With the new and much faster USB 3.0 port now available on many computers and notebooks, Apricorn has unveiled a new version of its Padlock that uses the new speedy port. The drive supports a PIN number that ranges anywhere from 6 to 16 digits and five different numbers can be assigned to various users. Encryption keys and PIN numbers are never exposed to the host system and are protected with a cryptographic algorithm.

The drive uses 256 bit AES-XT hardware encryption that is FIPS PUB 197 validated. The drive also has encryption circuitry that is sealed in epoxy to prevent the removal of the electronics to access the data. The drives are available in 1 TB to 3 TB capacities with prices ranging from $239-$369.

[via EverythngUSB]

Dropbox also offers a $20 per month plan for 100GB of space. Google Drive is the culmination of “G Drive” rumors and plans dating back several years, with the much-tipped service originally expected to debut in 2007 but failing to materialize.

Drive will contain documents, photos and videos, and allow users to share their files via a download link rather than send the content directly through email or similar. There will also be Google Drive apps for mobile devices, it’s suggested, for uploading photos and video direct to the cloud store.

Google has declined to comment on the rumored service, but online storage is a relatively small step from the company’s existing product platform. Users are already offered free Gmail accounts, Documents stores, Google Music for audio uploads, and Picasa photo and video galleries, each accommodating several gigabytes of content. Corralling those under a single banner would be no great leap, though Google would likely come under increased attention over the possibility of users uploading copyrighted content.

[via Android Community]

Seagate is predicting the shortage of hard drives by the end of 2012 is likely to be about 150 million units. Computerworld reports that Seagate’s prediction is in line with estimates from research firms such as Gartner. Analysts have said all along that the biggest impact of the hard drive shortage wouldn’t be felt until this year.

The flooding in Thailand already had a significant impact on shipments for Seagate in 2011. When the company reported its quarterly earnings, shipments were down 4% from the same quarter of 2010, and the reason cited was component shortages due to the flood. With the shortage becoming more significant this year, we could see prices for computer systems increase as well as prices for retail packaged hard drives increase. I still wonder if we may see more transitioning to solid-state drives that are readily available, even though they’re more expensive and tend to offer less storage space than traditional hard drives.

[via Computerworld]

This solution for businesses includes such enterprise features as RAID 1 and video surveillance IP camera support. You can replace your hard drives for disaster recovery on your own with this newest move by Iomega, and there’s an app called Iomega Link that’ll allow you to manage your network on your iPhone or iPad remotely. This product has VMWare and XenServer certification for virtual desktop implementation, and the ix2 NAS works with your Windows Active Directory Service as well – iSCSI storage is also included here.

There are one whole heck of a lot of options when it comes to purchasing different components for this solution. There’s first a $199.99 completely diskless model. That’s as inexpensive you can get for starting this environment up for yourself. Then there’s partially-populated (with one drive) models available at $249.99 for 1TB, $349.99 for 2TB, and $449.99 for 3TB. For a completely populated (two drive) model, you’ll be dropping $419.99 for 2TB, $579.99 for 4TB, and $769.99 for 6TB. This setup is also planned for late February for a general release.

Traditional storage methods apparently need millions of atoms to storage the bits and bytes that make up our data. The new IBM breakthrough can store that data with only 12 little atoms needed. The new technique uses ferromagnetism and might lead to smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient devices in the future. No one really knew how many atoms were needed to build magnetic memory structures that were reliable. IBM has now found that magic number.

The problem in the past was that using atoms to store data introduced issues with the neighboring bits affecting each other. IBM had to make a breakthrough in controlling the interaction between bits. The trick was to atomically engineer twelve atoms antiferromagnetically coupled. The atoms could store a bit of data for multiple hours at low temperatures. The tech has a long way to go before it lands in your computer, but this is a very interesting breakthrough.

[via TGDaily]

The Powerline 500 Nano (XAVB51010) provides consumers a simple plug-and-play networking solution when connecting a single device that converts a standard electrical wall outlet into a high-speed network connection. To connect multiple devices in a room, NETGEAR offers a new N900 Video and Gaming 4-Port WiFi Adapter (WNCE4004) that can simultaneously connect to up to four wired devices to your WiFi router.

The Universal Dual Band WiFi Range Extender (WN2500RP) boosts dual band WiFi coverage in home networks to allow users to enjoy fast WiFi speeds at longer distances. It extends both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, reducing WiFi interference. It’s easy to setup, no need for a CD or Ethernet cable, and it’s ideal for homes with a mix of high bandwidth video streaming devices sch as Smart Tvs and network DVRs.

The Media Storage Router (WNDR4700) is a high-speed wireless router that offers 2TB of hard drive storage that makes it simple and secure to store and stream HD content and other media over a high-speed WiFi network.

Additionally, NETGEAR is debuting the N900 Wireless Dual Band USB Adapter (WNDA4100) that provides a high speed connection between a notebook or desktop computer and a wireless network. It delivers up to 450 Mbps WiFi speeds and complements the N900 Dual Band Wireless Router (WNDR4500) and the previously mentioned Media Storage Router.

Capacities are expected to range in size from 128GB, through 256GB and 512GB, topping out at a full terabyte for those with high speed expectations and bulging wallets. According to OCZ, Thunderbolt’s low latency and accurate time synchronization make for a drive that can be used for pro-level A/V editing, working with source files saved directly on the external storage.

