April 5, 2010

High technology and aesthetics come together in new flash drive.

Apacer, digital storage manufacturer, recently launched its latest USB drive, “Handy Steno AH328”. The brand new AH328 features a classy metal-like silver case with simple lines, which give it a professional and elegant feel.  It also comes with a convenient sliding push key on the back, integrating the functionality of a retractable USB drive and the look of a sleek high-tech product.

AH328 has a wide capacity selection from 4GB to 32GB, and with the ACE compression software exclusively included, the user can even increase the usable capacity of the tiny flash drive up to 500%.

By David Ayala
February 26, 2009

February 8, 2010

WD Caviar Black and WD RE4 2TB
www.wdc.com

Western Digital announced that it is now shipping desktop 7200 RPM 2TB hard drives and is qualifying with OEMs enterprise-class hard drives based on WD’s 500 gigabytes-per-platter technology. The popular family of WD Caviar Black drives, now led by the new 2TB capacity, is perfect for gaming, high-performance desktop systems and workstations; while the WD RE4 2TB is suited for servers, network attached storage and storage networks.

High-performance hard drives by an industry leader in performance, WD Caviar Black and WD RE4 2TB drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 64MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive.

“WD Caviar Black 2TB hard drives maximize the features and functionality of power computing applications such as gaming, photo editing, user generated multimedia and video,” said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s client storage systems. “With the selection of WD Caviar Black hard drives, WD desktop customers receive the best possible mix of capacity, performance and reliability that is required for intense desktop computing.”

“Specifically designed for enterprise-class applications, WD’s RE4 2TB drives incorporate the best combination of features, optimum performance, and superior reliability that customers have come to expect from WD,” said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of enterprise storage solutions for WD. “Our enterprise products are directly aimed at customers who require additional features and extensive testing that are necessary for high-end enterprise environments.”

WD Caviar Black 2 TB and WD RE4 2TB hard drives feature the following:

Dual processor- Twice the processing power to maximize performance.

Dual actuator technology- A head positioning system with two actuators that improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.

IntelliSeek- Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration.

StableTrac- The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.

NoTouch ramp load technology- The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

Additional Features for WD RE4 2TB Enterprise Hard Drives
WD RE4 drives feature 1.2 million hours MTBF, Active Power Save, enhanced RAFF technology, multi-axis shock sensor, native command queuing (NCQ), pressure sensors, third generation dynamic fly height, time limited error recovery (TLER), and an extensive and enhanced testing process to ensure long-term reliability for demanding enterprise applications.

Price and Availability
The WD Caviar Black 2TB (model WD2001FASS) hard drives and WD RE4 2TB (model WD2003FYYS) hard drives are distributed by Axis Global Technologies and ATP Peripherals (Phils) and are available through select resellers. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Caviar Black 2TB drive are P 15,650 for WD2001FASS model and P20,800 for WD2003FYYS. Both drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty.

By Luis Anthony G. Oliveros
January 5, 2009

Taiwan-based manufacturer of memory modules and external storage devices Kingmax has released their latest Class 10 SDHC memory cards  featuring waterproof exteriors and fast transfer speeds at a relatively large capacity.

Its writing speed, which clocks in at over 20MB/sec, and a maximum storage capacity of 32GB allows it to be at par with most digital cameras’ full continuous shooting speeds. The Kingmax 32GB Class10 SDHC memory card ensures high resolution (AVCHD) and complies with full HD (1920×1080) picture quality and allows storage of up to 160 minutes of high-def movies, even up to 2,500 pictures in RAW3 format.

Also, the IPX8-compliant waterproof performance easily protects your data from damage, making sure that should you run into an unfortunate dunking accident, your photos and videos would be protected even if your camera faces a slim chance of survival.

December 23, 2009

Transcend Ultimate Class 10
www.transcendusa.com

Transcend Information has announced the launch of its Ultimate Class 10 SDHC cards. Part of Transcend’s “Ultimate” line of powerful high-speed memory cards, the new Class 10 SDHC cards easily outperform current Class 6 cards, with enhanced transfer speeds of 20MB/s and massive storage capacity of up to 16GB.

Ultra-fast Write Speed
As high-tech gadgets become increasingly advanced with ever-improving video and audio quality, memory card write speed plays an important role in taking high-megapixel pictures and shooting high-definition videos. Featuring the top-of-the-line Class 10 speed rating introduced by the SD Card Association this year as part of its new SD 3.0 specification, Transcend’s new Ultimate series SDHC cards provide blazing fast performance tailored specifically for high-speed consecutive shooting as well as smooth HD video recording.

