eTeknix » Hard Drive

Hitachi LifeStudio Desk Plus 2TB External Hard Drive Review

Andy Ruffell — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:42:00 +0000

Hitachi are classed as one of the biggest manufacturer’s on the market for many products in the retail world today, and with a division devoted to hard drives and storage, they have offered storage solutions for many years in an extremely competative market.

Part of this market is for the mainstream user who wants a simple plug and play device that can house their collection of data, which generally consists of music, movies and artwork images and this is where external hard drives that perch on your desk really come into action.

Obviously a drive like this is aimed at the user wanting a nice plethora of storage at their disposal and with lots of competition on the market, we hope that this product will give a slight edge over other drives on the market. When looking at a storage drive, most people would dish out the cash on an internal drive, but external still have their uses when it comes to transportation when all you have to do is unplug a few leads and stick it in your bag to take to work or even a friends house.

Also with USB getting faster as technology moves on, and motherboards incorporating more and more ports, it means that a drive like the one we’re looking at today gives that certain edge over an interal drive when it comes to connectivity.

We was half expecting this drive to follow suit with other products on the market from the likes of Buffalo and Lacie with a very standard design. Fortunately, this product has a little bit more to offer in the styling department with an ‘L’ shaped design that lets the drive sit upright on a desk, coupled with a piano black shell, makes this a product that people will gawp at.

The drive itself measures in at 18cm.09 x 12.33cm x 8.27cm and comes in the choice of 500GB 1TB and 2TB varients, though the 500GB is less commonly seen in the retail sector.

A unique feature is that the drive includes a section for an included USB key drive and sits on the front of the dock via a magnetized mechanism. With a light on the top of the drive and on the USB key too, you’re able to see exactly when the drive is in use and is working hard at transferring your important files, though it can get a bit annoying after a while of seeing that flickering light.

The USB key attaches to the front of the dock and connects through the drives USB interface to be read. It still has a traditional USB connection if using the supplied flash drive without the use of the LifeStudio.

Looking at the connections on the rear of the drive, we find a mini USB which connects into your computer via a standard USB on the other end. Also on the rear of the drive is a 12V DC power input port and space for a Kensington Security Lock to give that piece of mind if using this device in your office.

Taking a look at how the drive performs, we sadly don’t hold high hope and that comes down to the slow and ever-ageing USB 2.0 interface that it connects through. With this in mind, it’s still part of our process to show you some figures, so let’s get to it.

Starting with the drive itself, coming in at 2Tb with a USB 2.0 interface, you can’t expect miracles, though we do like the idea and concept around the device, and we can see it being aimed at users with multiple small files, such as documents, opposed to movies and music which generally are a lot larger in size.

As expected, we didn’t see the rear or write speed peak over 35MB/s but the drive did remain consistent across all allocation file sizes.

Now moving on to the USB flash drive, which is in the same boat due to the interfaced used.

Sadly the USB flash drive performed a lot worse than we anticipated at 12MB/s write speeds and 16MB/s read speeds when looking at the larger file size tests such as 1024.

Many consumers may be put off by the slower interface compared to other offerings using an eSATA connection, but for all around compatibility, USB is always going to be the favored choice and is by far the most convenient. Though, this is only the case due to the lack of eSATA on a lot of computers today.

From research, it also shows that the typical customer of a drive like this, is going to use it for exporting documents such as word files and small pictures (much like ourselves) so speed isn’t always the main factor when compared to the storage size vs cost.

Also by having a dockable USB key included, it does open up the avenue for a little bit more storage and the ability for multiple purposes including as a boot drive in our case.

When you really get down to it though, a 7200RPM drive encased in a stylish, sleek black shell at a reasonable price of £105 is something that can’t be moaned at and brushed to the side,especially with the price of internal hard drives at an all time high, the external solution still offers a lot better value for money and that’s reflected, when you look at the price difference between the 1TB and 2TB models of this drive.