From our time with the LaCie Little Big Disk SSD we know that’s a realistic prospect, but the Lightfoot has the benefit of being more pocket-sized and suited for mobile users. No word on how much it will cost when it launches, but OCZ expects it to go on sale later this year.

[via PC Perspective]

The StoreJet Cloud is a wireless HDD that has 64GB of storage inside. The MSRP for the 64GB version is pegged at $300, which is steep for such a small amount of storage. A free app goes with the device to allow your iOS gear to connect to it. Presumably, an app will also connect the Android devices in the future too.

It can also connect to your PC using WiFi. The idea is that you can shoot content from your PC, Tablet, and smartphone over to the StoreJet Cloud rather than leaving it on your gadgets. The drive can also stream media directly from internal storage. You could shoot a video with your smartphone and then stream it to your PC with no wires. There is no word on the exact launch date at this point.

[via WirelessGoodness]

According to Wired’s Gadget Lab, Dropbox users have have already logged quite a few complaints over in the Dropbox forums. For example, some users may take so many pictures that they “don’t want them all clogging up their limited cloud storage”. This new feature also adds another level of complexity to the Dropbox app itself, when it’s already relatively simple to have a third-party app store chosen photos inside your Dropbox folder. On the flip side of things, anything that makes photo backup easier can only be a good thing, right? Consider it a belated Christmas present from the guys at Dropbox.

The test builds are now available directly from the company itself, although users have been notified that they should probably back up their cloud-stored content beforehand. Readers, tell us if you like the new feature, and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

[via Wired Gadget Lab]

Hardware

Pogoplug used to be known for its bright pink “internet devices”; now the company has matured into a far subtler black box with a discrete blue logo that doubles as an indicator light. It’s considerably smaller than the original design, though you pay for that in connectivity: just one USB 2.0 port instead of five. You still get a gigabit ethernet port, but whereas the AC adapter was integrated previously there’s now a wall-wart plug instead.

What you do get differently is a full-sized SD card slot on the side, meaning digital photographers can instantly get their pictures and videos onto the network. Those who have more external drives can step up to the Pogoplug Series 4, $20 more than the $79.95 Pogoplug Mobile, which adds a pair of USB 3.0 ports and a SATA/USM connection. The original Pogoplug v2 – now known as the Classic – remains on sale at $49.95.

Setup is indecently straightforward: plug in the power, hook the Pogoplug Mobile to your router via the included ethernet cable, and then open up the company’s site to register a free account. That also gets you 5GB of free online storage, which is handy for offsite backups of your most important files. Pogoplug reckon you can do it all in sixty seconds, and as long as you’ve got a spare ethernet port on your router and a spare mains socket nearby, they’re probably not too far off.

After that, it’s simply a case of choosing what storage you’d like to use and plugging it in. Any USB drive should work, with mobile drives being powered from the port as usual, and you can have both a drive and an SD card connected simultaneously.

Software

Pogoplug Mobile is most easily accessed through the browser interface, either across your home network or remotely. You can, however, mount the volumes as drives in OS X and Windows for more straightforward drag/drop use. The internet-based UI offers access to files, as usual, and various multimedia sections, but Pogoplug has also released the Pogoplug Browser app for PC and Mac. That too shows files and folders, as well as gallery, jukebox and cinema sections that automatically pull out all the multimedia files on your storage and present them in a simple manner.

Files to be added to the Pogoplug can be dragged and dropped straight to the Pogoplug Browser app, and there’s sharing support as well to make firing off photos or other content via email or other routes easy. You can also set up an auto-sync folder that automatically copies any files saved to it over to a dedicated folder on the Pogoplug storage.

It’s the mobile apps that the company is really pushing with this new model, however. Versions for iPhone/iPod touch, iPad and Android are available, each a free download, with generally the same remote access options as the desktop software. You can browse through files/folders, stream photos, music and video, or download multimedia directly to the local storage on your handset. Conversely, you can set the apps to automatically upload photos and videos taken by the phone to your Pogoplug Mobile storage, meaning they’re ready and waiting when you get home. It’s a little like Apple’s iCloud, only with cross-platform support for both iOS and Android devices.

Performance

The bottleneck of the Pogoplug Mobile’s data-transferring abilities will inevitably be the USB 2.0 connection; factor in the inherent shortcomings of even 802.11n wireless networks and it’s inevitable that for most users access speeds will be significantly curtailed in comparison to a directly-connected drive. Still, we were able to watch an HD video stored on a USB 2.0 drive and streaming over an 802.11n WiFi connection to our laptop.

On the move, the mobile apps are very much dependent on your connection – both the download speed of your mobile network and the upload speed of the broadband connection the Pogoplug Mobile itself is connected to. Whereas you can generally rely on a commercially-hosted cloud storage service having a fat upload pipe, most domestic upload speeds are a fraction of the download speed.

That’s not so great an issue for accessing the odd file, browsing a photo gallery or even streaming music, but video could be a trickier issue. The mobile apps offer a choice of watching the original format clip – as long as you have a suitable playback app to handle the codec – as well as an “optimized” version that the Pogoplug Mobile converts into a more mobile-friendly format. The downside to that is the time and space required to actually do that transcoding; you can set it to automatically convert all video or do so on demand, the former obviously occupying space on your hard-drive, and the latter generally proving too slow when handling 720p/1080p original files to watch the clips when we actually wanted to.