Compared to Class 2 cards that only guarantee write speeds of 2MB/s, or Class 6 versions that start at 6MB/s, the new Class 10 SDHC cards boast 16MB/s write and 20MB/s read speeds that help process data quickly and prevent lag when recording 1920×1080 Full HD videos at 60fps. Transcend Ultimate Class 10 SDHC cards offer impressive data transfer rates, giving users the ability to unlock the full capabilities of their DSLR cameras.

Vast Storage Capacity for Memory-hungry Devices
To meet the requirements of high-megapixel DSLRs that can fill memory cards quickly, Transcend Ultimate SDHC cards are available in high-capacity sizes ranging from 4GB to 16GB. The 16GB SDHC card can store up to 6552 pictures (based on 5 megapixel JPEG compression format), over 88 hours of standard quality video (MPEG-4 video at 384 Kbps), or 240 minutes of HD video (AVCHD at 9 Mbps), providing photography enthusiasts with sufficient space for their high-resolution digital masterpieces. Currently offered in 4GB, 8GB to 16GB versions, Transcend’s new Ultimate series Class 10 SDHC cards are highly recommended for entry to mid-level digital camera or camcorder users.

By Luis Anthony G. Oliveros
September 23, 2009

Western Digital, one of the biggest players in the data storage market, has unveiled the freshest redesigns to their popular line of external storage solutions, My Book and My Passport. These plug-and-play models have also been equipped with the new WD SmartWare software hardware encryption as a double layered security for your digital files.

My Book Essential / My Book for Mac
Now in a sleeker 48x165x135mm body, the My Book Essential and My Book Essential for Mac are offered in storage capacities ranging from 500GB to a very spacious 2TB.

These external drives connect via a USB 2.0 port and carries an illuminated capacity gauge that lets you know just how much space is available. They also utilize WD GreenPower Technology which lowers internal drive power consumption by up to 30% and a sleep mode during idle times.

“Keeping an extra copy of your digital life used to be a painstaking, manual task undertaken only by the most expert and diligent of users. WD’s new My Book Essential and My Book for Mac external hard drives, powered by WD SmartWare, have finally made it easy enough so that anyone can do it,” said Dale Pistili, VP of Marketing for WD’s branded products group. “WD’s new drives combine massive storage capacity, visual backup and hardware encryption, so consumers can now actually see their digital life safe in one place.”

While the My Book Essential is compatible with various Windows operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, the My Book Mac runs Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard, and is even compatible with Apple TimeMachine.

My Passport Essential / My Passport for Mac
The My Passport Essential and My Passport for Mac external hard drives are more than 20% smaller than their previous generation models. At 15x83x110mm, they tip the scale at a mere 0.20kg for better storage and mobility. These are offered in storage capacities from 320GB to 1TB and come in different colors, including blue, red and silver in addition to the standard black and white.

“The smaller and sleeker design of WD’s redesigned My Passport drives, combined with the intuitive visual backup experience of WD SmartWare software, makes this drive a smart and secure, travel-friendly storage choice,” Pistilli said. “These ultra-portable drives are a stylish and spacious storage solution for consumers to confiddentaly backup, store and carry their entire digital lives.”

The WD My Passport Essential hard drives are formatted for machines running Windows operating systems  while the WD Passport for Mac are designed for Mac computers and are even compatible with Apple TimeMachine.


WD SmartWare
Along with these newly revitalized storage solutions is the WD SmartWare, Western Digital’s own beefy security software. It comes in a straightforward user interface that displays the contents of the plugged hard drive and even displays them in categories (e.g. movies, videos, audio, etc.).

The WD SmartWare presents a security feature that combines the ubiquitous user-selected password protection with military-grade 256-bit hardware encryption. This is a data protection feature usually present only among expensive data storage system.

In addition, it allows you to make automatic, continuous data backup (with a progress bar to easily track backup as it completes), retrieve data to its original location folder whether it may be lost data or an  overwritten file. Its settings are flexible enough to allow you to customize drive security, run diagnotics and  manage power settings, among others.

Buffalo TeraStation III Series
www.buffalotech.com

Buffalo’s TeraStation III Series is the ideal choice for businesses or demanding users looking to implement a RAID based Network Attached Storage solution. As Buffalo’s flagship NAS product, the TeraStation III includes all firmware features presently found in the Buffalo lineup of NAS products. Business oriented features, such as Active Directory support, DFS support, disk quota support, a share level replication feature and port trunking make the TeraStation III a top choice for small to medium sized businesses.

Hardware features like hot swap and dual Ethernet ports add to the list of new features. Reliability and performance are again the key design criteria for the TeraStation III. A heavy-duty power supply and oversized cooling system, as well as vastly improved CPU speed guarantee excellent and reliable performance. It is the clear choice for those users who desire maximum reliability and robust features.

