and With the Canvio Slim, consumers can now easily stash their storage device right along with their Ultrabook, knowing that their data is always safe, even when they’re on the go.”

Other specs include 5400 RPM and an 8MB cache buffer, along with a 12 ms average seek time. It’s not the fastest around, but it sure is portable. You can get it from Toshiba direct today for $115 in Graphite Black or brushed Aluminum Grey, and it should hit retail stores starting in October.

[via MaximumPC]

Toshiba outs Canvio Slim as world’s thinnest 500GB hard drive is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
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WD intros first 2TB My Passport Studio for Macs

Rue Liu — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:47:39 +0000

After recently introducing a 2TB My Passport portable hard drive with USB 3.0 for PC users, Western Digital today announced the 2TB My Passport Studio, its first portable storage drive of such large capacity dedicated for Mac users. It works with Apple Time Machine for streamlined data backup, but offers two FireWire 800 ports and one USB 2.0 port instead of the much faster, but also much more expensive, Thunderbolt.

The My Passport Studio drive features a 15mm 5400 RPM hard drive inside and its 2TB storage capacity is enough for about 400,000 photos, 240 hours of video or 500,000 songs. The drive is bus-powered, freeing it from the need of an additional power cable, and its two FireWire 800 ports allow for daisy-chaining hard drives.

Its huge capacity and portability is perfect for photography and video professionals that need a convenient backup solution for both in studio and on location. The minimalist all-metal casing of the My Passport Studio also aesthetically complements any Mac setup. The drive is available now priced at $299.99.

[via MarketWatch]

Seagate GoFlex Satellite update adds simultaneous WiFi streaming and web

Chris Davies — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:04:54 +0000

Seagate has released an update to its GoFlex Satellite WiFi-enabled external drive and its companion iOS and Android apps, adding support for simultaneously connecting via WiFi to the portable HDD and to a separate data network. Announced last May, the GoFlex Satellite is a 500GB drive positioned as a way to offload data from your smartphone and tablet, while still being able to stream it easily. However, until now using the WiFi connection meant your phone or tablet was unable to also connect to a home or office WiFi network.

The new firmware – and the apps – changes that; a new WiFi icon has been added to the GoFlex Satellite apps and the browser-based interface, which allows you to have both connections active. Meanwhile there’s also an increase on the number of simultaneously-connected users, now up to eight at a time (or five if encryption is enabled). The GoFlex Satellite can stream up to three HD-quality videos simultaneously.

Battery life is also improved, thanks to some pre-emptive caching that automatically downloads the current file to whatever device you’re watching it on; Seagate previously quoted up to 5hrs of runtime on a single charge. That can be toggled off, however, if space is at a premium.

There’s also now DLNA streaming support, allowing you to access the multimedia content on the Satellite drive from a smart TV or other device. The new firmware is available here, and the apps for iOS and Android are available in the App Store and Play Market respectively.