Though the unit isn’t as fast as we’d hoped for, it does have a good concept and looks stylish no matter what, and with a cheap price at the moment compared to internal equivalents, we’ve had to give it our Innovation Award, because it is simply that; innovative.

Seagate joins Western Digital in massacring Warranties

Ryan Martin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:11:20 +0000

Western Digital last week announced plans to slash warranties across the board and offer customers the chance to buy these back. It was a below-the-belt cost cutting method that could even turn around to make them a profit. Seagate has reportedly been up to the exact same thing. An extract from Seagate to its partners states that:

“Effective December 31, 2011, Seagate will be changing its warranty policy from a 5 year to a 3 year warranty period for Nearline drives, 5 years to 1 year for certain Desktop and Notebook Bare Drives, 5 years to 3 years on Barracuda XT and Momentus XT, and from as much as 5 years to 2 years on Consumer Electronics.”

The hard drives which get massacred the most are the Barracuda Green drives which decline from a 5 year warranty to just a 1 year warranty. The 2.5″ Momentus drives also suffer the same fate. The full list of warranty alterations is as follows ( remember they all previously had 5 year warranties):

Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives: 3 years
Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives: 1 year
Barracuda XT: 3 years
Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200rpm): 1 year
Momentus XT: 3 years
SV35 Series – Video Surveillance: 2 years
Pipeline HD Mini, Pipeline HD: 2 years

What is the meaning of this? Well some would say Seagate and Western Digital have to follow each others moves, if Western Digital cuts warranties so must Seagate to remain cost competitive and vice versa. Will the customer actually see some benefits of these cut costs in terms of lower hard drive prices and better hard drives? Probably not.

Source: The Register

Western Digital cuts hard drive warranties

Ryan Martin — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:21:31 +0000

Back in 2008 Seagate lowered its hard drive warranties from 5 years to 3 years in a move that angered the consumer market and the trend quickly spread with 3 years being the new standard for warranty. Now it seems Western Digital is taking it one step further, lowering their warranty again from 3 years to 2 years on selected models. The lines that are to be affected by the cut in warranty are Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue hard drives while the Caviar Black, Scorpio Black, A/V drives and external drives all retain the 3 year warranty. The transition takes place over the next few months and customers can check if their drive has a 2 or 3 year warranty by checking its serial number on the Western Digital website. The new changes come into affect on January 2012…Western Digital’s way of saying Happy New Year to its customers. Western Digital is considering a measure to allow users to essentially buy back the extra 1 year of the warranty and get an extended warranty by paying a bit more, seems like a below-the-belt money grabbing measure to us.

“This new warranty policy will be effective for drives shipped from January 2nd, 2012. It is important that you take a moment to update your website(s) and collateral to reflect this change for effected drives shipped after January 1st, 2012.

All drives shipped to distributors prior to Jan. 2nd 2012 will retain the current warranty terms. Because of existing inventory in the distribution channel there will be a short period of time when some drives with a 3-year warranty will be sold at the same time as drives with a 2-year warranty.

If you have any doubt about the warranty of a drive you purchased, you can go to support.wdc.com, select Warranty and RMA Services and proceed to the Warranty Check page.”

Source: The Register

Hitachi announce 4TB drives

Ryan Martin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:38:16 +0000

Hitachi 4TB Deskstar 5K4000 Hard Drive Retail Kit with CoolSpin™ Technology

The 4TB Deskstar 5K4000 is a 3.5-inch hard drive with a 32MB cache buffer that provides an exceptional blend of power efficiency and performance, making it an ideal solution for power-friendly desktop computers. Providing 33 percent more capacity compared to current 3TB drives, the Deskstar 5K4000 drive features innovative CoolSpin technology, expanding this class of performance-optimized, energy-efficient drives that run cooler and require less power. The CoolSpin technology, along with other Hitachi power management techniques, gives the Deskstar 5K4000 up to a 28 percent idle power savings over Deskstar 7K3000 7,200 RPM drives and an idle acoustic level of only 2.5 bels. The new 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 Hard Drive Retail Kit is currently shipping in limited quantities to online and retail stores with a suggested retail price of $399.99.