Western Digital (WD), one of the storage industry’s pioneers and long-time leaders, today officially launched a new product branding system in Philippines. Named BGB for Blue, Green and Black, the company has refined its 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch hard drive product names to distinct usage categories for desktop and notebook applications, symbolized with colors. The new naming system aims to simplify the hard drive buying processes for Philippine users in choosing the WD hard drives that are in line with their work styles: “always on the move”, “environmentally conscious” or “go getter” users.

“Having been serving Philippine market for many years now, WD has been among the most preferred hard drive brand for both MNC and local PC manufacturers in Philippines,” said Tod Yagi, Western Digital senior manager, WW Channel Marketing, Component Business Units. “With the new product branding system, Philippine customers can have a much better understanding of WD product classification, and we are also making it very simple for every storage buyer to quickly find the right drive for them.”
 

WD’s BGB campaign provides customers the “Power of Choice”. 

 WD Caviar Blue

WD Caviar Blue hard drives are available with either SATA or EIDE interface in a variety of cache sizes with a multitude of available features to deliver rock solid performance and ultra-cool and quiet operation. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Caviar Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability. With capacities ranging from 80GB to 750GB, these drives are the perfect solution for family and business computing.
 

WD Scorpio Blue

WD Scorpio Blue 5400RPM 2.5-inch SATA and EIDE hard drives from Western Digital deliver fast and ultra-quiet performance hand-in-hand with low power consumption. These hard drives are designed with ruggedness, reliability, and data-protection features that actively watch over valuable data. Available in capacities from 80GB to 500GB, these drives feature a 3Gb/s SATA interface and 8MB cache. WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are designed for portable digital devices of all kinds, including notebook computers, external storage, and digital media players.
 

WD Caviar Green

Available in capacities from 500GB to 2TB, WD Caviar Green SATA hard drives reduce power consumption by up to 40% and offer best-in-class acoustics and operating temperature. WD Caviar Green drives make it possible for energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation. They are ideal for PCs, external storage and other devices that require lower power consumption and cool, quiet operation.
 

WD Caviar Black

WD Caviar Black high-performance 3.5-inch SATA drives combine 7200RPM speed, 32MB cache, SATA 3Gb/s interface, and an integrated dual processor for fast performance in demanding systems. Rock solid mechanical architecture and enhanced reliability features help protect the drive and the data stored on it. Available in capacities from 500GB to 1TB, and backed by a five-year limited warranty, these drives are ideal for power computing applications such as multimedia, video and photo editing, and maxed out gaming computers.
  

WD Scorpio Black 

WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM SATA 2.5-inch hard drives from Western Digital combine a lightning-fast 7200RPM spin speed with a SATA 3Gb/s interface and 16MB cache to deliver desktop-class performance. With 5400RPM-equivalent power consumption there is no compromise in battery life. In addition, these hard drives are designed with ruggedness, reliability, and data-protection features that actively watch over valuable data. Available in capacities up to 320GB, these hard drives are perfect for laptop users who require maximum capacity and lightning-fast performance.

To commemorate the launch of the new product branding, WD introduced industry’s first 2TB hard drive – the WD Caviar Green 2TB drive.  This new 3.5-inch platform is based on WD’s industry-leading 500GB/platter technology (with 400Gb/in2 areal density) with 32MB cache, producing drives with capacities of up to 2TB, which is the largest capacity in the market.  WD Caviar Green hard drives reduce power consumption by up to 40% and offer best-in-class acoustics and operating temperature.  Based on WD’s exclusive GreenPower Technology, these drives are designed to deliver power savings as the primary attribute. 

“Saving power without sacrificing storage capacity is what consumers want, and what many businesses are requiring today.  With the launch of the new WD Caviar Green 2TB hard drive, customers receive the additional capacity needed to operate today’s highly advanced programs and high-resolution digital files while using less power than typical drives with similar performance and capacities,” Tod further averred.

A number of advanced technologies enable the speed, capacity and performance of WD’s Caviar Green 1.5TB and 2TB hard drives. Those include: StableTrac, which secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations; IntelliPower, which fine-tunes the balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance; IntelliSeek, which calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration; and NoTouch ramp load technology, which is designed to ensure the recording head never touches the disk media resulting in significantly less wear to the recording head and media, as well as better drive protection while in transit.
The WD Caviar Green 2TB is available at select resellers and distributors. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 2TB hard drives (model WD20EADS) is P14,495.  More information about WD Caviar Green desktop drives may be found on the company’s Web site.

