hard drive

While consumers, particularly those on laptops, look to SSDs as their data storage of choice because of their speed and reliability, hard disk drives or HDDs are never going away. In fact, they have become even more critical because of the digital content we produce and store these days. Unlike SSDs, however, hard drives run into the limits of physics sooner. Which is why making a single HDD that reaches 14 TB capacity, such as Western Digital's Ultrastar Hs14, is no small matter for the enterprise.

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SSDs may have the advantage of reliability, but the costs of production keep them from becoming the go to solution for large scale storage, like NAS drives. Hard drives, on the other hand, can reach oodles of terabytes but have relatively shorter lifespans. That's why hard drive makers have turned to helium-based designs to bridge the gap. Like the new WD Read and WD Red Pro drives that offer reliable 10 TB of storage perfect for NAS systems.

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For the past several months I've been using a piece of OWC technology called the OWC Drive Dock. This gadget surprised me, genuinely - and has proven to change my life in a significant way. Because of this drive dock, I was able to clear out a significant portion of my junk closet. This OWC Drive Dock device is certifiably radical for an old data hoarder like myself.

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In this day and age of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, hard drive failure almost seems like a thing of the past. Especially since these devices don’t actually use that kind of storage technology. But for gamers, multimedia workers, and backup storage companies, the reliability of the hard drive can make or break their livelihood. That is why every year since 2013, online backup solution providers Backblaze releases a list of its hard drives and their failure rates, basically forming a fame and shame list of which brands and models had the most or least number of failures throughout the year.

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Last week, Amazon announced a new service for uploading large amounts of data to its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage. Dubbed Snowmobile, it's an actual 18-wheel semi-truck hauling a storage container filled with hard drives. See, it's not meant for times when you need to back up your photo or video collection, but rather for an entire company's data, such as a movie studio's archives or a government agency's library of satellite imagery.

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Western Digital has a slew of new product announcements to make today, announcing redesigns for two lines of external hard drives and revealing two new internal solid state drives. The company is teaming up with fuseproject to give the My Passport and My Book lines something of a refresh, while at the same time introducing its new WD Blue and WD Green SSDs.

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Hard drive and accessories maker OWC has announced an updated version of its Drive Dock, a docking station that allows users to connect up to two bare drives to their Mac or Windows PC. The new model takes advantage of USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectivity, allowing read speeds up to 434 MB/s and write speeds up to 406 MB/s.

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Just about anytime you think you and your computer are safe from hackers and security weaknesses, some bizarre, unexpected method or flaw gets discovered. Case in point: security researchers have come up with a way to steal data from a computer's hard drive just by listening to the sounds it makes. Not only can information be transmitted without a users' knowledge, but their computer doesn't even need to be connected to the internet.

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On the principle that bigger is better, Seagate has rolled out its new line-up of 10TB hard-drives, the Guardian Series, targeting those who refuse to delete things or indeed compromise on speed. Made up of three different ranges, each aiming at a different use-case, the Guardian Series is likely to be of particular interest to PC gamers.

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Western Digital has a new line of storage devices for creative users and others who produce a lot of content. Called the My Passport Wireless Pro, these devices are part of the WD Pro Series and offer wireless data transfers and storage in capacities up to 3TB. Western Digital says it designed the devices specifically for the “creative community,” such as photographers who take a ton of photos and need a way to offload them from their cameras.

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Seagate has unveiled a new storage solution for desktop users called Seagate Innov8. This external storage device is hailed as the world's first USB-powered desktop hard drive. The device has 8TB of storage and doesn’t require an external power supply to operate. Innov8 gets all the power it needs for operating and accessing data directly from the USB 3.1 connection.

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The Raspberry Pi, in all its incarnations, have become a darling within the hacker and hobbyist community. That's due to the little board's potential and affordability. The RPi alone, however, isn't capable enough for all the magical things you might want to make it do. That's were all the connectors and accessories and extra storage space comes in. Western Digital, one of the bigger names in the digital storage industry, is trying to woo this growing market of makers and tinkerers and has announced a 314GB PiDrive designed specifically with the Raspberry Pi's constraints in mind.

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