The 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 Hard Drive Retail Kit comes complete with mounting screws, step-by-step instructions, and a software download that allows 32- and 64-bit Microsoft® Windows®, Apple® OS X and Linux® systems to tap into the full capacity and power of the 4TB drive, as one big massive data drive, without having to install extra hardware¹. Consumers planning to use a Hitachi 4TB drive should consult the Hitachi High Capacity Technology Brief.

The new drive also demonstrates Hitachi’s ecological leadership with its halogen-free design and power-efficient operation. These features helped qualify the drive for the Hitachi EcoTrac™ classification, which identifies products that minimize environmental impact in the areas of product design, manufacturing, operation and disposal. It also uses Advanced Format, which increases the sector size on HDD from 512 bytes to 4096 (4K) bytes, thereby increasing capacities and improving error correcting capabilities. Please see the Hitachi Advanced Format Technology Brief for more information.

Hitachi GST will be shipping its Deskstar 5K4000 (bare drives and bulk pack) to OEMs, distributors and channel partners worldwide in Q1 2012.

4TB Hitachi Touro Desk External Drive

Placed vertically or horizontally, or even stacked, the Touro Desk External Drive perfectly fits into any home or office environment. Featuring a smooth black, textured body for solid good looks, the Hitachi Touro Desk External Drive provides easy add-on storage for all your photos, movies, music and documents. Offering colossal storage capacity, it can store hours and hours of high-definition video, thousands of movies, songs and photos, and tons of video games with room to spare². Bundled with the Hitachi Touro Desk External Drive, and offered as a standalone service for anyone to use, every user gets 3GB of cloud storage for free from HitachiBackup.com. Not only does HitachiBackup.com help keep your digital content safe up in the cloud, your online content is available anytime, anywhere, from any smartphone or computer web browser. You can even share your online content with others by simply sending a web link. If you need more online storage, you can quickly and easily upgrade to a paid account and receive 250GB of cloud storage along with Apple® iPhone® and iPad® apps.

Housing a Deskstar 5K4000 hard drive, the new 4TB Hitachi Touro Desk External Drive provides plug and play simplicity and a fast USB 3.0 interface with all the quality and reliability you expect from Hitachi. Both Mac and PC compatible, the Hitachi Touro Desk External Drive now comes in 4TB, 3TB, 2TB and 1TB capacities.

The 4TB Hitachi Touro Desk External Drive will be available in January for $419.99 MSRP

Source: Press Release

3TB Hitachi Deskstar for £109.99 – This won’t last long

Ryan Martin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:45:48 +0000

Hard drive prices are at an all time high and for those looking to increase their storage it may seem like there are very few opportunities to buy reasonably priced hard drives. However, if you live in the U.K (which a lot of our readers do) then you are in luck. Currys is selling a 3TB 5400RPM Hitachi Deskstar for a price of £109.99 which is about £40£60 cheaper than anywhere else. We don’t know how long this deal will last so you should probably head on over there soon as stock is likely to run out very fast.

SuperTalent debuts enthusiast SSD in the form of the TeraNova series

Ryan Martin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:38:19 +0000

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions, today announces their fastest 2.5” SSD to date, the SATA3 TeraNova. Targeted at the Pro/Enthusiast seeking extreme performance, the TeraNova is the fastest 2.5” SSD that SuperTalent has released to date. Featuring the SATA3 Interface and SandForce 2200 processor with optimized firmware, the SuperTalent TeraNova was built for speed.

By optimizing the transfer rate at various queue depths, the TeraNova delivers excellent performance in a variety of different conditions. Sure the TeraNova boots quickly and posts outstanding benchmark scores (over 500 MB/s for both read and write), but the TeraNova also excels in general responsiveness. Industry standard applications like Photoshop, Premier, Maya and 3DS Max, load, render and perform much faster when compared to countless other SSDs available on the market. The TeraNova also includes new features that enhance reliability as well. In the event of a sudden power loss, the TeraNova reacts, protecting valuable data from corruption before it powers off.

