Seagate GoFlex Satellite
- Details
- Category: Storage
- Published: Wednesday, 20 June 2012 14:16
By this time, we all should be familiar with the term "cloud" and what it means, and you probably already are using a cloud solution of some kind (either Dropbox, or Windows Live Mesh, or others). What about a personal cloud? A cloud that you can take with you everywhere you go that stores much more data than what you can put up in a Dropbox account. We have previously reviewed a 16GB product from Kingston, but lets take a look at something with a bit more storage. Today we will be looking at the 500GB Seagate GoFlex Satellite external WiFi hard drive, designed to give you access to media, particularly on your mobile devices, wherever you go.
In the beginning, there were platter hard drives. They would spend their lives spinning away into a data driven oblivion. 
It’s really crazy to think that it’s been over 16 years now since USB 1.0 was released. Even looking back to USB 2.0 in April of 2000 it’s been 12 years that we have been living with that 60 MB/s theoretical speed. I can’t even imagine how many hours, days, maybe even weeks; I have spent waiting for files to transfer in those 16 years. When USB 3.0 was introduced in 2008 I literally couldn’t wait for the day I would finally be able to fully take advantage of the speeds that USB 3.0 brought to the table. Today for the first time I can say that I am taking full advantage. I’m going invite you all in to see what I am using to do this.
So you do the smart thing, you backup your data from your laptop and your home PC to an external or network drive and go on with life feeling confident that you have gone well and above what most people do. For the most part, you did. What about when you’re traveling, have you seen how much abuse a device can take when on the go? For some people, and I know I’m one of them, some of the data you carry with you while traveling is more important than the laptop or device that you actually carry it on. In that situation you need a way to not have to worry about your data, no matter the situation, and to have a guarantee to back it up as well. The folks over at ioSafe focus specifically on this crowd. Not only do they offer products that are according to them build to handle almost anything, but they back it up with data recovery if something does happen. Today we are going to take a look at that Rugged Portable hard drive to see what all of the fuss is about, without any more buildup, let’s dig in.
I remember, early last year, thinking to myself; "Self, it would be totally awesome if they made an external hard drive that was battery operated and could connect to a WiFi network. No more USB cables!" Well, that time has arrived with several new products that have recently hit the market. Today, I would like to take a look at the Kingston Wi-Drive 16GB unit and see how it works, and more importantly, is it worth the money.
Earlier this month Star Trek: Online went the Free To Play model, meaning anyone can have their own starship and participate in one of the best science fiction franchises of all time! Why is that significant to this article? It is significant because I am a Trekkie. I openly admit it. When HornetTek contacted us to do some reviews on their products, this product definitely caught my eye for two reasons. One, I like hard drive enclosures and external storage solutions. Two, it is named "Enterprise". There is even a glimpse of the good 'ole 1701 on HornetTek's website.
If you are building a new computer, or looking for a great way to upgrade the performance of your current machine, many people recommend picking up a Solid State Drive instead of a spinning Hard Disk Drive. SSD's have several advantages of their spinning counterparts, including faster read and write times, and better reliability in environments where shocks and drops are common (like laptop computers). However, they do require some management that you might not be familiar with.
We used to work closely with Mushkin as far back as our first few LAN parties but over the past few years that communication slowed down. This year at CES we had a chance to catch up and see what they have been up to, and we were happy to see that on top of staying in the RAM market they have also introduced a couple SSD’s. Their newest SSD is called the Callisto Deluxe, and we will be taking an in depth look at it today. Sporting the SandForce SF-1200 controller and promising read speeds of up to 285MB/s and write speeds of up to 275MB/s, it sounds like it’s a perfect match for the Mushkin name. Of course there is only one way to find out; let’s jump in.
I have always been a big fan of Seagate’s FreeAgent Go lineup for some time. With only USB 2.0 drives being available up until the past year they were limited in speed by an aging interface. USB 3.0 came out but was only available to people who have 3.0 integrated on their motherboards. Seagate recognized this and designed a product lineup that is flexible enough to be used with any interface without having to buy different drives. Their GoFlex product line is an entire collection of drives, cables, and accessories that can be a little overwhelming. Today I am going to sort through it all and see if I can’t help break it all down. Let’s jump in!
With internal Blu-Ray players starting to become normal and prices becoming very reasonable it’s no surprise that Plextor would look at other options to continue to grow their product line. They have had an external Blu-Ray drive for some time, but it would be hard to call it portable. With the introduction of the PX-B120U they could finally call their external Blu-Ray drive portable. Just like the PX-610U it doesn’t require external power making it much easier to take with you on the go. Let’s take a look and see if the PX-B120U is as portable as it looks.
Even with the price of SSD’s still out of range of some users we see an amazing variety of models giving the most hardcore and wealthy enthusiasts a great selection to pick from. OCZ itself manufactures a model for any price or performance range. We already took a look at their budget/mainstream focused Agility; today we have a chance to put their new Vertex 2 to the test. Will the added cost equal better performance?
When you first visit RunCore's website, you'll have to chose what sort of consumer you are: professional or 'prosumer'. For those unfamiliar with the latter, it's a hybrid word to describe a 'professional consumer', or if you will, an enthusiast. Today we look at a solid-state drive, a piece of hardware any PC enthusiast drools over, provided by RunCore, a China-based manufactuer focused on the production of high-end solid-state storage options.
When you hear the word Hybrid you may have images of Prius’s or maybe even the south park episode where they called all Hybrid owners fart sniffers. You may be surprised to find out that you can get hybrids in the computer industry, specifically in storage. With SSD’s gaining popularity it’s not a surprise that manufactures are looking at ways to bring SSD performance with a normal hard drives capacity and price. Today I have the chance to take a closer look at the Momentus XT from Seagate. This is a 2.5inch laptop drive with 4 gigs of SLC NAND (solid state flash) attached to the PCB to give you just that.
The SSD market has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years. It has given new names a chance to make a name for themselves. Strangely enough, the biggest names in the storage industry Western Digital and Seagate have been slow to the market, letting the technology mature before jumping in. With the purchase of SiliconSystems, Western Digital finally jumped in. Today we are looking at their SiliconEdge Blue, their first entry in the personal SSD market. To celebrate we will showcase this milestone in a custom case from Cooler Master and Smooth Creations.
When the PlayStation 3 first launched it was not only marketed as a game console but also a Blu-Ray Disc player which at the time may have justified its higher price when compared to its competitor consoles. But what once seemed like a a great value when compared to other Blu-Ray players which couldn't play video games may not seem so great now. Lite-On introduced an affordable Blu-Ray option to the PC, a gaming platform as old as the industry itself. For less than the price of a new retail PS3 title, you can now add Blu-Ray capabilities to your PC with the iHOS104. Today Lite-On has sent us one to test.
Storing and backing up your files on a USB or eSATA hard drive is an important part of computer use today. If you are like a good portion of computer users today, you have multiple computers. Wouldn't it be great to be able to backup your files from all of your PCs and access them from any computer on your network? That is where NAS (network attached storage) comes in to the picture. Today we are looking at Seagate's BlackArmor NAS 110. We have already been impressed with Seagate's storage products in past and I am curious to see if they can uphold that standard with their NAS product line.