Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Iomega’s eGo external drive line has now hit 1 Terabyte of storage.  Entitled the “Super” eGo drive, the portable storage device contains one single 1 terabyte drive.  The drive’s physical size is also increased, as it is a 3.5 inch drive, as opposed to the normal 2.5 inch size portable hard drives have.  As a reference point, this thing can hold 1.5 thousand hours of video.  It comes in three colors: ruby red, midnight blue, or jet black.  However, the Super eGo only interfaces through USB 2.0, and with a drive of that size I would’ve liked to see a FireWire interface. You can pick one up now for $270.

Via [Gizmodo]

SanDisk has upped the notch in memory card storage with the release of its new high-capacity microSD, microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro (M2) which all belong in their new Mobile Ultra card series. These flash mobile memory cards boast of 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacities as well as offering fast loading speeds and accelerated transfer rates.

SanDisk said that their new Mobile Ultra flash memory card series will fit well with budding mobile phone photographers and videographers, thanks to their high-storage capacity and the ability to easily transfer photos and videos to PC’s. SanDisk has packed their Mobile Ultra memory cards with a MobileMate Micro Reader that users can plug into the USB port of their machines which allows for those fast data transfers. This also goes for users who habitually transfer their digital media into social media or video-sharing sites.

MORE »

Standing by their tag line, Fujitsu will truly “make your data portable” with its new Handy Drive 400, offering 400GB of space for any kind of digital contraption you can throw at it. The drive measures a convenient 3.23 x 5.57 x 0.87-inches and weighs 8.12-ounces. This 4200rpm hard drive will connect to your PC just fine over USB 2.0, although there’s no word whether this will support Firewire. Available now in Japan for 216€ or just a little over $330 USD. Yes, it’s pricey.

Via [Akihabara News]

Remember that innovative Wi-Fi-enabled SD card aptly named the Eye-Fi? Well Eye-Fi, which is what the company is also called, must have been overwhelmed by the success of their product that they decided to add not just one new model, but three to the Eye-Fi SD card series. So, we now have the Eye-Fi Share, Eye-Fi Home and the Eye-Fi Explore.

Actually, there’s not too many differences with these three models. It is still the same Wi-Fi enabled SD card that was launched not so long ago. For instance, both the Eye-Fi Share and Eye-Fi Home are almost identical to the current Eye-Fi models in terms of features. However, Eye-Fi home is geared for users who want to sync their SD card to their PCs only. While the Eye-Fi share lets users to automatically sync their SD card to both their PCs and websites, such as Flickr.

On the other hand, the Eye-Fi Explore is more of a tie-up with Wayport, a major hotspot provider in the US. So, the Eye-Fi Share lets users to automatically upload their photos while connected anywhere there is a Wayport hotspot without the need to authenticate for each location. In addition, the Eye-Fi Share also allows geotagging and supports Skyhook’s Wi-Fi triangulation for GPS purposes.

The Eye-Fi Explore, Eye-Fi Share and the Eye-Fi Home are now available for $129, $99, and $79 respectively.

Via [Ubergizmo] Via [Gizmodo]

Sony has made available a slew of tiny USB flash drives in its Microvault product line, branding these babies as the USM-L. The drives measure in at 0.69 x 0.33 x 2.44-inches and weighing only around 0.32-ounces, who would think that the USM-L flash drives can store as much as 16GB of data? Well, that’s how flash drives are nowadays, the smaller they get, the larger their storage capacities are, and this is particularly true with the Sony USM-L flash drives.

As if the USM-L flash drives were not small enough, Sony even made use of the Click mechanism which makes it shorter when it is connected to your machines. This also enables Sony to do away with the common USB flash drive design that comes with a cap that you have to pull out to reveal the flash drive’s USB connector. With the USM-L, all you have to do is to slide out the flash drive’s body to reveal the USB connector. 