If you are looking to improve workstation productivity across the board, SuperTalent’s new TeraNova is an excellent choice. Available in 60, 120, 240 and 480GB capacities, the TeraNova begins shipping today.

Source: Press Release

Western Digital also alters last quarter outlook

Ryan Martin — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:45:32 +0000

Western Digital today is updating its financial outlook for the December quarter and the progress to date of its operations recovery effort in Thailand. The company is also providing its view of the industry conditions for the December 2011 quarter and beyond.

Company Fiscal Q2 Outlook:
For the December quarter, the company now expects revenue of at least $1.8 billion and gross margins above the high end of its business model range of 18 percent to 23 percent, and operating expenses of approximately $265 million, exclusive of unusual charges related to the floods, acquisition-related expenses and litigation. Unusual charges related to the floods are expected to be in the range of $225 million to $275 million for the December quarter, exclusive of any insurance recovery. The company expects to file a property damage claim of at least $50 million and an additional claim for business interruption during the December quarter. The accounting treatment of these claims is dependent on their status as of the end of the quarter. The company expects acquisition related charges in the December quarter of approximately $15 million.

The company will be vigorously contesting the arbitration decision announced November 21, 2011, in the legal matter with Seagate and has not yet determined the accounting treatment associated with this matter.

The company expects to maintain its net cash position flat with prior quarter end.

Thailand Flood Recovery Effort:
“The passion, perseverance, ingenuity and execution exhibited by the WD team has been extraordinary and enabled us to make substantial progress in partially restoring our operations in Thailand, well in advance of our earliest expectations when the floods hit,” said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer of WD. “Much work remains to be done but we couldn’t be more pleased with the effort and results thus far, including tremendous support from our supply partners and strategic customers.”

Specifically, the company indicated it:

Re-started production of hard drives this week in one of its buildings in Bang Pa-in (BPI), Thailand, one week ahead of internal schedules. This facility had been submerged in some six feet of water since October 15, the estate was pumped dry on November 17, main power was restored on November 26 and production restarted November 30;
Has removed all submerged slider manufacturing equipment from the BPI facilities for assessment, decontamination and refurbishment and has commenced decontamination and restoration of its remaining buildings in BPI;
Expects to recommence head slider production in BPI in the March 2012 quarter (Q3 FY’12) and also begin production in a new WD slider fab location in Penang, Malaysia, in the same time frame; and
The company’s other Thailand hard drive facilities at Navanakorn remain under approximately two feet of water. The industrial estate is expected to be pumped dry within ten days at which point the work of decontamination and refurbishment will commence.

Industry Conditions:
The company believes that hard drive industry shipments in the December quarter will be limited to approximately 120 million units due to production and supply constraints related to the historic flooding in Thailand. This includes units that were in inventory at the beginning of the quarter. The company believes that demand for the December quarter is in the range of 170 million to 180 million units. The company believes that significant industry supply constraints will continue in the March quarter and beyond.

HGST Acquisition Status Update:
In connection with its planned acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the company is working to satisfy the remedy provision included in the European Commission’s recent conditional approval of the transaction and to obtain approvals from the remaining regulatory authorities. Subject to completing these actions, the company is now expecting to close the transaction by March 2012.

Source: Press Release

Seagate updates outlook in light of the Thailand Flooding

Ryan Martin — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:43:21 +0000

Seagate Technology plc., updated its financial outlook for the December 2011 and March 2012 quarters. The company continues to believe that, due to the industry impacts caused by the extensive flooding in Thailand, hard disk drive supply will be significantly constrained for several quarters. For the December 2011 quarter, the company believes the industry will ship between 110-120 million units.

The company believes the industry’s ability to manufacture and ship hard disks drives will gradually improve throughout calendar 2012. While this may alleviate some of the unit demand shortfall, it is expected that some companies will optimize unit shipments by manufacturing lower component count/lower capacity hard disk drives; thereby, only modestly offsetting the growing petabyte shortage. Because demand is estimated to significantly exceed supply during this time, pricing is expected to remain stable.

