Category Archives: Hard Drive

G-Technology G-Drive Mobile Review

March 17, 2013Apple, Hard Drive, hitachi, mac, storage, USBApple, external hard drive, external storage, Firewire, G-Technology, Macbook, review, storage, usb3Andrew

On review today is the G-Technology G-Drive Mobile, a 1 TB mobile external hard drive. Aimed squarely at the Apple MacBook crowd, the brushed aluminium finish and white LED compliments the host machine, and the combination of both USB3 and FireWire 800 show its Mac heritage. Of course the drive can be formatted for Windows or Linux use but the G-Drive is pre-formatted for HFS+ and is TimeMachine-compatible. As expected, the G-Drive is bus powered so there’s no power adaptor.

The G-Drive Mobile has a couple of touches that set it apart from the other mobile drive offerings. To start with, it comes with all the cables that might be needed, so in the box there’s a USB3 cable, a FireWire 800 cable and a FireWire 400 to 800 cable. There’s no getting the box home only to find the cable need for your setup is missing.

Second, the packaging presents the G-Drive to best effect and the “Getting Started” instructions are printed on the inside lid of the box. Again, it comes back to appealing to the Apple crowd who expect good design.

But enough of how it looks. How does it go? Pretty well actually. Connected up to USB 3, the G-Drive Mobile recorded the following data rates:

– hdparm gave 107 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
– dd gave write speeds around 105 MB/s.
– bonnie++ gave 104 MB/s for writes and 141 MB/s for reads.

I’m fairly sure that those figures make G-Drive Mobile the fastest USB3 unit tested, beating the previous holder by a considerable margin. Under FireWire 400, the figures were obviously slower, but are provided here for comparison.

– hdparm gave 36 MB/s for buffered disk reads.
– dd gave write speeds around 22 MB/s.
– bonnie++ gave 22 MB/s for writes and 55 MB/s for reads.

Price-wise, the model here costs £129.95 but if you want USB3 only, there’s a much sleeker and cheaper version at £109.95 in the Apple store. However, if you need FireWire with USB3, the model viewed above is hard to beat, giving historical compatibility with older gear while also offering fast data transfers on newer kit.

Thanks to G-Technology for providing the G-Drive Mobile to review.

HyperDrive Shop

February 23, 2013Gadgets, Gear, Hard Drive, Information, Special MediaHyperdrive, iUSBport, wirelessKL Tech Muse

Hypershop introduced several products that allow you to connect wirelessly to an attach device even if you have no internet connection. The iUSBport has its own router with it’s own SSID . The batteries last about 8 hours on a charge. It has two USB ports. The content on any attached device such as a USB hard drive becomes available wirelessly to an iPad, iPhone, Android device or any Wi-fi enabled device. Can stream up to three different movies to three different devices at a time. You don’t even have to be connected to the internet. The iUSB Port HD is like the iUSBport but it has a hard drive within the enclosure. You can install your own or Hypershop can install one up front for you. It can handle up to a 2TB drive. Hypershop also introduced a 64GB flash drive which can be plugged into a computer and then connect wirelessly to the computer.

All these devices will be available in March the iUSBport will be $149.95. The iUSB Port HD will be $159.95 for a blank case with no hard drive enclosed and the 64GB flash drive is $64.95. All these devices would be great for families who travel a lot in the car, photographers or anyone who wants the ability to stream videos, documents, music on one device to their favorite mobile gadget.

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine, and by Scott Ertz of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology.

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A Hard Disk Designed to Last Millions of Years

July 14, 2012Hard Drivehard disk, hard driveAlan

Traditional hard drives can last anywhere from a few months to a few years, with the latter being more likely. SSD’s can last longer thanks to their lack of moving parts, but they still probably aren’t something you would want to include in a time capsule. Now researchers in France are working on a drive that they hope will last as much as 10 million years.

The sapphire “hard disk” prototype has been created by ANDRA, the French nuclear waste management agency. The disk, which is one of a kind, cost $25,000 to make, and stores information with platinum-based etchings. The reason for this? To warn future generations of nuclear waste buried in the ground.

The data stored on the sapphire disk contains 40,000 miniaturized (not digital) pages, and the only thing future archaeologists will need to read them will be a microscope. ANDRA researchers tested the disk’s durability by immersing it in acid to simulate the ageing process. The disk should last at least 1 million years, the researchers stated. In fact, they hope to prove a durability of 10 million years very soon.

Source: Science Now

Image: Hard Drive by BigStock

Upgrading My NAS…Yawn

June 11, 2012Hard Drive, storage, Technicalbuffalo, hard disk, hard drive, linkstation, nas, storageAndrew

Hard Drive Last weekend, I upgraded my NAS from 2 TB to 4 TB and it was all too easy. The NAS is a Buffalo LinkStation Duo but as the drives are mirrored, I only get half the total 2 TB capacity, i.e. 1 TB. I was getting pretty close to having the full terabyte of data on the unit, so I decided it was time for a storage upgrade. However, the last time I upgraded another model of NAS, it involved much chicanery and re-installing of firmwire via USB, so I proceed with trepidation.

