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Gnarbox 2.0: Portable media management for the outdoor crowd
The original Gnarbox was intriguing. On the one hand, it was a rugged portable drive. On the other, it was a mini PC without a display. Via the companion app, you could connect to the device wirelessly and edit 4K video and high-resolution photos. Today, Gnarbox 2.0 is ready for prime time, and it's a very different proposition.
Seagate slapped a PlayStation logo on a hard drive to match your PS4
You've had the option of attaching external storage to the PS4 for a while. If you find the existing options just too gauche, though, you're in luck. Seagate is releasing an officially licensed Game Drive that brings 2TB of additional space to your PS4 while matching the aesthetics of the console. It's ultimately a standard portable USB drive with a PlayStation logo on top, but that's not necessarily a bad thing -- it's still an easy way to add extra room for games (roughly 50 more, Seagate said) or cart your library to a friend's place.
LaCie's chiseled 5TB USB drive aims to make storage stylish
LaCie (and its parent Seagate) is still determined to inject some style into the world of external hard drives -- thankfully, with some improved functionality as well. Its 2019 Mobile Drive touts a chiseled-looking "diamond cut" metal design that wouldn't look out of place next to a MacBook Pro (you can still use it with Windows PCs, of course). The real allure, though, is the raw capacity -- you can opt for a 5TB version if you're editing gobs of media on the road, and even the slim version packs 2TB.
Samsung's latest external Thunderbolt 3 SSD is all about speed
Samsung has revealed its first NVMe-based portable SSD, the Portable SSD X5, which is targeted at IT pros and content creators who need to transfer large files quickly. It has a read speed of up to 2,800MB/s and write speed of 2,300MB/s (2,100 MB/s for the 500GB model). Those read and write speeds, combined with 40Gbps-bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, will let X5 owners transfer a 20GB file in as little as 12 seconds, Samsung claims.
Seagate's hard drive/battery fanny pack is made for VR
In addition to the major software update for the Vive Focus standalone VR headset yesterday, HTC also unveiled the Seagate VR Power Drive which, as the name suggests, is a hybrid of a power bank and a portable hard drive. This isn't an entirely new idea, of course, but it's the first of such kind designed with VR usage in mind. Specifically, this device packs 5,000 mAh of battery juice -- almost doubling that of the Vive Focus -- plus 1TB of storage space (but no speed specs yet), and it has a detachable belt clip which can be locked at every 90 degrees.
Lacie's DJI Copilot is the perfect portable hard drive for video pros
Look, it's kinda hard to get excited about a hard drive. But Engadget video producer Kaard Bombe immediately started geeking out hard over the Lacie DJI Copilot. It's a portable hard drive with the sort of features any professional videographer or photographer would kill for. Sure, at its heart it's a rugged 2TB drive, but it's also a media-card reader, a USB hub and backup battery.
WD is developing 40TB hard drives powered by microwaves
Western Digital (WD) may have lost a bid to buy Toshiba's flash memory technology, but is still hard at work on its bread-and-butter hard drives. The company has unveiled a breakthrough called microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) that will allow ever-higher disk capacities, up to 40TB by the year 2025. "Commercialization of MAMR technology will pave the way to higher recording densities and lower cost per terabyte hard disk drives," said VP of research John Rydning in a statement.
Octuple your Xbox storage with this new Seagate hard drive
Both PS4 and Xbox One come with at least 500GB of storage, which seems colossal until one realizes each installed game typically takes up 40 to 50 gigabytes. Back in August 2015, hard drive maker Seagate released a 2TB external HDD specifically keyed to both Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Today, they've unveiled a new version that bumps up the space to 8TB and promises to work with every version of Microsoft's current-gen console -- including the upcoming Scorpio.
WD's G-Drive USB-C adds storage and power to your laptop
Apple's courageous decision to equip the MacBook with just one USB-C port for charging and external storage forced owners to carry a pricey dongle if they wanted to do both at once. If you're in that camp, or would rather not sacrifice a port on your MacBook Pro or other USB-C device, Western Digital has a drive that could make your day. The G-Drive USB-C gives you 4, 8 or 10TB of storage, while simultaneously charging your laptop with up to 45 watts of power.
Your WD networked drive is vulnerable to remote attacks
If you have one of Western Digital's My Cloud nstorage drives, you might be particularly vulnerable to internet attacks. Exploitee.rs has discovered a number of unpatched security flaws in most My Cloud models that let remote intruders bypass the login, insert their own commands and upload files without permission. In numerous cases, it's a matter of poorly implemented scripts. Also, every command exectued through the web interface has full access to the operating system -- an attacker would have the keys to the kingdom.
LaCie's Thunderbolt drives are built for your MacBook Pro
If you bought a new MacBook Pro (or really, any Thunderbolt 3-equipped PC), there's a good chance that you're looking for high-capacity external storage that takes advantage of your system's newer, speedier ports. Well, you're in luck: As is its custom, LaCie is launching a pair of external drives that promise a load of extra space using newer interfaces. The centerpiece is the d2 Thunderbolt 3. While the hard disk itself is only slightly faster than before (240MB/s) and won't come close to saturating USB-C or Thunderbolt 3, the choice of connector makes it easy to daisy-chain other devices without sacrificing performance. You can hook up a 5K display, two 4K displays or five additional Thunderbolt 3 drives, so you may have to plug only one cable into your computer to power your entire setup.