Financial Outlook
The company’s component and disk drive factories in Thailand have not been directly affected by the flood; however, the company’s ability to manufacture hard disk drives has been impacted due to external component supply constraints as first disclosed on October 12, 2011.

For the December 2011 quarter, the company now expects unit shipments of approximately 43 million units and revenue of approximately $2.8 billion. Gross margin as a percent of revenue is expected to be 150-300 basis points above the high-end of the company’s long-term, targeted gross margin range of 22-26%. Operating expenses (R&D and SG&A) are expected to be approximately $400 million. Expenses related to the acquisition of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd’s (“Samsung”) hard disk drive business and any revenue or operating expenses of the acquired business following the closing date cannot be estimated at this time and are therefore excluded from this outlook. The company continues to expect to close the acquisition of Samsung’s hard disk drive business by the end of December 2011.

The company’s outlook for the March 2012 quarter assumes requisite regulatory approvals are received and the Samsung acquisition closes in December of 2011. The company also continues to work with its external suppliers to restore the component supply chain, and now expects that in the March quarter it will be capable of shipping a mix of products in terms of capacity per drive and expected market similar to pre-flood levels.

Currently, for the March 2012 quarter, the company expects unit shipments to increase sequentially. Revenue is expected to be at least $3.75 billion and gross margin as a percent of revenue is expected to be at least 300 basis points above the aforementioned targeted range of 22-26%. The outlook for the March 2012 quarter excludes certain costs related to the integration of the acquired Samsung hard disk drive operations which cannot be estimated at this time.

The financial outlook provided today does not include the arbitration award previously disclosed on November 21, 2011.

Source: Press Release

Seagate announce second generation Momentus XT Hybrid drives

Ryan Martin — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:55:07 +0000

Seagate is now shipping the second generation of Momentus XT, its groundbreaking solid state hybrid drive for consumer and commercial laptops and the company’s fastest drive ever for personal computers. With a simple drive upgrade, users can boost boot-up speed and overall performance to turbo-charge their laptop PC. Seven original equipment manufacturers are gearing up to ship laptops powered by the Momentus XT drive. The drive is now available at online retailers Amazon, Canada Computers, CDW, Memory Express, NCIX, Newegg, and TigerDirect.

Powering the Momentus XT drive are Seagate’s Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies. Adaptive Memory technology works by identifying data usage patterns, and then moving the most frequently retrieved information to solid state memory for faster access. Adaptive Memory effectively tailors hard drive performance to each user and the applications they use. FAST Factor technology blends the strengths of SSDs and hard disk drives for faster access to applications, quicker bootup and higher overall system speed.

“Laptop users want faster access to all of their content, from gaming, music and video to spreadsheets and documents, creating strong demand for the highest performance,” said Scott Horn, vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Seagate. “Seagate is excited to answer this need with a second-generation Momentus XT drive that delivers solid state drive (SSD) speed, greater storage capacity and easy installation at an affordable price.”

“High-speed storage devices make a difference when it comes to improving overall PC performance,” said John Rydning, research vice president at IDC. “Seagate’s newest Momentus XT drive gives notebook PC users an economical option for boosting PC performance while at the same time providing spacious storage capacity all in one device.”

Momentus XT – Meeting the need for speed
The Momentus XT drive is nearly 70 percent faster than the prior Momentus drive version and up to three times faster than a traditional hard disk drive while providing 750GB of storage capacity. The Momentus XT hard drive’s Serial ATA 6Gb/second interface and 8 gigabytes of Single Level Cell NAND flash double the interface and NAND read-write speed of the previous generation. The all-in-one design of Momentus XT drive makes installation and upgrading simple and easy for any laptop or desktop computer and with any operating system.

The Momentus XT drive is now shipping in volume worldwide. Manufacturer’s Suggesting Retail Pricing (MSRP) for Momentus XT 750GB is $245.

