Storage

Learn to play harmonica in a Flash

By Paul Ridden

15:00 November 6, 2009 PST

A music teacher from Riverside Illinois has come up with a Flash drive design that's more novel than novelty. Possibly one of the most portable instrument around - the harmonica - and the most portable digital storage solution have been merged into one to produce the FlashHarp. Read More

New solar storage solution could be the key to home-brewed electricity

By Darren Quick

22:28 November 4, 2009 PST

Reports of new developments in the area of solar power are an almost daily event here at Gizmag. The main focus of research seems to be on improving the efficiency of solar cells, but others are working at developing an inexpensive method of locally storing the energy generated by solar systems. Because society relies on a continuous energy supply and solar energy is diurnal, storage systems are integral to what some see as an inevitable move towards the era of “personalized solar energy”, in which the focus of electricity production shifts from huge central generating stations to individuals in their own homes and communities. Read More

Award-winning ReNu personal solar-powered storage system

By Mick Webb

20:51 October 27, 2009 PDT

Solar power is being harnessed and applied in ever more interesting and creative ways, and the ReNu personal power generation and storage system is certainly no exception. The device features a freestanding modular solar panel that, once charged, can be slotted into a number of extensions to make use of the collected energy, including an iPod dock and an LED desk lamp. Read More

Newly developed nanomaterial could boost data storage density and cars' fuel efficiency

By Dario Borghino

18:00 October 25, 2009 PDT

By manipulating matter at the nanoscale level, engineers from North Carolina State University led by Dr. Jagdish Narayan have developed a new material that could make it possible to manufacture terabyte memory chips the size of a fingernail, boost vehicles' fuel economy significantly and reduce heat dissipated by semiconductors, with applications ranging from spintronics to solar panel technology. Read More

Unfold and go - the Citibot kayak

By Mick Webb

04:53 October 13, 2009 PDT

For those who love getting out on the water, but lack the extra space required to store a recreational vessel, comes the Citbot Folding Kayak. Lightweight and easily assembled, the kayak can carry up to 95kg and folds down into a convenient backpack weighing just 11kg. Read More

Kingston releases MobileLite Flash card reader, reloaded

By Dario Borghino

03:24 October 10, 2009 PDT

Kingston recently released MobileLiteG2, the second generation of its portable Flash card reader. The 18.9g plug-and-play unit shows up as two separate devices on your system to make it easier to transfer data between Flash memory cards using only one USB port. Read More

World’s biggest and fastest desktop hard drive from Seagate

By Darren Quick

22:56 September 21, 2009 PDT

Hard drives aren’t just getting bigger, they’re also getting faster. And, for the time being, there's no bigger or faster desktop hard drive than Seagate’s new Barracuda XT. It's a 7200RPM drive that boasts 2TB of storage space and a blazing 6Gb/second SATA interface. This high performance, high capacity drive is aimed at gamers, digital video editors and other storage- and speed-hungry desktop computing applications. Read More

PortiloBox - changes from bike rack to extra boot in seconds

By Jeff Salton

00:08 September 21, 2009 PDT

Westfalia-Automotive has created a towbar-mounted bicycle rack that, in a matter of seconds, converts into an extra boot by attaching a cleverly-designed waterproof lid. Portilo – the bike rack – is built to hold two bicycles in stands, rather than hang them from the frame (which is becoming increasingly difficult these days, given the variation in frame sizes between brands). The PortiloBox fits the Portilo easily with no tools needed to secure it. It’s only small but, if you just need that little bit of extra space, it’s ideal. Read More

Nexto eXtreme ND2700 review

By Tim Hanlon

07:04 September 19, 2009 PDT

The Nexto eXtreme ND2700 is a 320GB 2.5" SATA drive in an enclosure with two memory card slots, enabling the backup of CompactFlash, SD/SDHC, MMC/MMCPlus, MS/MS Pro-HG/MS Pro MagicGate, and xD cards (and more, with an optional adapter) without a computer. It can also backup straight from your camera using the USB OTG port, and features USB 2.0 and eSATA connectors, the latter of which means you can pull data off the drive at an average of 60 megabytes per second. Read More

Graphite could revolutionize mass data storage AND circuit design

By Dario Borghino

11:25 September 10, 2009 PDT

Graphite has long been known to have unique electrical properties and has therefore been put forward by many as a possible substitute for silicon for use in integrated circuitry. Now, in a major step towards making graphene-based electronics, researchers from Rice University have published the results of work on graphite-based mass data storage and reprogrammable gate arrays. Read More

First look: Samsung's tiny 1.8 inch S1 mini, the smallest external hard drive yet