Wrap-Up

Compared to regular cloud-storage services, the Pogoplug Mobile costs more upfront – the $79.95 unit itself, and then whatever storage you choose to plug in – but, with no subscription fees, less over time. If you’ve already got a USB drive you’re halfway there; alternatively, there are dual-HDD USB drives that you could plug in if you want some hardware redundancy. Since the Pogoplug Mobile itself is fanless, if you opt for an SD card then you’d have a silent, cool-running storage device that’s easily hidden away.

Alternatively, rely on USB drives for regular storage and then SD cards for when you want to quickly review the photos you’ve just taken on a tablet or phone which lacks a full-sized memory card slot (in other words most of them). It’s certainly convenient, as is dumping all your photos, music and video onto a single drive and streaming them around the home, rather than maintaining copies on each computer and gadget.

Those who can put up with a little noise and who aren’t bothered by SD compatibility might choose to grab the Pogoplug Classic, saving money and getting some extra USB ports in the process. For most mainstream users, though, the Pogoplug Mobile ticks most of the important boxes: ease of setup, ease of use and low cost of ownership.

Inside the 1:18 scale replica of the SLS is a 2.5-inch 500GB HDD. Generally, the cars that Flash Rods use start out as toys like Hot Wheels cars or other brands. This particular SLS version has a hood that opens and the gull wing doors actually work.

The USB port for connecting the thing to your computer is set into the back of the car. You can order one of these up in Black, Red, or Silver for $250. That’s not such a bad price if you are a big fan of cool storage devices. This would certainly look better sitting on your desk than a normal external storage device.

[via EverythingUSB]

“Samsung employees joining Seagate include a number of senior managers and design-engineering employees from Samsung’s Korea facility,” the two companies have confirmed, “who will focus on development of small form-factor products for the mobile compute market.” The exact nature of those SFF products is unclear at this stage.

Hard-drives currently found in Samsung’s line-up will, in some cases, continue to be available with the same branding for the next 12 months. Those with Samsung drives still under warranty will continue to be covered for that period, of course.

However, moving forward Seagate has slashed its warranty period on certain drives, a shift it describes as keeping the company’s offering in line with what the rest of the market promises. Some models have been trimmed down to a single year, while others have been curtailed to three years.

The warranties will vary in length depending on the drive families in use. The Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives will have a 3-year warranty. The Barracuda and Barracuda Green drives will have a 1-year warranty. The Barracuda XT and Momentus XT will have a 3-year warranty. The 2.5-inch Momentus HDDs will offer 1-year warranties.

The SV35 series for video surveillance will get a 20-year warranty as will the Pipeline HD Mini and Pipeline HD. Seagate notes that mission critical and retail HDDs will not be affected by the warranty change.

Seagate says it is standardizing warranty terms “to be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries. By aligning to current industry standards Seagate can continue to focus its investments on technology innovation and unique product features that drive value for our customers rather than holding long-term reserves for warranty returns.”

[via The Register]

Although Intel is best known for its processor line-up, with chips for everything from performance desktops through notebook sand ultraportables and into low-power netbooks and embedded devices, the company also has a solid-state drive division. Intel’s SSDs and NAND flash storage has received positive reviews in general, and found its way into several enterprise data centers, though relatively high prices still mean HDDs dominate the storage marketplace.

A shortage of HDDs, however, could help turn that around. “So far we have not seen a big uptake in demand for SSDs” Smith conceded this week, ZDNet reports, going on to suggest that “I do expect that to happen.”

“I think that it will be one of the ways that the industry helps offset some of the HDD shortage; and I also think if you go out towards the end of 2012, and you think about notebook computer at the end of 2012, which is very thin, very light, very power efficient, Ultrabook class machine, SSDs become really important in that.” Stacy Smith, CFO, Intel

Intel’s most obvious current strategy for driving SSD adoption is the ultrabook segment, a rebranding of the ultraportable notebook category that mandates such basic features as pairing one of the company’s own processors with solid-state storage, housed in a sub-0.8-inch thick chassis. Several manufacturers have risen to the challenge, including Toshiba, Acer and Lenovo, though so far pricing has kept them out of the mainstream.

“The worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages” Intel concludes, with a similar dearth of drives impacting Q1 2012 as well. In fact, any turnaround isn’t expected until later in the first half of next year.

Intel had previously been expecting fourth-quarter revenues to reach $14.7bn, give or take another half a billion. That predication has been scythed down to $13.7bn, plus or minus $300m, on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis.

The processor company isn’t the only one hurting from the hard-drive shortages, mind. Both Google and Facebook are believed to be struggling to meet their own respective demand for storage, according to HP.

There’s a SATA III 6Gbps connection, and speed-freaks should probably opt for the 240GB model if they want the best combination of performance. As the following table – using Super Talent’s own data – suggests, that model leads the TeraNova pack with a 540 MB/s sequential read rate and 520 MB/s sequential write rate. Still, even the lowest write rate is a healthy 480 MB/s.

All that speed will come in handy not just for booting up and shutting down your system – though it’s worth noting that an SSD-equipped notebook can be dramatically faster to load than an HDD-based counterpart – but for storage-intensive apps. Video and audio processing, image editing and the like are all improved using an SSD.

The Super Talent TeraNova begins shipping today, in 60GB, 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities. Pricing is yet to be confirmed

When the user has a machine with three drives inside there will be a 3-way mirror solution. The solution allows the user to have the same data on all of the drives. That way if one of your drives fails the other is ready to run right away. The three-way solution will keep you going even if two of the drives fails.