MORE »

It’s very seldom that we hear about Sony coming out with a flash drive product, although we know that it certainly has some data storage devices in its arsenal but these mostly belong to its proprietary Sony Memory stick duo series which are used for most Sony Ericsson mobile phone’s and the PSP. So, it is refreshing to hear about this new USB flash drive which belongs to Sony’s Microvault product line. The flash drive we’re talking about is the USM-LX high-speed USB flash drive.

The USM-LX gives a maximum read-out speed of 31Mb/s which is the USB flash drive standard, is simply fast enough to handle large files - that is store, transfer and share just about anything. Sony has also made some stride in improving this flash drive’s design by using what it calls a “Click mechanism”. This eliminates the need for a USB cap, since all you have to do to connect the USB to your machine is to slide out the flash drive’s body to reveal the USB connector. This adds some convenience to users as it makes the flash drive shorter when not in use.

MORE »

Looking for a creative (albeit a bit expensive) way to banish your computer’s data? EDR Solutions might have just the right thing for you. Cleverly disguised as a seemingly hibernating war machine, the Hard Disk Crusher will offer to ‘drill’ through your hard drive’s spindles, effectively killing it just like how crunch waves do brain cells. A standard 110V outlet should be enough to give this monster some juice, but in the unlikely event that you need to use this where there’s no electricity available, you can use an emergency hand-pump and crush hard drives 15 pumps at a time. How much is one Hard Disk Crusher to destroy all your unwanted data easily? $11,500 (including a one-year warranty, at $995 per year extended). The comfort in knowing that nobody will ever find all your precious “YouTube videos?” Priceless.

Via [Oh Gizmo]

We first learned about Crucial prepping SSD’s in both a 32GB and 64GB size back in early January, but at the time we were yet to learn about any pricing or a time frame for an actual release. Well it turns out the drives are now shipping and although they would make a nice upgrade for alot of notebooks on the market, their price is going to be a barrier for many folks.

The 32GB model is retailing for $800, while the 64GB is a whopping $1,500. Its a shame because the drives are the notebook-sized 2.5-inch, which means, assuming you were comfortable enough to open up your notebook, would make a perfect replacement or upgrade drive.

While the whole SSD craze is relatively new, its fair to say that with time, just like any other new technology the price will quickly fall to a more reasonable level. One thing is for sure though, given the price of the drives from Crucial, the $1,000 MacBook Air upgrade option seems cheap, or at least fairly priced.

Via [Wired]

LaCie has upgraded its most popular product - the all-terrain Rugged Hard Disk with some 500GB of storage goodness. If you will recall, this external hard drive was recently upgraded to 320GB, but it seems LaCie will not stop upgrading its capacity until they hopefully pack in one terabyte or more.

But for now, you will have to be satisfied with 500GB of storage. If you’re not so much into photography and music, 500GB is already a lot, and possibly more than you would need. With 500GB you can store around 710 movies, 135,000 songs or 550,000 photos. And with the hard disk’s scratch-resistant aluminum shell as well as its shock resistant rubber bumper, you are assured that your data files are secured from everyday bumps, bruises and hard knocks. This ruggedized data storage package is available with USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 versions and was designed to interface smoothly with any computer.

The 500GB LaCie Rugged Hard Disk is now available and retails for $299.

Read [LaCie]

HP has been a little up and down with their recently announced Upline service. After being announced on April 7, the service seemed promising, but was quickly taken off-line on April 18 with little explanation as to why it was going down or even for how long it would be gone.

The good news is that the Upline service is now back online. According to HP the service will pretty much pick up where it left off and everything will restart automatically. Meaning any backups that you had setup will begin to run at their scheduled time, as well as any files that you have backed up or stored in your account will be just where you left them.

All things considered its hard too complain that much, after all they are giving new users the option to get a basic 1-user Home plan for free for the first year, but at the same time it is a little worry some that it could disappear again.

Keep reading for the full email from HP regarding the return of the Upline service…

MORE »