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Monster Digital Will Be Showing off its LeMann SSD Drive at CES 2012

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 6:00 PM on January 6, 2012

Monster Digital Back in November Monster Cable license their brand name to SDJ Technologies a Simi Valley based technology business creating the company Monster Digital. At CES 2012 Monster Digital will be showing off several of their new products, including an Ultra Speed SSD, Hybrid Hard Drive, Standard Drives, Micro SD Cards and high performance flash. They will be showing off the Ultra Speed SSD called the LeMann Series. The LeMann Series SSDs are some of the fastest drives on the planet. They support read and write speeds of 550MB/s-515MB/s and are SandForce based. They are  shock proof , waterproof, magnetic proof and super durable. Monster Digital has also been working with Seagate Technology to create a Hybrid Hard Drives (HDD). These drives increase a computer’s speed and performance with a simple upgrade. Monster Digital will also be showing off their SD, Micro SD cards and high performance Compact Flash.

Monster Digital will be showing off its products at Booth 13013 in the Central Hall. Monster Digital is committed to provide unparalleled user experience. Each of its product categories offers best in class performance. They are rigorously tested to meet the highest standards of durability and performance. Jay Tandon, former CEO of SDJ Technologies and now the CEO of Monster Digital® will be present at CES 2012 and will be available for interviews, upon request.

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Buffalo DriveStation Velocity Review

Posted by Andrew at 2:12 PM on November 13, 2011

Buffalo LogoThe Buffalo DriveStation Velocity is a 2 TB USB 3 external drive, and given the size and the interface, it’s aimed at people who want lots of data and want it quickly. Let’s get the external features of the device out of the way and then check how quick it is.

In the box, there’s only the drive, the power supply, USB 3 cable and the usual paper flimsies for getting started and warranty. There is no driver CD as the files are all on the disk, but more on this later. The drive housing itself is black plastic, with a matte finish on the larger sides and glossy piano black on the thinner side, with a disk activity light that glows blue when on USB3 and green on USB2. The unit can either stand upright or be laid on its side and stacked: I couldn’t decide what orientation I preferred but it seemed to spend most of its time lying down.

Buffalo DriveStation Velocity

Round the back it’s fairly sparse with a USB3 connector, power socket and Kensington lock socket. Observant readers will also spot that there’s no fan so the Velocity runs quietly with only the hum of the hard drive itself, possibly making this a good choice for the living room.  Even while the disk was being thrashed during the read and write tests, the case never got more than lukewarm.

Buffalo DriveStation Velocity Rear

Time for the speed tests. Connected up to USB 3, the Velocity recorded the following data rates:
- hdparm gave 133 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
- dd gave write speeds around 92 MB/s.
- bonnie++ gave 75 MB/s for writes and 137 MB/s for reads.

Under USB 2, the figures were obviously slower but still fine for a USB 2 device.
- hdparm gave 32 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
- dd gave write speeds around 37 MB/s.
- bonnie++ gave 33 MB/s for writes and 38 MB/s for reads.

Wow! The read speed of 137 MB/s makes the DriveStation Velocity the fastest single USB3 unit that Geek News Central has tested, which is pretty impressive.

As mentioned earlier, the driver and utility software comes installed on the disk rather than on a CD. Generally, this is great and cuts down on CD-waste, but it would be wise to take a copy of the software in case the disk needs to be re-formatted…

…which brings us to the included utility for whole disk encryption. It’s very handy for keeping your data from falling into the wrong hands in the event of theft or other loss, but the utility completely erases the disk as part of the encryption process! So it seems to me that there’s a bit of a problem here for a drive that includes encryption as a feature but then deletes the utility off the disk as step number one. There either needs to be a CD in the box or else the encryption utility needs to make a backup copy of the software locally.

Other than this small issue, I liked the Velocity. I had no trouble getting it to work, the styling was satisfactory and it performed well. In summary, if you need a quiet drive with lots of space and great transfer rates, then put the DriveStation Velocity on your shortlist. Just remember to copy the drivers and utilities off the disk before enabling encryption.

Thanks to Buffalo for the loan of the DriveStation Velocity.

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Posted in Hard Drive, storage, USB

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Thailand Flooding and the Price of Hard Drives

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 7:26 AM on November 10, 2011

If you are thinking about getting a hard drive you may want to wait. Thailand has been hit by terrible flooding during the yearly monsoon season. Up to 500 have died and whole areas have been devastated including areas where the majority of the world’s hard drives are manufactured. Companies including Western Digital and Toshiba have been hit hard. As reported by the NY Times Bang Pa-In, Thailand which produces one-quarter of the worlds sliders a vital hard drive component is almost completely under water. Piper Jaffray believe that the supply of hard drives may run dry by the end of November. Prices may rise anywhere from 10 to 60 percent. There maybe a shortage of up to 60-80 million hard drives in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the shortage may only get worse. Full recovery of the market isn’t expected until late 2012.

