LaCie Hard Drive Unveiled

LaCie unveiled a new external HDD, simply named LaCie Hard Drive.

The user-friendly LaCie Hard Drive, Design by Neil Poulton adds sophisticated style to your desktop yet its presence is quiet and unobtrusive. It has a unique distinguishing feature - a cool, blue LED strip on its underside that creates an ambient glow. Its subtle, all-black design blends perfectly into dark home entertainment setups and workstations. Very small for its vast capacity, this lightweight, compact drive has a fashionable, mirror-polished finish. The smartly engineered design allows for heat dissipation and near-silent, fanless operation. With Hi-Speed USB 2.0, this efficient hard drive makes a great companion to your PC or Mac. Setup is nearly effortless; it’s plug & play and offers customizable formatting. LaCie ‘1-Click’ Backup Software for PC and Mac is included for quickly saving files in one click.

It will be available in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities for $149.99, $249.99 and $399.99, respectively. The product will start shipping in early January 2008.

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320GB Passport USB HDD Launched By Western Digital

Mobile users looking for data storage and backup capabilities on the go want something smaller and sleeker that is easy to take with them. Western Digital announced its new WD Passport 320GB portable hard drive today. The small drive is powered completely by the USB bus of a computer.

The USB interface allows for data transfer of up to 480 Mbps. The drive measures 0.590-inch H x 5.11-inch L x 3.14-inch W and weighs 0.23 pounds making for a very portable package. Google software is included on the drive to allow users to search for files and folders on the drive, mange photos, and simplify web searches.

WD Sync software allows users to synchronize and encrypt data between the host computers and the storage drive. The 128-bit encryption secures data on the Passport in the event the drive is lost. While the drive is compatible with both Mac and Windows, the software included on the drive is for Windows systems only. The 320GB Passport drive is available now for $229.99.

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Western Digital Unveils GreenPower 500GB HDD

Western Digital unveiled a new 500GB HDD in its GreenPower family of hard drives. The new WD Caviar GP 500GB uses only 3.3W in idle and 6W during seek mode.

WD Caviar GP 500 GB 3.5-inch SATA hard drives support quieter, cooler-running desktop PCs and external storage devices, with power usage 30 percent lower than any other announced 500 GB hard drive in the industry.

"Cooler and quieter operation are key benefits of the WD Caviar GP line of hard drives, which has created a strong following among desktop and external HDD customers," said Don Bennett, vice president and general manager of WD's desktop business unit. "When a hard drive requires 30 percent less power to operate, heat generation is significantly reduced, enabling greater long-term reliability in all applications."

WD Caviar GP 500 GB hard drives (model WD5000AACS) will be available for $149.99 USD.

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Kingston Working On SSD Drive - Available In 2008

One of the most well known names that comes to mind when you speak about SSD drives is SanDisk but several other manufacturers are also working on solid state drives. FUD Zilla reports Kingston unveiled last week at a press event in Taiwan that they will launch their first SSD drives in the first quarter of 2008.

The company believes that that is when the pricing structure of the components will be right for it to enter this market.

The first product from Kingston will be a 32GB 1.8 or 2.5in drive and the plan is to ramp up production and capacity over the next few years.

Kingston admitted that SSD will always have a price premium over traditional mechanical hard drives, although they though that when the SSD drives hits a two to three times price premium over traditional drives, consumers will consider them as a viable alternative.

Kingston believes future notebooks will get two storage slots: one for SSD drives to store the operating system and frequently used software and a second slot for a traditional HDD for data storage.

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Western Digital Announces Record Breaking Hard Drive Density

Today Western Digital announced that it has achieved 520 Gb/in2 areal density in an actual demonstration using its own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology. For those of you who are counting, that makes it the highest density ever reached using continuous media. A density of this magnitude produces a 3.5-inch hard drive storing 640 GB-per-platter and single hard drive capacities as large as 3 TB. Compare that to the current leading density of around 200 Gb/in2 being shipped high volume products like WD's 250 GB Scorpio(R) 2.5-inch drive. That's all well and good, but it looks like you will have to wait to get your hands on this technology. Current estimates put the release at around 2010.

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Seagate's 1TB HDD With Native Encryption

Seagate announces a 3.5-inch 1TB hard drive with full disc AES encryption and a 250GB notebook hard drive.


Seagate this week announced two new hard drives for desktops and notebook computers. The new desktop hard drive is a 1TB 3.5-inch internal drive with integrated government-grade encryption technology to keep data safe from unauthorized users. The drive is called the Barracuda FDE for full disk encryption and is the world’s first 3.5-inch desktop hard drive with native encryption and uses the same technology as the Momentus FDE notebook hard drives.

Seagate employs AES, which is the strongest level of commercially available encryption protocols. The Barracuda FDE encrypts the entire drive’s contents for full protection when the system is off. Booting a computer with a Baraccuda FDE drive requires the user to enter a pre-boot password. The Barracuda FDE desktop drive is available in capacities up to 1TB and has a 7200-rpm spindle speed.

To reach this high level of storage, Seagate employs perpendicular magnetic recording technology it pioneered on the 750GB Barracuda hard drive last year. The Momentus 5400.4 also has improved durability with an operating shock tolerance of 325 Gs and a non-operating shock tolerance of 900 Gs.

The Momentus 5400.4 is scheduled to ship to system builders in the fourth quarter of 2007 and the Barracuda FDE is on track for shipment in 2008. Seagate has no comment on pricing of either drive at this time.

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