Owners of some Western Digital external hard drives should disconnect them from the internet and probably turn them off completely, as reports of remotely wiped data continue. The drive-maker confirmed last week that some owners had seen their network-connected storage accessed unofficially and a complete reset triggered, though details on just how much people should be concerned continue to emerge.
A new study has confirmed that graphene can be used to create ultra-high density hard disk drives that offer up to ten times the amount of storage compared to current technologies. The study was published by researchers at the Cambridge Graphene Center in collaboration with teams at the University of Exeter, India, Switzerland, Singapore, and the US. While many computers are turning to solid-state storage devices today, hard drives are still widely used to store files in computers in large part because they are cheap and can store massive volumes of data.
This week the folks at Western Digital revealed their latest external WD_BLACK D30 game drive SSD. This new storage solution was made specifically to work with gaming consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, right out the gate. UPDATE: There are two WD_BLACK D30 devices, one just called D30 Game Drive SSD, the other specifically branded with the word "Xbox".
So you're in need of a bit of data storage, and you've got a drawer full of old phones. This was the situation I found myself in this past week - and I had questions. Today I'd like to share with you what I'd learned, what I think you might want to try, and which bits and pieces of this situation you'll do well to avoid.
There's a new Lexar external data drive in the world this week called the Lexar SL200. This is an SSD, with SSD-level performance, which means it'll roll at speed up to 550MB/s read and 400MB/s write. This machine has 256-bit AES encryption and connects with a USB-C port - that's USB-C to USB-C or USB-C to USB Type-A.
Western Digital, one of the biggest names in the data storage industry, got dragged into a rather complicated controversy regarding hard disk technology and marketing. That drama also dragged others like Seagate and Toshiba, though all three companies have, by now, made their official statements and clarifications. WD, however, is still working to clarify its position and its product line and it is doing so by introducing a third category in its Red family of NAS drives.
You might think that buying and using a hard drive is a simple matter of picking one from a catalog and connecting it inside a computer. That may be true fro the simplest of desktops but when you factor in devices like NAS products, the selection process can be quite daunting, especially when data storage manufacturers aren't so forthcoming with critical details. To dispel any lingering doubt and confusion, Toshiba and Western Digital have released the list of hard drives that use the now somewhat controversial SMR technology and which ones don't.
![WD, Seagate, Toshiba allegedly sell SMR drives without telling buyers [UPDATE]](https://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/wd-red-nas-1280x720.jpg)
People might take hard drives for granted these days. After all, their use of moving parts makes them less suited for mobile devices and their bulky sizes give off an "old school" vibe. Hard disks and their magnetic plates and moving read/write heads, however, still trump Flash NAND technology when it comes to capacity, which is why they are still the go-to for large storage devices like NAS. Unfortunately, picking out a hard drive is harder than you might think, especially when manufacturers themselves aren't being upfront about the technologies they use.
This week the folks at Western Digital released a new collection of WD_Black series hard drives (HDD and SSD) with radical new industrial designs. When you're buying a hard disk drive or solid-state drive, especially an external HDD or SSD, you'll first look at the capabilities of the drive - mostly innards. Then you'll look at the external bits - the way the case looks, the bits you'll be seeing every time you access your gaming machine. Because of this, Western Digital went the extra mile (in the right direction) with their latest round of WD_Black.
The amount of data we generate and accumulate is sometimes too much for our laptops or even desktops to accommodate. Normal external hard drives are veritably just that, hard drives you plug in as needed. Networked Attached Storage or NAS provide some speed, reliability, and power but at the price of complexity. Enter Direct-Attached Storage or DAS like the new TerraMaster D2 Thunderbolt 3 that offer the reliability of NAS drives without the hassle nor the latency of networks.
Storage is one of the great unifiers of the information age. Everyone needs more storage, whether they're an individual consumer or a massive company. For those in the latter group, Western Digital today announced a beefy new HDD that packs a whopping 15TB of storage.
Storage is something that a person living in the digital age can never get enough of, and if you find yourself a little low on available space, then you might want to have a look at Amazon. Today, the company is hosting a one-day sale on a variety of different storage devices, from SD cards and flash drives to SSDs and external hard drives. Some of the discounts on offer are pretty solid, so let's dive into them.