Just in time for the next monsoon season. Climate change may only increase the flooding next year unless Thailand figures a way to control it. Unfortunately the very rice fields that helped to control the flooding in the past have been replaced by the factories that manufacture the hard drives. Companies may think of moving some of the processes outside of Thailand but that will take years and a lot of money. Companies may decide that the cost of moving is greater than the cost of dealing with flooding and choose to stay.

The hard drive shortage is already being felt by small businesses who sells or purchases hard drives. They are having trouble getting the hard drives they need and their prices are going up. The longer the problem continues the more the problem will spread to anything with a hard drive in it. Which includes desktops, laptops, gaming systems, and more. Not all hard drive companies were hit equally Seagate whose plants are in the highlands of Thailand was not effected by the monsoon directly, however it says it will have difficulty getting some parts. SSD drives are not effected either. Gus Richard an analyst at Piper Jaffray believes that there was an over reaction to the economic impact of the Japanese disaster and an under reaction to the Thailand disaster. This is at the time when large data centers are being built, data centers which require more and more hard drives. So the shortage and higher prices will most likely continue until late 2012.

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Buffalo Gets Extreme

Posted by Andrew at 8:43 AM on October 19, 2011

Buffalo Technology has announced the launch of the MiniStation Extreme, a ruggedised USB3 portable hard drive. Conforming to the US Military’s MIL-STD-810F 516.5 Procedure IV, the shock protection on this drive means that it will survive a fall from over 2 m or 6 ft.

Buffalo MiniStation Extreme Portable Hard Drive 

And if securing your data against physical damage isn’t enough, the MiniStation Extreme also comes with 256-bit AES whole/full disk encryption to prevent unauthorised access to your data. There’s an integrated USB3 cable which snaps in and out of the Extreme, keeping it all neat and tidy.

Paul Hudson, Sales Director for Northern Europe at Buffalo Technology said, “The MiniStation Extreme is a prime example of Buffalo’s commitment to product innovation. This latest addition to the MiniStation family is ideal for globetrotters who travel with their PCs and portable HDDs and demand a robust, fast and secure high performance portable storage device. The MiniStation Extreme can withstand free-fall drops of up to 2.3m making it the most robust MiniStation ever.”

The MiniStation Extreme is available in 500 GB and 1 TB sizes at £78 and £113 respectively, and comes in piano black, silver and red. No white yet for the iPhiles.

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Posted in Hard Drive, storage, USB

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TDK Looking to Double Hard Drive Capacity

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 2:00 PM on October 10, 2011

Storage, both HDD and SSD, is growing in capacity and shrinking in price all of the time.  With hard drives currently as large as 2 TB available, and promises of even bigger ones coming it seems there is almost more storage already than anyone of needs.  Plus, for those willing to pay a premium, there are SSD’s, which are smaller in capacity, but much faster in read time.  Plus, we have even heard vague rumors of holographic storage coming in the future.

Now, from the future technologies department comes some news that TDK, the once famous cassette tape maker, has a technology that could double the storage capacity of a hard drive by using laser heaters to write the data.  TDK calls the technology HAMR – heat-assisted magnetic recording.  The laser needs to be combined with a new way of making the drive platters.  Supposedly TDK has used the technology with platters that would normally have held 1 TB of data and successfully stored 2 TB on them.

It sounds very futuristic, and honestly it is.  There is no release date for the technology, no idea of how such drives would be priced in comparison to a standard drive, and no real idea if this technology will ever even hit the market.  Frankly, beyond this one report from the Register, there is really no concrete evidence of this technology existing.  But the science of storage is always moving ahead at a fast pace, so it’s likely that such things as this are at least being tested.

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Posted in Hard Drive, storage

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Freecom Mobile Drive Mg Review

Posted by Andrew at 4:01 PM on May 26, 2011

The Freecom Mobile Drive Mg is no ordinary 2.5″ external drive. It’s a thing of beauty. Intended to complement Apple’s MacBooks, the slimline Mobile Drive has a magnesium body that looks and feels great. The icing on the cake is that it’s USB 3. I’ve seen lots of external drives but this is the one you want.