Other things that we can glean from the screen shots include that the user can tell the computer how much capacity the Storage Space can have. The users will be able to assign a drive letter to their storage drives and name the spaces as well.

[via Neowin]

The tiny SSD measures in at 50.95 x 30 x 2.80 mm and weighs a scant 8g. The little SSD will be used in Samsung’s own performance notebook line. The PM830 comes in 128GB, 64GB, and 32GB capacities in addition to the 256GB capacity. The SSD is very fast with up to 500MB/s sequential reads and up to 260MB/s sequential writes.

That makes the SSD six times faster than a traditional HDD. The SSD also features 256-bit AES encryption to protect data stored on the drive. The small drive uses the SATA 3 6Gbps interface and will be available soon. It’s not clear if the drive will be offered as an upgrade or only to OEMs.

While the OSZ Octane has been promised to achieve read / write speeds of 560MB/s for reading and 400MB/s for writing, it appears that reviewers have found this to be not all that far off from the truth. Have a peek at the specifications in this new OCZ offering first, then see what the real deal is.

OCZ Octane Specs
128GB (OCT1-25SAT3-128G) $199.99 ($1.56/GB)
256GB (OCT1-25SAT3-256G) $369.99 ($1.45/GB)
512GB (OCT1-25SAT3-512G) $879.99 ($1.72/GB)
1TB (OCT1-25SAT3-1TG)

• 512GB Formatted Capacity: 476.94GB
• Indilinx Everest platform
• Up to 560MB/s Read (1TB Capacity)
• Up to 400MB/s Write (512GB and 1TB Capacity)
• 512MB Onboard Cache
• 25nm Intel Synchronous NAND
• TRIM Support
• SATA 6Gb/s interface
• NCQ Support up to 32 Queue Depth
• 9.5mm, 2.5″ form factor
• Dynamic & Static Wear-Leveling, and Background Garbage Collection
• 8 channels with up to 16-way Interleaving
• Power Consumption: 1.98W active, 1.15W standby

Let’s have a look at a few different perspectives here, each from different sides of the internets, starting with PC Perspective’s Allyn Malventano who comments on both the contents of the package and the size along with a couple results in a chart below:

“The Octane comes packaged like many other SSD’s out there, with a few extra presents like the “My SSD is faster than your HDD” sticker seen with Vertex units. … 1TB – in a 2.5″ form factor SSD! HDD’s hit this mark not too long ago, and while a 1TB Octane will most certainly cost a pretty penny, there’s something to be said for SSD’s so rapidly catching up to HDD’s for a given form factor. … Octane did well in sequential transfers with HDTach, but remember this particular test hits drives with a string of sequential (QD=1) IO, a notorious weakness of SandForce controllers.” – Malventano

Next see what Kevin OBrien of Storage Review had to say on another synthetic benchmark test by the name of Iometer, with the single chart showing off a Workstation 4K model profile, with results below:

“Our last section of synthetic benchmarks looks at the performance of each drive in enterprise profiles, including database, webserver, file server, and workstation. One of the main benefits of this test over other synthetic benchmarks is the mixed workload with both read and write transfers as well as varied transfer sizes at the same time. These are also scaled from a queue depth of 1 to 128 to fully stress the drive in a demanding environment. As you can see below the OCZ Octane stayed close to the group in the lower queue depths, but couldn’t scale up as high under a multi-threaded workload; although it did manage to stay above the Crucial m4 in all but the webserver test.” – OBrien

Then of course no review series based mainly in benchmarks would be complete without a visit by Anandtech’s Anand Lal Shimpi himself. Check out Anand’s review for a rather in-depth and interesting story on the history of OCZ if you like, otherwise just read this snippet on how well the drive works with their heavy workload test:

“When put to the test the Octane does not disappoint. It’s within a couple MB/s of the SF-2281 based Vertex 3, and effectively one of the fastest 6Gbps drives on the market today. I included the old Indilinx Barefoot based Corsair Nova V128 to show just how far Indilinx has come here.” – Anand

Look like a winner to you?

Synology spent time making the new NAS device quiet so it won’t bother people in the home. According to the firm, the device puts out 18.3dB of sound. It is also looks to be greener with power consumption of 17.6W under full load and when in hibernation mode it uses 5.5W of power.

This new version of the device uses DiskStation Manager 3.2 as the OS. This is a new versions of the OS made for ease of use and to be intuitive with a web-based interface. The device can also stream video to game consoles and more. The DS212j is shipping globally right now.

Hardware

Netgear’s chassis is sober but sturdy, with a blocky metal casing that’s larger than some rivals thanks to its use of regular 3.5-inch desktop hard-drives rather than smaller – generally more expensive and lower capacity – 2.5-inch mobile drives. Up front there’s a USB 2.0 port with a dedicated “backup” button that pulls the content of any removable storage plugged in off and to a preset folder, along with a power button, activity and drive lights.

As the Duo name suggests, this particular ReadyNAS supports a pair of HDDs which are hot-swappable. Storage can be set up as either RAID 0 “striped” for speed without redundancy, or RAID 1 “mirrored” for data redundancy but half the capacity. However, extra capacity can be added using the two USB 3.0 ports on the back of the ReadyNAS, a welcome update over the more typical USB 2.0 connections.

