The boys over at Western Digital have taken a 2.5 inch 300 GB spinning at 10,000 rpm and enclosed it in a 3.5 inch form factor case, which, would you believe, cools this little sucker down? Yep, that’s right, you can get your mits on a 300 GB VelociRaptor unit (WD3000HLFS) or a 150 GB version (WD1500HLFS) both of which incorporate a backplane structure which acts as a heatsink for those platters spinning around at 10,000 rpm. Still not impressed? May be you will be after a few more facts and figures

* 300 or 150 GB capacity
* 10,000 rpm
* talks nicely with Macs and PCs
* 3 GBps SATA interface
* 16 MB cache

And, finally, the price tags are US$320 for the 300 GB version with its smaller 150 GB brother weighing in at US$230. Whilst the uses of these puppies are pretty specific, anyone looking for some more performance out of their HDDs may not need to look any further as these VelociRaptors offer twice the capacity and are a third faster than their Raptor predecessors and are also cooler.

Featured tags: 2.5 inch HDD backplane hdd velociraptor western digital

Sphere this entry»

Aimed firmly at the DVR market, Hitachi has launched a couple of new HDDs, namely the CinemaStar 7K1000.B and the CinemaStar 5K320. The 7K1000.B is similar to its DeskStar namesake, yet this unit has been optimised for continuous operation by tweaking its drive mechanics to use three idle modes. The 3.5 inch SATA drive has also been toughened up to withstand the fanless environment found inside DVRs. It spins at 7,200 rpm and is available in a range of capacities from 160 GB thru to a 1 TB big boy!

The 320 GB capacity CinemaStar 5K320 also boasts the toughened touch and optimisation found on the 7K1000.B. However it has also has had CoolSpin technology added to its repertoire to make it one of the most energy efficient and quiet 3.5 inch drives out there - well, according to Hitachi anyway.

Apart from the refinements required for DVR usage, these units are not much different from their DeskStar siblings, so for the average Joe they may get a ‘So what?’ comment, but for the improvement of DVR specs we give them a big thumbs up.

No prices as yet with the 7K1000.B out in August and the 5K320 on show from September.

Featured tags: CinemaStar 5K320 cinemastar 7K1000.B DVR hdd hitachi

Sphere this entry»

The boys at Fabrik have come up with an eco-friendly external hard drive unit with their latest offering the SimpleTech [re]drive. The unit has a bamboo and re-cycled aluminium case and an Energy Star power adapter. For the more usual specs on an external hard drive, read on

* 500 GB storage
* Turbo USB 2.0 interface (25% faster than USB 2.0)
* 2 GB free online storage
* Unlimited tech support
* Plays nicely with PCs and Macs
* Plug n Play

The price tag rocks in at US$160 so not a bad package and eco-friendly too. I think that Fabrik have got a hot little winner on their hands here.

Source: Fabrik

Featured tags: external hdd Fabrik hdd simpletech [re]drive

Sphere this entry»

Next month our Japan-based readers will be able to get their mits on Buffalo’s latest Blu-Ray burners, the BR-816SU2, BR-816FBS-WH and BR-816FBS-BK, all of which are capable of writing to Blu-Ray disks at a speed of 8x. First up is the BR-816SU2, an external USB 2.0/eSATA unit capable of writing to your single layer BD-R at the lightening fast speed of 8x when connected through its eSATA interface. Using the USB 2.0 connector you’ll still be able to achieve 6.5x. The BR-816FBS black and white units are internal burners and have a SATA connection allowing the same 8x speeds. Speeds for other disk types are as follows

* Dual layer BD-R, BD-RE and LTH BD-R - 2x
* DVD±R - 16x
* DVD-RAM - 5x
* DVD±R DL - 8x
* DVD-RW - 6x
* DVD+RW - 8x
* CD-R/RW - 48x/24x

Now for the crunch, what’s the price tag on these suckers? The BR-816SU2 will retail at 46,700 Yen whilst the internal units, BR-816FBS will appear at 41,000 Yen. This figures if converted directly when launched else where work out to US$435 and US$380. Not shabby for some decent hi-def storage units.

Source: Google Translate

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray burner buffalo

Sphere this entry»

Looking for an ultrathin laptop and not keen on the MacBook Air, then the latest offering from Lenovo, the ThinkPad X200, may just be the answer to your Apple phobia. This Centrino 2 powered notebook weighs in at 2.95 pounds, a smidge under the 3 pound Apple variety. The rest of the X200’s specs don’t look too bad either

* 12.1 inch display
* 64 GB SSD or up to 320 GB HDD
* Optional Blu-Ray drive
* Centrino 2 chips running between 2.26 and 2.40 GHz
* up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory
* Windows Vista
* Wi-Fi and mobile broadband connectivity
* 11.6 x 8.3 x 0.8 inches

This puppy won’t be out until August but that’s six weeks away at the latest, so not too long to wait. When it does hit the shelves the base model with 2.26 GHz Centrino 2 and least storage will set you back US$1200. Not bad! Lenovo have got it spot on with the X200 and just as well as this area of the laptop market is heating up considerably especially now the Centrino 2 is out there.

Source: PC World

Featured tags: laptop lenovo thinkpad x200 ultrathin laptop

Sphere this entry»

Hitachi have just announced their latest 1TB hard disk drive, the Deskstar 7K1000.B, claiming it’s the first in a new generation of terabyte hard disk drives. So what’s so new about this second generation of drives, well according to Hitachi’s press release their latest offering

provides an exceptional blend of power efficiency and performance, making it an ideal solution for power-friendly consumer and commercial PCs

So basically they’ve managed to reduce the drive’s power usage whilst maintaining read/write speeds. Here are a few more specs for you to consume.

* spin speed of 7,200 rpm
* 1TB storage
* 3 Gb/s SATA interface
* 32 MB buffer
* 1.2 million hours Mean Time Between Failure
* Rotational Vibration Safeguard

Hitachi claim that this new drive, whilst in idle mode will provide a power saving of up to 43% on first gen drives through its three disk design. Each disk can 375 GB of zeroes and ones. Pretty impressive, eh? Good timing too, considering all the hoopla over the ‘power savings’ of SSDs at the moment.

Source: PC Launches

Featured tags: 3.5 inch HDD hdd hitachi

Sphere this entry»

We showed you the Gigabyte M912 sucker back in June, and it’s now officially launched with a few varying specs. Check out the dets below

* Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU
* 1GB memory
* 2.5 inch 9.5 mm SATA 120, 160 or 250 GB HDD
* 8.9 inch 1280×768 res WXGA touch screen LCD panel
* 3 USB ports
* 1.3 Mp web cam
* Bluetooth, 802.11b/g wireless connectivity
* 3.5 hours battery life
* OS options of Windows XP, Vista Home Basic or Linux
* Express card slot
* 235 x 180 x 42 mm
* 1.3 kg

Conspicuous by its absence is an internal optical drive but this is offset by a price tag of US$700. Not bad for a tablet PC especially given OS options too. Yeah we like the Netbook-M912V so we give it a big thumbs up!

Source: Gigabyte

Featured tags: gigabyte m912 tablet pc umpc

Sphere this entry»