Spotify's desktop app writes tons of data to storage drives
Over the last few months, Spotify desktop users on both Mac and PC have noticed the app has been writing massive amounts of data to their storage drives on a daily basis. Reports in the company's own forums, Reddit and Hacker News indicate that tens up to hundreds of gigabytes of data are written on an hourly basis. Sometimes the amount of data exceeds the terabyte mark. Of course, continuing to write that much data over a period of time could affect how long an SSD will last.
Western Digital finally offers a consumer SSD
Western Digital has enjoyed a long run supplying data drives for all markets, but had stubbornly resisted releasing solid-state ones for consumers. This was an odd position back in 2008 when the technology began entering the mainstream and it's only become a more glaring omission in the interim. But today, WD is finally offering its first SATA SSDs for personal computers.
Drobo's USB-C drive array is tailor-made for your new PC
You haven't had a whole lot of options for very high-capacity external drives on computers with USB-C ports. How are you supposed to archive the video projects from your MacBook? Drobo wants to help: it's launching the Drobo 5C, a five-bay self-managing drive that, unsurprisingly, plugs into your system's USB-C port. You won't gain a speed advantage over a USB 3.0 box (it averages 250MB per second if your drives are fast enough), but that's not the point. This is about giving you future-proof storage that you can upgrade at any time. As with other Drobos, you just have to swap in a new disk if you're running low on space or encounter a failure. There's no need to shuffle files or configure a RAID array.
Seagate unveils a 10TB hard drive for your home PC
It's no longer far-fetched to buy a 10TB hard drive if you're running a server, but what if you need gobs of space for your games and 4K videos at home? Seagate has your back after today, as it's releasing a trio of 10TB drives (mainly focused on networked and surveillance storage) that include one designed for your desktop. The new Barracuda Pro doesn't do anything remarkable beyond its capacity (it's a standard 3.5-inch, 7,200RPM disk), but that still means getting a massive amount of room in a drive that's meant for a run-of-the-mill PC. Just brace yourself for the cost. Seagate pegs the 10TB Barracuda Pro's price at $535 -- it'll be tempting to settle for 'just' an 8TB disk unless you know you need as much storage as possible in a single drive bay.
Samsung's new 512GB SSD is smaller than a postage stamp
Storage in your laptop or smartphone is a compromise between volume, access speed and physical size. But, the industry's competition to shrink them while boosting their specifications is fierce. A few months after shipping a 16TB solid-state drive, Samsung has announced a fast, efficient 512GB SSD that's half the size of a postage stamp.
WD's PiDrive gives your Raspberry Pi 314GB of storage
Sure, you can already add storage to your Raspberry Pi, but it's usually an exercise in trade-offs: SD cards don't hold much data, and USB drives (even the portable ones) tend to be too big and power-hungry for a mini PC. WD doesn't think you should have to compromise, though. It's shipping a new PiDrive that stuffs 314GB into a slim design that won't overwhelm the Pi's power system, but is fast enough to make full use of the USB connection. It even has a special version of BerryBoot (a multi-operating system tool) to help you load your platform of choice and fill that abundant space with apps.
Google wants hard drives designed to store your cloud data
Take a look at the hard drive in your desktop PC. It might hold terabytes of data, but the basic 3.5-inch design can be traced back to the early days of computing -- not really relevant in an era when a lot of your content sits in the cloud, is it? Google wants to change that. It's hoping to work with both the tech industry and researchers to design hard drives that are tailor-made for cloud-based storage. It wants to optimize the "collection" of disks instead of focusing on individual drives, and is more concerned about capacity and performance -- the things that matter most in a bustling data center -- over sheer reliability.
LaCie's latest hard drives offer extra space via USB-C
As USB-C arrives on more machines, accessory makers will need to update their products accordingly. That's just what LaCIe has done for CES with its latest Porsche Design Desktop and Mobile hard drives. The aluminum-wrapped storage units now offer USB Type-C connections to your laptop or desktop. What's more, you can still charge your laptop while you're transferring files, so long as the drive is plugged in. If you haven't yet splurged for a new machine with the latest ports, there's a USB 3.0 adapter included with each of the hard drives. In March, the Porsche Design Mobile Drive will be available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB models starting at $110 and the Desktop Drive will be offered in 4TB, 5TB and 8TB options from $210.
Flash-based drives may soon be as cheap as the spinning kind
If you've noticed that solid-state drives (and the PCs that include them) no longer cost an arm and a leg, you're not alone. Researchers at DRAMeXchange understand that the price per gigabyte of an SSD has fallen off a cliff in the past three years, and the trend is only accelerating. If the company's estimates are on the mark, these drives could cost just 11 cents more per gig than conventional hard drives by 2017. At that rate, you might not have to choose between high capacity and breakneck speed when you're on a budget -- you could easily afford both.