Inside, Netgear has updated the processor to a 1.6GHz Marvell chip paired with 256MB of RAM. The company reckons that makes the Duo v2 twice as fast as its predecessor, with file transfers and higher-bitrate media streaming each said to benefit from the extra performance.

Netgear will offer three versions of the ReadyNAS Duo v2. Cheapest is the empty, barebones shell, intended for those wanting to use their own hard-drives, and priced at $199. Then there are 1TB and 2TB versions – each with a single drive – at $269 and $299 respectively. Our review unit was supplied with two 1TB Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 7K1000.C SATA 3.0Gb/s drives, spinning at 7,200 rpm with 32MB of cache.

Software

Backup isn’t really sexy, and so a home NAS needs to be easy to use if owners are going to stick with it through not only setup but taking advantage of the various value-adds Netgear and others throw in. The ReadyNAS Duo v2 gets a double-whammy: Netgear has updated its RAIDiator 5 setup software to reduce complexity, and throws in a three year warranty too. For the first 90 days users get access to 24/7 customer service to help them set the NAS up; after that, three years of 24/7 support and hardware replacement is $99. If that seems too rich, three years of hardware replacement alone – within seven business days of a fault being diagnosed – is $29.

We didn’t need to call for help, however, and we doubt most reasonably confident home users would need to either. Once the ReadyNAS boots for the first time, a simple browser-based setup wizard walks you through formatting your drives in either RAID 0 or 1, and then drops you in a straightforward GUI.

As well as access to documentation and Netgear’s online support, RAIDiator 5 consists of various panes for setting up user accounts and shared folders, monitoring the “health” of the NAS including temperature and fan-speed, and checking which “Add-ons” have been installed. For most, the latter will consist of ReadyNAS Remote, which allows you to use Netgear’s iOS and Android apps to log in from your smartphone, browse through folders and download content, and ReadyNAS Photos II, for hosting your own Flickr alternative directly from the NAS.

The Remote app works well, though since you’re accessing your files from your own “personal” cloud – i.e. through your home broadband connection – the speed at which they filter through to your smartphone (or indeed the standalone OS X and Windows software) depends on your home upload speed. That’s less of an issue for photos and most documents, but may make accessing video and higher-bitrate music files a struggle. Still, being able to remotely grab a missing file while you’re at the office or in a meeting can be a very useful thing.

ReadyNAS Photos II bills itself as a free, more controllable alternative to Flickr: since the storage is all on your end there are no hosting fees, and it’s entirely private. Only those you share the link with can access them, and there are various options for limiting visibility to those with accounts or opening them to unregistered guests.

Finally there’s native UPnP/DLNA streaming support, meaning the ReadyNAS Duo v2 can send multimedia across your network to an Xbox 360 or PS3, your digital TV set-top box streamer, iTunes, SONOS kit or Logitech’s Squeezbox platform. Netgear has over 100 different Add-ons – some of its own creation, others from third-party developers – to download, allowing owners to enhance the capabilities of their NAS. Power users may prefer the more advanced “desktop” layout of Synology’s DSM software, which allows multiple add-ons and other windows to be seen simultaneously, but home users will likely find the simple panes of the Netgear interface easily navigable.

Performance

We started off testing the ReadyNAS Duo v2 with a single drive installed. Transferring a single 5GB file to and from the system saw 36.5 MB/s write rates and 100 MB/s read rates. Transferring 5GB worth of 20MB files saw write speeds stay the same, at 36.5 MB/s, but read rates dropped to 85.6 MB/s.

We then installed the second drive in a RAID 1 “mirroring” array, which basically provides drive redundancy. With the 5GB single file, write speed rose slightly to 39 MB/s, though read speed dipped to 94.4 MB/s. For the 5GB of 20MB files, writes took place at 36.2 MB/s and reads at 84.8 MB/s.

Finally, we used the two drives as a RAID 0 “striped” array, which bypasses data redundancy in the name of speed. In this setup, the 5GB single file wrote at 41.3 MB/s and read at 90 MB/s, while the 5GB of 20MB files wrote at 40 MB/s and read at 79.4 MB/s.

Given the relative price and capacity of 3.5-inch drives (compared to 2.5-inch drives) we’d recommend most home users opt for RAID 1 with as big a pair of drives as they can afford. That will provide the best balance of data security and speed.

Wrap-Up

Persuading home users to invest in backup can be difficult, and so the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2′s sub-$200 – albeit drive-free – sets the NAS off to a good start. The company’s home user focus extends to the straightforward setup and the reassurance of the helpdesk support, and those looking for more sophisticated functionality, such as remote access, can have that too thanks to the iOS and Android apps.

The only real potential pain-point is the speed, with the ReadyNAS Duo v2 falling behind what we saw from the Synology DiskStation DS211 (With Diskstation V3.x). Still, Synology’s barebones DS211 is around $100 more expensive than the Netgear, and for general backup and media access many home users won’t particularly notice the difference.

Compromises, then, but acceptable ones when you consider the overall package. Small business and more advanced home users may want to look elsewhere where more expensive NAS offer stronger performance, but for its balance of usability and accessibility the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2 hits the consumer spot.

Each accepts 3.5-inch desktop hard-drives, and comes with a front USB 2.0 port (with a dedicated copy button) along with two USB 3.0 ports on the rear for adding extra external storage. Although most home users are unlikely to have the network bandwidth to take advantage of USB 3.0 versus USB 2.0 data rates, Netgear tells us the new NAS should be its entry-level options for at least 12-18 months, and expects home networking speeds to catch up somewhat in that period. A single gigabit ethernet port hooks the ReadyNAS to your router.