Huge 8TB Capacity, Media Streaming and Performance Enhancement Added to WD ShareSpace Network Storage Systems for Small Offices and Digital Media Enthusiasts.

WD today announced that WD ShareSpace network storage systems now offer 8 TB (terabytes) of capacity, up to 30 percent faster transfer speeds, and DLNA(1) media streaming capabilities. Combined with its ease-of-use and small footprint, WD ShareSpace is now a more compelling solution for small offices and digital media enthusiasts who want to store, protect and share massive amounts of content.

Responding to small-business customers’ needs for increased shared storage, WD incorporated its industry-first 2 terabyte WD Caviar Green drive into WD ShareSpace’s flexible four-bay design, creating a massive 8 TB’s of storage in a small footprint.

The included WD Anywhere Backup software provides automatic and continuous protection for the valuable data from every PC and Mac on the network.

To speed up both backup and storage, WD improved WD ShareSpace’s read and write speeds up to 30 percent for large media files. Current WD ShareSpace owners may download the new firmware update (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/wdsharespace/) to experience these performance improvements.

Twenty-six percent of broadband households worldwide find it very appealing to be able to play PC-stored content on their TV, and the majority of consumers buying network storage cite as important the ability to serve content to other devices (58 percent), according to a recent Parks Associates studies (Aug. 2008).

To meet the needs of digital media enthusiasts, WD added a DLNA Certified media server to the WD ShareSpace system, making it easy to stream music, photos and videos to popular DLNA-Certified devices including Windows Vista PCs, Playstation3, and Xbox 360. The previously included iTunes Music Server lets anyone on the network stream the music collection on WD ShareSpace to any PC or Mac running iTunes.

“With its huge capacity and small footprint, WD ShareSpace has become a popular choice among small business owners. By doubling capacity and increasing transfer speeds, the new 8 TB WD ShareSpace offers more value to small business users,” said Jim Welsh, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups. “Digital media enthusiasts, on the other hand, will really appreciate the new streaming support which lets them easily stream to PCs, Macs and game consoles. With the new WD ShareSpace, we have made important improvements for all our customers.”

Features
The new high-speed network storage systems feature:
•A small-footprint, 4-bay storage system that takes up very little space and provides plenty of storage to go around;
•GigE connectivity with data transfer rates up to one gigabit per second when used in a GigE network;
•RAID 0/1/5 capabilities for data protection and speed;
•E-mail alert system that monitors drive and system health and sends you an e-mail if a problem is detected;
•UPnP/DLNA 1.5 Certified Media Server;
•iTunes server for centralized shared music;
•Microsoft Active Directory® directory service support;
•Plug a USB drive into the front-mounted USB 2.0 port and push a button to transfer automatically all the data on the drive to the WD ShareSpace system;
•Automatic and continuous(2) network backup software including licenses to back up 3 computers;
•WD’s unique MioNet remote Web access service (for PC and Mac) that lets users access the drive from anywhere;
•Download manager that supports scheduled downloads through FTP and HTTP;
•Windows Vista® operating system ready;
•Built-in FTP server;
•3 USB 2.0 ports;
•Equipped with WD drives using WD GreenPower technology, this system, with its efficient cooling architecture and power saving mode, consumes up to 33 percent less power3 and is reliably cool and quiet; and,
•3-year limited warranty.

About WD
WD, one of the storage industry’s pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users’ data accessible and secure from loss. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications.
WD was founded in 1970. The company’s storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company’s Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

March 15, 2009

Samsung HM320JI
By Carlo C. Gutierrez
Published in the December 2008-january 2009 print edition of PC World Philippines

www.samsung.com.ph

The Samsung HM320JI comes with a 320GB and 5400rpm hard drive. It has support for both Serial ATA 3.0 and 1.5 interfaces.

Similar to other hard disks we received, we used HDTach RW 3.0.1.0 to gauge the HM320JI’s performance. It finished with an 18.7ms random access time with an average read and write speed of 55.9MB/s and 45.2MB/s correspondingly. Uploading and downloading 1.66GB of random files took 70.22s and 120.22s in that order.

Samsung HD103UJ

The Samsung HD103UJ sports a massive 1TB worth of storage, a 7400rpm hard drive motor, and a Serial ATA 3.0 interface support. It has an areal density of 334GB per platter, storing data on a three-platter array for faster seek times.

Testing the hard disk with HDTach RW 3.0.1.0 proved to be of no surprise. The HD103UJ had a random access time of 13.8ms along with an average read and write speed of 99.6MB/s and 94.3MB/s respectively. Uploading and downloading 1.66GB of random files clocked at 54.34s and 77.50s. Though it has a slower random access time compared to the Samsung HA101UJ, it dominated every other aspect with plenty of time to spare.