Not so this time. It was mostly lots of waiting interspersed with a few minutes of activity, followed by first time success. Disappointingly little geekery was required.

Step 1. Buy a pair of SATA 2 TB hard-drive. The LinkStation already had Seagate drives installed, so I played it safe and bought some Seagate Barracuda drives. Wait a couple of days for drives to arrive in post…

Step 2. Backup the data from the NAS to an external USB drive. My favourite tool for this is rsync because it simply copies files (no archives or zip files) and you can stop and start the backup as you like. You can even keep using the NAS up until the last minute before running one final rsync to copy the latest changes over. Leave the backup to run overnight…

Step 3. Shutdown the LinkStation via the web interface.

Step 4. Remove hard drives, insert new ones.

Step 5. Power up the Linkstation and log on via the web interface.

Step 6. Format drives in turn. Configure as RAID 1. Wait for best part of a day while array synchronises….

Step 7. Restore data from external USB hard drive. Leave to run overnight….

Step 8. Job done!

It was pleasantly straightforward to upgrade the NAS and a big change from the last occasion I had to swap a disk. For sure it takes a couple of days to do the swap, but the time is spent shuffling data around, not actually working on the unit. Definitely a recommended upgrade.

[Disclosure: this is my personal NAS and not a review unit.]

WD TV Live at The Gadget Show Live

April 23, 2012Android, Apple, application, google, Hard Drive, Interview, iOS, IPAD, iPhone, ipod, Special Media, Streaming, Western DigitalApple, application, google, IOS, IPAD, iPhone, iPod Touch, Media Player, narrowband, The Gadget Show, WD, WD TV, Western DigitalAndrew

Western Digital’s TV Live series of media players has been around for a couple of years and they’ve gained a sizeable following with over 3.5 million devices sold. The 3rd generation WD TV Live has been released recently and Daniel Mauerhofer was kind enough to give me an interview at The Gadget Show Live.

The new WD TV Live model introduces wi-fi connectivity which was absent on the previous model and it’s now been localised for the UK market with the inclusion of iPlayer and Spotify. Coming in two models, one without an internal hard drive (£99), which is available now, and a second which will have a 1 TB drive and will be available later in the year (approx. £129).

As ever, there’s a complementary remote control app for Android and iOS devices, which looks pretty useful; it’s certainly more than just a button-for-button replacement of the IR remote control.

My personal pet peeve in this area was that media players seemed either play from the local network or stream from the Internet but it was a rare device that could do both. The WD TV Live does both so it’s a thumbs up from me.

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Rocstor AES 256-bit Enctypted Hard Drive

February 26, 2012ces, Hard Drive, Security, Special Mediaaes-256, encryption, hard drive, Rocstor, Smart CardAlan

Rocstor has unveiled a new portable external hard drive that practically guarantees that your data won’t be stolen. The hard drive, which comes in capacities up to 1 TB, has a slot for a smart card. Enter the card, punch in your code (which you choose), and you unlock the drive and all of the data you have stored on it. The drives are FIP certified and ship with multiple cards. For users that need additional cards, they can be purchased blank and inserted into a unit to be programmed to work with it. PIN Numbers can be changed an unlimited number of times as well.

These hard drives are probably not for average consumers, but more for business and government. They are designed to protect highly-sensitive data and eliminate those stories that are always in the news these days about stolen laptops filled with account and credit card information. The drives retail in the $400-600 range and are available now from Rocstor.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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Kingston HyperX SSD

January 22, 2012ces, Hard Drive, Special MediaHyperX, Kingston, SSDAlan

Kingston is known for their memory, but now they are branching out into the world of hard drives and, more specifically, solid state hard drives, or SSD’s as they are commonly referred to. The HyperX is the top of the Kingston line when it comes to this technology. The SSD is a much-hyped technology that has remained a dream for most consumers because of their price-point, but they are starting to come down into the realm of the affordable, although still top-end, drives. The SSD provides much faster speed than the traditional HDD, plus they are much smaller in size, which is driving the new Ultrabook craze, which was also capturing the media at this year’s CES.

The new HyperX comes with an external drive bay that you can plug into your computer and software to clone you current drive to get you started without any down time. The new Kingston drive may still be out of reach for the average user, but that’s okay, because they know it’s for the enthusiast, who knows how to get inside a PC and change out hardware, clone drives, and use all of the hardware and tools that come along with a project such as this.

Currently for the 120 GB version seen in the video below the price is coming in at a little over $200. To find out more be sure to check out the video and visit Kingston.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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