Join a Seagate webinar for a chance to win a laptop powered by Momentus XT
Learn more about solid state hybrid drive technology and Seagate’s new Momentus XT drive by joining a live webcast on Tuesday, December 6, at 11 a.m. PST. Sign up for a chance to win a high-performance laptop powered by Momentus XT here.

Tuning Momentus XT for Optimal Performance
The hard drive industry is transitioning from the current 512-byte sector standard to a newer Advanced Format 4K (4096-byte) sector size that helps maintain data integrity at higher storage densities and capacities. Momentus XT takes advantage of this newer Advanced Format 4K standard and is already tuned for optimal performance on the latest PC operating systems.

Momentus XT customers can easily optimize Momentus XT to work with Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Windows with a few simple steps. Please visit this page on the Seagate web site to determine if Momentus XT is already tuned for your operating system version and how to do so if needed.

Source: Press Release

Icy Dock MB981U3-1SA 2.5″/3.5″ USB 3.0 SATA & IDE Hard Drive Docking Station Review

Simon Telford — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:57:17 +0000

Once upon a time, IDE Hard Disk Drives were all the rage, and if you do still have some of these, soon to be, legacy drives then you will be surprised to see a company creating products that allow you to dock an IDE drive, on top of that, this dock also allows you to use SATA drives too.

While this product in itself is not unique, it is certainly a rarity and something we were very interested to take a look at. Most docks that are readily available on the market currently can usually fit 2.5″ or 3.5″ SATA drives only and sometimes only one or the other of these sizes. This Icy Dock creation takes both IDE and SATA drives of both sizes due to a very cleverly designed adapter.

This product certainly has a bit of style to it, and from the front we can see the Icy Dock branding.

At the bottom of the back we see a power and data connection, but you may notice this section seems to be removable so we will look at this in more detail.

On the top of the device there is a power button, and the two slots for a 2.5″ or a 3.5″ drive, these are both flaps which are spring-loaded but push open very easily. On the right hand side is a push lever to help aid the hard drives out.

This adapter was nicely slotted into the bottom of the device and as you can see there is quite a lot to it. There is the power button, and molex power connector, and a SATA data/power connection on top. At the bottom is the standard 3.5″ IDE connection.

On the one side we have the cut-down 2.5″ IDE connection.

On the top, which we could see from the back of the product is the USB 3.0 connection as well as the power supply for this adapter/product.

After removing the adapter we are left with a fairly large gap in the main product, as you can see the power button pushes through from the top and the hard drives plug directly into the adapter at the bottom.

Of course this device connects via the latest and greatest USB 3.0 interface and as such contains a USB 3.0 cable.

As you might expect this dock needs to be powered and as such there is a fairly hefty power supply which has been split into two parts, very much like a laptop charger.

The cables on both parts of the power supply are plenty long enough for you to position the device wherever you want on your desk.

This is the 4-pin molex adapter which is only used when using the 3.5″ IDE drives, and it is fairly short although just about long enough to do the job – another cm in length would of made it easier to plug in.

We now turn to the performance of this dock:

As you can see we have tested a wide variety of drives and did also test a 3.5″ IDE drive, but did at this point find that it is possible to put the drive in upside down – even though then you can’t actually power it up. This is normally avoided by putting in a ‘key pin’ so that the pins can only go in one way round. Unfortunately Icy Dock did not do this with the 3.5″ side of the adapter which did at first cause some confusion.

You can also see from the results that the Icy Dock is not too compromising on the read/write speeds of the drives and does certainly work as expected. Of course, it is not able to utilise the full USB 3.0 speed but this is all due to the hard drives used and there is clearly plenty more data bandwidth left.

In general we do quite like this device, it looks good, works well and has a few good features up its sleeve. It is certainly quite hard to create an all-in-one dock that can cater with the both drive types and both in 2.5″ and 3.5″ form. Certainly Icy Dock have found a fairly cunning way round this by having the detachable adapter.

However, we do partly wonder whether they should of kept the product to just the adapter and not had the whole dock over the top as this would of made more sense. That said, it does give you the best of both worlds, if you only want it for SATA drives you have a lovely docking station and if you are using IDE then you will just use the adapter on its own.