Even the packaging reflects the target market. Instead of a relatively dull cardboard box, this comes in an acrylic box so that you can see drive before you’ve even purchased it. The model shown here is the slimline 320 GB USB 3 version which is just 1 cm thick. Freecom have used the bevelled-edge trick to make it seem even thinner than it is but it doesn’t detract from the fact that it is thin and Freecom claim that it is the world’s thinnest external drive. In addition to the 320 GB capacity, there are two 720 GB units which are a bit thicker at 1.5 cm – one is USB 3 only, the other is USB 3 and Firewire 800.

Apart from the USB 3 connector and the Freecom logo, the only other external feature is a white LED which indicates power and disk activity. It’s difficult to make out in the picture below as it’s not lit, but it’s pretty much right in the middle. The drive is bus powered so there’s no power supply needed.

The Mobile Drive Mg comes pre-formatted with HFS+, so if you have a Mac, you’re good to go out of the box. If you’re a Windows or Linux user, it can easily be reformatted to another format.

I think we’ve established that it looks good, but does it perform? Connected up to USB 3, the Mobile Drive recorded the following data rates:

- hdparm gave 75 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
- dd gave write speeds around 82 MB/s.
- bonnie++ gave 74 MB/s for writes and 85 MB/s for reads.

Under USB 2, the figures were obviously slower but still healthy for a USB 2 device.

- hdparm gave 30 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
- dd gave write speeds around 37 MB/s.
- bonnie++ gave 35 MB/s for writes and 40 MB/s for reads.

Looking at the data, using USB 3 roughly doubles the performance when compared to USB 2, which is not unexpected. If you are interested in the specs, there’s a datasheet .pdf.

Price-wise, the model here costs 79 euros, with the 750 GB model bumping the price to 119 euros. Adding the Firewire port will cost 10 euros extra.

You know you want one.

Thanks to Freecom for the loan of the Mobile Drive Mg.

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Posted in Apple, Hard Drive, mac, storage, USB

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Seagate Momentous XT Hybrid Solid State Hard Drive

Posted by tomwiles at 8:30 PM on April 24, 2011

Want to give your tired old computer a speed boost? Listen up — this is a good one!

A few days ago my 17” MacBook Pro shut down a couple of times due to overheating issues, so I ended up taking it to the local Mac dealer to get it cleaned out – a truck is a surprisingly dirty operating environment. The machine was full of dust, which was preventing the internal fans from functioning properly.

When I dropped the Macbook off, almost as an afterthought I decided I would have them install a larger hard drive and clone the data over while they had the machine opened up. I ended up buying a 500 gigabyte Seagate Momentous XT Hybrid hard drive as the replacement drive. It was somewhat more expensive than a non-hybrid solid state drive, but the sales pitch on the outside of the retail package touting greatly-enhanced overall performance of this hybrid drive convinced me to give it a try.

The Seagate Momentous XT 500 gigabyte solid state hard drive comes with a 4 gigabyte solid state drive, with the rest of the storage being a conventional 7200 RPM 2.5” SATA laptop hard drive. The drive contains some built-in intelligence that automatically copies the most frequently-accessed computer files that will give the most boost to overall performance, including significantly faster boot-up times.

Does it work? All I can say is “Wow!” I am amazed at the performance boost. The machine boots quicker, and overall it has a much more snappy feel. The Seagate Momentous XT 500 gigabyte hard drive is worth every penny as an upgrade.

The old adage about speeding up a computer by maxing out RAM is still true. However, now there’s a new performance-boosting item that can be added to the list: add the appropriate hybrid hard drive for an even greater performance boost. With the addition of this drive, this 17” Macbook Pro is exhibiting better performance than ever.

Needless to say, I’m impressed. If you’ve maxed out your computer’s RAM, get one of these drives: I promise you that you won’t be disappointed with the performance boost.

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Buffalo USB 3.0 Interface ExpressCard Review

Posted by Andrew at 12:41 AM on April 21, 2011

If your laptop is like mine and pre-dates USB 3 but you want to use USB 3 devices at their full speed, then you might be interested in the Buffalo USB 3.0 Interface ExpressCard (IFC-EC2U3/UC). It’s an ExpressCard/34 size device, with two USB 3.0 ports on the side. The card will also plug into in ExpressCard/54 slot. If needed for bus-powered devices, there’s a auxiliary power lead to provide extra power to the card which connects from a standard USB port to a DC in socket on the side of the card.

Installation was simple – run the install CD, follow the prompts, insert card, job done.

The socket housing sticks out from the socket a couple of centimetres which is a bit inconvenient if you move your laptop around but that’s the price of two USB 3 sockets in the ExpressCard/34 size. If you need an adaptor that fits entirely into the socket, you’ll need to have an ExpressCard/54 size adaptor or go with only one USB 3 socket.