Netgear has refreshed its setup wizard and browser-based UI, RAIDiator 5, and now claims it’s less than eight steps from plugging in to being up and running. Up to 96 MBps read rates and 60 MBps write rates are claimed – for real-world performance testing, check out our ReadyNAS Duo v2 review – with hot-swappable drive bays allowing you to replace a faulty drive or add a new one without powering down the NAS. The X-RAID2 software can automatically expand your RAID volume if a new drive is added, with no downtime.

Netgear is particularly keen on its ReadyNAS Photos II app, which basically allows you to turn your “personal cloud” into a private Flickr or Picasa. Custom URLs can be created, to invite friends and family to view certain galleries, or you can throw open the door to public access. Because you’re hosting it, not somebody else’s servers, you can offer full resolution pictures – something many sites demand subscription fees for – though, as ReadyNAS senior product marketing manager Matt Pahnke explained to us, what viewers actually see will depend on their device and connection.

“Photos II automatically optimizes resolution based on the network speed of the consuming device” Pahnke told us. “The goal here is to provide all users with an efficient way to enjoy the photos stored on the ReadyNAS without having to endure lengthy download times. If a user with a sub-optimal connection would like to view the photos at a higher resolution, they do have the option of overriding the optimization.”

There’s also a Remote Access app, available for Windows, OS X, Android and iOS, allowing for browsing and downloading over a secure VPN connection to your ReadyNAS at home. In the future, Pahnke confirmed, Netgear intends to add support for its Netgear Vault cloud storage service (already available for the company’s more advanced NAS) so that ReadyNAS owners will be able to mirror some or all of their content in true cloud backup.

The ReadyNAS Duo v2 will be priced at $199 as a diskless drive, or at $269 pre-fitted with a single 1TB drive. A version with a single 2TB drive will be $299. As for the ReadyNAS NV+ v2, that will be $399 diskless, $499 for a 2TB version and $599 for a 4TB version. Netgear says that, while the cost of hard-drives may rise as supplies grow temporarily scarce, it has secured storage to cater for estimated demand this quarter and will only be passing on its own increased costs, nothing more (the diskless models will remain the same price). They’re all available from today.

Seagate has axed all 5400 rpm HDDs and is now going with nothing but 7200 rpm desktop offerings. Seagate points to reduced power consumption in the 7200 rpm drive market allowing it to leave the 5400 rpm units behind. I wonder if the flooding and HDD shortage we are facing had something to do with this too. The 7200 rpm HDD is the more popular choice so loosing the 7200 would free up more space for the popular choice.

New read/write tech that allows more data to be stored on a single platter is where the power savings comes from. The 5400 rpm drives will apparently still be offered in the mobile category. The new Seagate OptiCache tech also helps to improve performance in Seagate HDDs with a 45% boost in performance compared to older tech.

[via Computerworld]

The DS212 is aimed at the home and business workgroup user. Both of the devices have read speeds of over 109 MB/s and write speeds over 54 MB/sec. Both of the devices use a RAID 1 configuration and have USB 3.0 ports. The NAS devices also have drive noise damping features with noise output of 19.8 dB.

Both of the devices also have a SD card slot that allows a plug and save function for memory cards. The difference between the two units is that the DS212+ adds a single eSATA port as another connectivity option. Both drives support hot swap storage and need no more than 19W of power in operation and under 8W in hibernation mode. Both models are shipping globally at undisclosed pricing.

Both of the SSDs use the Indilinx Everest-bases controller. Using that controller platform the SSDs can deliver up to 560MB/s of bandwidth and 45,000 IOPS. The series also has proprietary mapping algorithms that allows for steady mixed-workload performance. The SSDs also use the Indilinx NDurance tech to increase the lifespan of the NAND.

The Octane has a dual-core CPU for the controller with up to a 512MB cache. The SSDs come in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacity. The SATA 3.0 version of the Octane is good for 560MB/s read and 400MB/s write performance. The Octane-S2 on the SATA 2.0 port is good for read up to 275MB/s and write at up to 265MB/s. Write access times are as low as 0.06ms. The line will launch next month at undisclosed pricing.

This new unit will be just under $500 USD and with the ability to begin with any amount of storage, scaling up an option as a person’s usage grows. The DS712+ allows you multiple redundancy options and the two-bay server will support RAID 1 or Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) for single disk redundancy. Dual NICs will allow for inexpensive MPIO support, SHR will allow users scaling their storage to do so quickly when adding disks in the DX510, and the entire DS712+ runs DiskStation Manager (DSM) software.

DSM software is currently on version 3.2 and supports Mac and Time Machine for OS X Lion. Your DiskStation will include support for joining LDAP domains including simply to act as a lightweight LDAP server. Alongside this is Package Manager which allows you to add packages only when you need them, and users can now browse, install, and run add-ons from inside the DSM. Packages can be installed including VPN server, Syslog Server, and now 3rd party packages as well!

Synology rounds the whole package off with the following features:

Other business-friendly features include:
• Support for ADS domains up to 100,000 users and groups
• ACL support for granular file-level permissions (using local or ADS users and groups)
• iSCSI support with MPIO, MC/S, and SPC-3
• Virtualization support (supports VMware, Citrix Xen, and Hyper-V)

You can find all the places where you can pick up the SD712+ by heading over to Synology.com and tapping the correct region for where you’re living.