As already mentioned, there is a slightly design flaw with the 3.5″ IDE section which means you do have to be careful to make sure you are putting the drive in the right way up, and also the molex cable being a bit on the short side, at the very least we expect its life expectancy would be higher if it was slightly longer as it would be under such stress to twist round in a short space.

We now turn to price, and we were certainly unsure as to the price we would expect this product to retail at. It is certainly pretty unique, and currently it can be purchased for around £42. While this is a slightly higher when compared to other docking stations on the market it does have a lot more features and is certainly very well built and the dual-functionality makes it very useful in lots of applications as well as using the latest USB 3.0.

This is a brilliantly designed product that will look good and be extremely useful to lots of computer users.

Hard drive prices continue to soar but when will they come down again?

Ryan Martin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:42:42 +0000

The devastating floods in Thailand had serious implications for hard drive production. But it seems things are not as bad as they seem, there has been an essence of manufacturer and retailer scaremongering in order to exploit much higher prices. Hard drive production could recover within about 3 weeks so in time for the new year and Christmas. According to Digitimes there are several suppliers waiting to unload their hard drive inventory onto the market and the supplies they have, were hoarded over fears of hard drive shortages. So in essence the current hard drive shortage, to a large extent, is a self fulfilling prophecy of suppliers hoarding hard drives midst fears of a shortage and then actually creating one.

“Japan-based hard drive motor supplier Nidec already announced that one of its plants in Thailand has resumed production, while many other hard drive component suppliers are also aggressively seeking solutions to substitute their lost capacity in Thailand, the sources believe the hard drive shortage issues will see an obvious improvement in January 2012.”

The UK and Europe has been hit particularly bad by the soaring prices. In the UK prices have gone from around £35 for 1TB to about £105 for 1TB which is a 300% increase. Internationally these kind of prices actually are similar to what we saw in late 2009 and early 2010 when high capacity disk drives were relatively new. The main message of this all is that if you do not have to upgrade now then hold out for a month and you should be able to avoid the inflated scaremongering prices set by most retailers.

Source: Digitimes

Hard drive shortage to worsen before it gets better

Ryan Martin — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:21:39 +0000

Thailand struggles to contain flood waters from ravaging its lowland areas, industrial output across the board has been stifled by the floods and in particular hard drive production from Thailand has crashed. The flood waters are expected to recede within a few weeks but the clean up operation could take several months and as you may already know the Western Digital production facility in Thailand was hit significantly. It could take nearly 6 months for hard drive producers to catch up with production shortage and fulfill production quotas and as a result the figures for this year don’t look good at all.

IDC and iSuppli believe the floods will result in a 25 percent to 28 percent overall market shortage over the next six months. Overall shipments are down from 173 million in Q3 to 125 million in Q4 which is a steep drop representing the 25-28% market shortage. Western Digital has been hit worst losing around 75% of production for Q4. IDC expects hard drive prices to go up by about 10 percent in Q4 but as you may have seen already prices are increasing by much more than this, about 25%-75% in most cases which is a real problem for the consumers. The only positive about this for the PC market is that SSD sales are expected to shoot up as they are produced elsewhere and production has not been affected.

Source: ComputerWorld

Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB Hard Drive Review

Andy Ruffell — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:23:11 +0000

A lot of talk has been about solid state drives lately and rightly so as they are one of the most beneficial components into a system that money can buy. By the addition of a SSD, a system can be boosted but it comes at a cost and sadly doesn’t offer much in terms of price per Gigabyte.

What a lot of users are tending to go for these days is a smaller size solid state drive to simply run their operating system whilst their games and storage is moved over to a large mechanical style drive and with more companies than ever before offering drives with higher capacities per platter, it’s an easy decision to make if needing a lot of storage.