For USB 3, I had a Buffalo MiniStation on test – more on this in a later review. With the MiniStation I was able to get write speeds of about 285 Mb/s and 430 Mb/s on read. This was using Totusoft’s LAN Speed Test v2. I was a little disappointed with these speeds initially, but I then ran the Speed Test on another 2.5″ external HDD I had lying around and it struggled to make 100 Mb/s. So not so bad after all and, of course, your mileage may vary according to your particular configuration.

I did have one minor problem and this is more to do with the design of the ExpressCard slot in my laptop rather than this particular device. It was all too easy to pull out the card from the slot when trying to unplug a USB device – you have to hold onto the card with one hand and unplug the USB cable with the other.

Backwards compatibility with USB 2 was fine. I tried a wireless mouse, a memory stick and an external hard disk drive. All worked fine, albeit at USB 2 speeds. Slightly interestingly, the USB 2 external hard drive had exactly the same performance whether it was connected into the laptops USB 2 ports or the ExpressCard.

Overall, if you need to add USB 3 to your laptop the Buffalo USB 3.0 Interface ExpressCard appears to be solid contender.

RRP is £39.99 but may be available cheaper. Photos below.

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Posted in Hard Drive, review, storage

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GoFlex Slim Performance Drive Review

Posted by geeknews at 11:06 PM on April 5, 2011

I have been using a Seagate GoFlex Slim Performance Drive for the past few days.  While external hard drives are a dime a dozen, this is one of the first USB 3.0 with 2.o fallback that I have been able to play with.  This drive can be used with a PC or a Mac, and has a high performance 7200 rpm very drive.

Researching the drive, I found out that Seagate utilized a well established drive for the guts which has a very good performance record.

While the USB 3.0 SuperSpeed was simply fantastic, the drives form factor is a huge selling factor in that the body of the drive is only 9mm thick. For those that like to minimize what they are traveling with this drive is fantastic or better yet low form factor on a desk. I found myself wanting to use it as a coaster which obviously is not a good idea.

The Seagate GoFlex Slim has a very cool secret feature it is part of the GoFlex Storage System by Seagate. If you have a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Net Media Device or the Seagate GoFlex TV HD Media Player you can simply plug it into a SATA slot on one of those devices by removing the USB Adapter that is part of the GoFlex Slim drive body.

The drive includes backup software with encryption the software also makes it easy for you to sync files between your computer and the drive. Included in the drive is the Seagate Dashboard management tool.

Priced at $99.00 it is a great value for what it offers.

 

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La Cie and Thunderbolt

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 8:52 PM on February 28, 2011

Little Big DiskIf you depend on moving a lot of data around and are looking for ways to move it faster then the Thunderbolt technology (formerly Light Peak) is something that should be of  interest to you. Companies and individuals who work in the area of video editing and transfer will be one of the first groups that will take advantage of the Thunderbolt technology. The Thunderbolt technology was developed by Intel in collaboration with Apple. The technology supports both data and display protocols simultaneously over a single cable. The Thunderbolt technology outperforms all other method of transfers by a mile.

Task that previously took a workstation will soon be performed on a consumer compact device. The new Macbook Pro is the first computer to take advantage of this technology. One of the first companies that has created a device that takes advantage of the technology other then Apple is La Cie. La Cie first show case the Thunderbolt technology at the Intel Developer Forum in September 2010. Since then it has worked even more closely with Apple and Intel to develop various storage solutions and peripherals that take advantage of Thunderbolt technology and to bring them to market. This close cooperation between La Cie and Apple  is nothing new. La Cie has been working closely with Apple for over 20 years developing innovative and cutting edge products. La Cie specializes in hard drives including desktop, mobile, network storage, Raid and Multimedia Hard Drives. Their newest product  called the Little Big Disk will be coming out summer 2011. The Little Big Disk was built to store large amounts of video and audio files. The integration of the Thunderbolt technology will allow that data to be transfer far quicker then any other technology. This in turn will speed up the process of both backup and editing.  Task that used to take hours will now be completed in minutes without any effect on bandwidth performance. Multiple Little Big Disks can even be daisy chained together to expand storage. You can also connect other peripherals like cameras or high resolution displays. The chairman and general manger of La Cie said it best:

“Thunderbolt technology is a breakthrough in I/O technology and
represents the future of mobile computing. Soon you will be able to
carry workstation-class power and functionality in compact devices,”
said Philippe Spruch, Chairman and General Manager,LaCie. “LaCie is
excited to be one of the first to deliver Thunderbolt technology with
the LaCie Little Big Disk.”

La Cie obviously sees Thunderbolt as the the transfer technology of the future. whether it is will depend on how fast other companies create products that take advantage of it.

 

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Posted in backup, Hard Drive, Information

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