Seagate says that its plants are all functional and there are no logistical issues with its workers reaching plants. However, Seagate is warning that there are disruptions in the supply chain for the parts that it requires to make the HDDs it sells. With flooding in the region ongoing Seagate can’t predict the severity of the slow down at this time.

Due to this Seagate is expecting HDD supplies to be constrained through the quarter. All of Seagate workers in the region are reportedly safe. A shortage of HDDs will drive the price of the HDDs available up and likely lead to increased prices for devices that use HDDs for storage over the coming months. Seagate will talk more about the situation on October 20 during its quarterly conference call.

WD says that it is working with its suppliers to maximize its current throughput and parts availability to meet the demands of customers. WD notes that in the quarter that ended on July 1 2011 it shipped 54 million HDDs from facilities located in Thailand and Malaysia. The facilities in Thailand were responsible for 60% of that amount.

WD reports that the flooding is affecting the regions infrastructure including transportation and utilities and this has resulted in the inundation of some facilities and employee homes. The company does note that 37,000 of its workers in that area have been deemed safe. The facilities in Thailand are operational, but production has been suspended to protect workers and the facility from water. Updates will be offered on the investment call to be held October 19.

Other ports include stereo audio output, an S/PDIF digital optical audio output and a USB 2.0 connection which allows you to treat the GoFlex Cinema as an external drive and dump media straight onto it. Meanwhile the drive can also be used standalone with digital cameras and camcorders, pulling your content straight across ready for playback.

Format support includes Xvid HD; AVI; MPEG-2 (VOB/ISO); MPEG-1; MPEG-4 (Xvid); AVC HD; H.264; TS/TP/M2T; MOV; M2TS; MKV; FLV; VC-1; and WMV9 video, along with ASF; MP3; WAV; AAC; FLAC; WMA; LPCM; WMA Pro; Dolby® Digital; and DTS audio. There’s also support for up to 20-megapixel images and subtitles.

The Seagate GoFlex Cinema is available now in Europe, priced at €99 ($136) for the 1TB model, €129 ($177) for the 2TB model, and €179 ($246) for the 3TB model. No word on North American pricing or availability at this stage.

The storage device connects to your computer via USB 3.0 port and has a data rate of up to 5 Gbps making it perfect for lots of photos and video backups. The drive inside the unit uses 256-bit AES full disk encryption as well. That means the content you put on the storage device is automatically encrypted and protected from loss or theft.

The DriveStation Velocity will work with USB 2.0 ports as well. The TurboPC Ex software also helps to increase the speed the drive handles data. In June, Buffalo Technology unveiled a MiniStation Plus portable HDD for on the go data storage. Pricing and availability are unknown at this time.

The M2P SSDs come in 128GB and 256GB flavors and are the second series of SSDs that Plextor has announced this year. The SSDs have random read speed of 70,000 IOPS and a random write speed of 65,000 IOPS. The controller chip inside the SSD is a Marvell 88SS9174 and the SSD supports SATA III 6Gb/s interfaces.

Plextor claims that the SSDs have the lowest average annual failure rate in the industry. The SSD bundles come with free upgrade software and a 3.5-inch bracket for putting the SSD inside a desktop. Plextor will be launching the M2P line in the UK this month with the 128GB version selling for about £200 inc VAT and the 256GB version selling for £383 inc VAT.

ioFusion says that the new ioDrive2 has nearly symmetrical read and write access with the best low queue depth performance in the class. The low latency for mixed workloads and 15 microsecond write latency make the drive very fast. The ioDrive2 is capable of over 700,000 read IOPS and over 900,000 write IOPS.

The maximum capacity that can be fit inside the little PCIe SSD is 2.4TB making it fast and high capacity. The new drive also has a self healing feature called Adaptive FlashBack that has complete chip-level fault tolerance. That feature allows the ioMemory to repair itself after a single chip or multiple chip failure. The drive has support for all major operating systems. The ioDrive2 will come in 365 GB, 785 GB, 1205 GB and 2.4 TB starting in late November with pricing starting at $5,950.

The drive is the intercontinental Ballistic Design Missile allowing it to be called an ICDM sounding close enough to ICBM to keep the design working. Obviously, the design of this missile is the draw. The packaging doesn’t even appear to say how much storage is actually inside.

The nose cone comes off to reveal the USB connector. The downside I see is that if you use a thin notebook the fins may keep the drive from plugging in and sitting flat. It’s cool though and I would bet it has a small amount of storage. It doesn’t appear to be available for purchase at this time.

[via Technabob]

“By selectively storing the block of data in the flash memory, the hybrid storage device can address the sensitivity of the HDD to changes in the environmental state of the hybrid storage device. For example, if the change in the environmental state information results in an operating state of the HDD in which failure or shut down of the HDD is to occur during the write operation, or if there is an imminent risk of data loss during the write operation, the write operation can be completed using the flash memory. Therefore, this storage technique can increase the reliability of the hybrid storage device” Apple patent application

As Apple describes it, the hybrid drive could quickly save data to the flash section if it detected it needed to suddenly lock down the platters such as during a fall. Alternatively, if drive temperature exceeded a preset “safe” level, the platters could spin down and the flash storage be used as a temporary cache until they had cooled once more.

Hybrid hard-drive technology isn’t new, and several manufacturers already have products that pair spinning platters and solid-state memory. Perhaps best known is Seagate’s Momentus XT – which we reviewed all the way back in July 2010 - though the primary purpose of the combined storage is usually expressed as a matter of speed.