Casting your mind back to this time last year, the 750GB per platter boundary was broken and were quickly implemented into drives and sold by the truck load but ended up being quite costly, used a lot of power and in turn generated a mass amount of heat. This clearly wasn’t a viable option, though the likes of Seagate and other well-known brands continued to sell these drives in succession, whilst the likes of Western Digital sat back to admire what was about to come.

Moving forward ever so slightly and Western Digital brought their 3TB Caviar Green drive to market which only uses four platters, opposed to five which means less heat, less power and also brings the price down for the consumers which is a typical win, win, win situation for everyone involved and will also give that slight edge to them over the competition.

Today we’re taking a look at that very drive to see if performance is hindered in any way or whether this drive really can do it all whilst offering a huge capacity for space at the same time.

Seagate says 5TB drives in 3 months

Ryan Martin — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 06:07:31 +0000

An employee at Seagate has stated that now Seagate has 1TB a disk technology and has the ability to combine 5 disks into each 3.5″ drive, they will soon be able to produce a 5TB drive. He specified a time period of 3 months and stated that Seagate has been working hard to ensure it is the first in the market to bring out a 5TB drive as it was the market first with 500GB and 1TB disk platters.

Seagate plans to introduce its five platter based 4TB drive in November based off five 800GB platters and then a couple of months after that it will introduce the 5TB drive based off five of the 1TB platters. Both of these drives will come in the GoFlex disk line first as 7200RPM external drives. We are not sure how much either of these will retail for but on launch they certainly will not be cheap. You can see the whole interview with the Seagate Employee here, 6 minutes onwards is the point of interest to hear him discuss the upcoming 5TB drives.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source

New USB 3.0 portable hard drive from PQI

Ryan Martin — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:10:05 +0000

Foxlink group-Power Quotient International (PQI) has just released its all-new H552V USB 3.0 2.5” portable hard drive! The drive features sharp and refined curves that create a stylish sports car-like appearance, a dual curved back case that lends it a stunning beauty, and a precision engraving polishing technique and ornate buffing that manifests a high quality combination glossy/matte black finish. The device’s smooth surface texture, which is both aesthetically pleasing and comfortable to the touch, subtly exudes a reserved sense of extravagance. The PQI H552V boasts stylish race car-like curves and also features a USB 3.0 transfer interface crafted like a hawk-eyed double headlight. The bright LED light at the center of the headlights clearly displays transfer status to help avoid interrupting data transfers—and thereby losing one’s important data—as a result of accidentally removing the device at the wrong time.

In addition to its remarkable appearance, PQI’s H552V provides 3 different capacities to choose from: 500G, 750G, and 1TB. The back of the device features 4 specially-designed grip pads to effectively prevent sliding, reduce noise while the drive is in use, and avoid undesirable scratching. As users increasingly demand higher quality multimedia, the highly anticipated introduction of the USB 3.0 interface not only provides a maximum transfer rate of 5Gbps/sec—which is 10 times faster than USB 2.0 (480Mbps/sec) and is a great time saver for data transfers—but is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as well. Its stable current helps prevents data loss and makes it consume less power consumption and be more eco-friendly. Because PQI pays attention to the needs of consumers, the H552V comes with exclusive software for data security protection and large file transfers. It also has a special TurboHDD USB acceleration device which offers data transfer rates up to 53% faster than average external USB hard drives, which greatly reduces waiting times during large file transfers. In addition, Ur Fortress data encryption software utilizes AES256 encryption technology to provide high-level data security for users, including data protection for classified files and guaranteed privacy for personal photos so that users can back up data and manage file encryption more efficiently. Users may also visit the PQI global website and download the Ur-Smart Mobile Office Software to bolster mobile management of personal documents and achieve higher efficiency. PQI continues to work towards advancements in technology in order to a build a better and more convenient life for all.

Product Specifications
Interface: USB 3.0
Capacity: 500G/750G/1TB
Dimensions: 500GB/750GB – 80(L) x 129(W) x 15.5(H) mm
1TB – 80(L) x 129(W) x 18.5(H) mm
Weight: 500GB/750GB -145g
1TB – 150g
Warranty: 3 years

Source: Press Release