That would also be a benefit of Apple’s system, the company recognizes – “the external device may be able to improve performance by leveraging the relative performance capabilities of HDD and flash memory” – though it’s possible the focus is on longevity so as to suitably differentiate the patent application from prior art. Whether that will fly with the USPTO remains to be seen, but we wouldn’t be surprised if future MacBook Pro models incorporated a cost-effective balance of hybrid storage rather than the wholesale shift to expensive SSDs that some have predicted.

[via PatentlyApple; image via iFixit]

All versions are pre-loaded with the software needed to perform backups on your computer. The software used is NTI BackupNow EX with step-by-step backups to make saving your data easy. The Canvio is also able to look at the files it is backing up and suggest which to back up on the cloud rather than local storage.

Toshiba is also showing off the new Canvio Basics line with USB 3.0 and 500GB, 750GB, or 1TB capacities. The Canvio 3.0 pricing ranges from $89.99 up to $139.99 depending on capacity. The Canvio Basics 3.0 line ranges from $79.99 to $129.99. The drives are available now.

The files that are shared with the iTwin device are encrypted for protection with military-grade encryption. The iTwin has two parts that are identical and are activated by a computer with an internet connection. That allows the sharing of files between the two halves of the iTwin from any computer with a web connection.

The encryption used inside the device is AES 256-bit. The owner of the drives also gets a remote disable code that will allow the disabling of the connection if one of the iTwin devices is lost or stolen. The drives allow the use of a remote computer sort of like a personal cloud with access to all the storage that the remote system has available to it. The iTwin is available right now for $99.

The longevity of the new memory Vault is in part thanks to the storage inside that has no moving parts. I can tell you from experience that HDDs fail and that CDs can be scratched making the photos on them unreadable. SanDisk tested the Memory Vault with heat cycling and other tests to prove that it will last for up to 100 years. Inside the shiny metal enclosure is solid state storage.

The Memory Vault is offered in 8GB and 16GB capacities. That is enough space for thousands of photos and hours of HD video according to SanDisk. The Memory Vault is low priced as well at $49.99 for the 8GB version and $89.99 for the 16GB version. I think for many people looking to archive family photos that won’t be enough storage. I would like to see a much larger version in play. As it is now, you will simply have to use multiple storage devices.

The special high Endurance Technology in the NAND chosen provides SLC endurance with the value of MLC NAND inside the SSD. Intel says that its SSD 710 series MLC NAND is almost on par with the MLC NAND but costs less. The write endurance for the SSD is almost 1.1 petabytes. The SSD is for I/O starved applications and has a 4K random write performance of up to 2700 IOPS.

The SSD is also designed with security features like enhanced data loss protection and the SSD has surplus NAND flash inside for system protection in case a NAND die fails. The SSD also has 128-bit AES encryption to protect the data. Prices for the SSDs start at $649 for the 100GB SSD, the 200GB is $1,289, and the 300GB is $1,929 based on 100 unit quantities.

This lovely device was out for us to take a look at inside Pepcom’s end of summer 2011 Holiday Spectacular, a digital forest of many wonders. What you’ve got here is an external hard drive available in 2TB and 3TB configurations, both of them working with an ultra-fast 7200 RPM 3.5-inch hard drive formatted HFS+ made ready for Mac computers with no additional fixing up right out of the box. The device is also a 2.1 Amp hookup in addition to holding all your media and whatnot, this making it easy for you to plug in all your peripherals and extra mobile devices without a hassle.

As for what you can actually plug in to this mother, you’ll get two FireWire 800 ports, one USB 2.0 port, a two port integrated 2.0 hub that’ll connect you back up to your Mac device or connect to other external storage devices in a daisy-chain sort of situation. This drive also comes with one FireWire800 wire, one conversion FireWire 400-800, and one single USB 2.0 cable.

Check out what this simple and lovely looking drive is all about:

Notice the lovely LED lights up the center front of the device, four in a row. These lights let you know how much storage you’ve got left in general:

4 LEDs lit white: less than 20% capacity in use
3 LEDs white: 20-40% capacity in use
2 LEDs white: 40-60% capacity in use
1 LED white: 60-80% capacity in use
1 LED red: more than 80% capacity in use

Interesting, yes? Next you should note that this device comes with Iomega Protection Suite, Mac Edition, Iomega QuikProtect, MoxyHome Online Backup, and a free 12 month subscription to Trend Smart Surfing for Mac. The smaller of the two drives, the 2TB model, will run you $239.99, while the 3TB model will cost you $369.99. These prices are suggested US retail – you can find them immediately if not soon in your local Apple store or in various online sources.

ALSO have a crack at the rest of our hands-on videos from the event in our Pepcom Holiday Spectacular 2011 portal!

There are smaller and cheaper versions offered. Today WD has announced a new app that will allow iPhone and Android users to remotely access their files and content on the go. The app is called WD 2go and WD 2go Pro. The apps are the same with the exception that the Pro version allows you to share nay content on your drive with another person.

The basic WD 2go app allows only you to access the files on your remote cloud drive. The basic app is free on the Android Market and iTunes right now. The Pro version sells for $2.99. The Pro version also has a 4-digit pass code that locks the sharing of files. Sharing of content like documents, photos, and video using the Pro app is done via a link that can be emailed to other users.

[via Android Community]