By Dave Weinstein

03:54 September 6, 2009 PDT

Samsung's continues to add to their line of external USB hard drives, now adding the S1 mini line of USB powered 1.8 inch drives. Ranging up to 250GB in size, we had a chance to quickly test the 160GB version and came away particularly impressed. Read More

Freshness valve keeps coffee at its peak

By Jeff Salton

23:53 August 9, 2009 PDT

Coffee-lovers of the world rejoice … a new coffee canister for the home that eliminates the four main causes of flavor loss in whole bean and ground coffee - CO2 gases, moisture, light and air - has been released by Friis. The company says its Coffee Savor container is the first in the world that vents away damaging trapped carbon dioxide gas created during the roasting process and also blocks out moisture, light and air to seal in flavor. Read More

Colossus: OCZ's 1TB solid state drive expected in stores this month

By Paul Ridden

22:23 August 2, 2009 PDT

Has the death knell finally sounded for the hard disk drive? As HDD manufacturers wrestle each other for best market position a newcomer lurks in the shadows - the solid state drive (SSD) is becoming a beast to be reckoned with. Taiwan's OCZ Technologies gave the world it's first glimpse of its 1TB (1024GB) behemoth named Colossus at June's Computex information technology show in Taipei, Taiwan. Read More

Is this the world's most expensive (and annoying) 16GB Flash drive?

By Darren Quick

23:48 July 21, 2009 PDT

If there’s one thing you could expect to rely on when it comes to Flash memory it’s that as capacities increase over time, prices decrease. It’s a rule that has been borne out over the years and its continuation has been a source of comfort that everything is right with the world. Now Japan’s Solid Alliance has thrown our world askew with the release of the Mnemosyne, a 16GB flash drive that is yours for the paltry sum of one million yen (approx. USD$10,000.) Read More

MIT team develops hi-fi quantum memory

By Dario Borghino

20:27 July 21, 2009 PDT

Scientists are rapidly achieving important breakthroughs in quantum computing, from obtaining precise manipulation of four photons at the same time to the very first quantum processors. But just like in traditional electronics, a quantum computer can't be realized with information processing alone — we need a reliable way to store and retrieve quantum information too. A new breakthrough by MIT researchers represents a step forward in acheiving this goal of high-fidelity quantum memory. Read More

Kingston DT300: the first 256GB USB Flash drive

By Paul Ridden

17:43 July 21, 2009 PDT

Remember those halcyon days when the whole world tingled with excitement as the first 8MB USB Flash drives were made commercially available? Things have certainly moved on at an incredible pace in the few short years since then, only last month Kingston announced the world's first 128GB Flash drive and already the bar has been raised with the announcement of a 256GB monster - the Kingston Data Traveler 300. Read More

The 128GB USB Flash drive arrives

By Mick Webb

23:49 June 18, 2009 PDT

USB Flash drive capacity has come a long way in a very short space of time. It was merely a couple of years ago that a 32GB memory stick was considered groundbreaking. Taking storage capability to dizzying heights is the new DataTraveler 200 series from Kingston Technology which features the world’s first 128GB capacity Flash drive. Read More

No PC required: Brando SATA HDD adapter plays media straight out of the box

By Alan Brandon

18:29 June 17, 2009 PDT

If you like your gadgets to be functional but without all that fussy “styling” or aesthetic design, the Brando SATA HDD Multi-Media Player Adapter may be for you. This no-frills adapter is literally a black box device that lets you play media files from a SATA hard disk, SDHC card or USB storage device on your TV – without the need to use a computer. Read More

Western Digital lets loose mammoth 4TB external hard drive

By Paul Best

18:57 June 10, 2009 PDT

It doesn’t seem so long ago we were oohing and ahhing that an external hard drive could hold a terabyte (TB) of data, then a couple... and the march continues unabated. Western Digital (WD) has followed on from its 2TB MyBook with the release of the 4TB dual-drive My Book Studio Edition II. Read More

Apple adds a bit of zip and grunt to latest MacBook Pro line-up

By Paul Best

22:19 June 8, 2009 PDT

Apple has given its MacBook Pro line a quick touch up, most notably increasing processing speeds, hard-drive capacity and battery life, as well as adding SD card slots to the 13 and 15-inch models. The 13-inch model has also undergone a name change – the MacBook now joins the MacBook Pro family – and has had its Firewire port restored.

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Mercury On-The-Go Pro offers 500GB of bus-powered external storage

By Gizmag Team

21:51 June 4, 2009 PDT

Billed as the largest capacity, fastest bus-powered portable storage solution on the market, OWC's Mercury On-The-Go Pro series features 500GB, 7200RPM HDD and triple interface (FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and/or USB 2.0) connectivity for data transfer at speeds of up to 100MB/s. Read More

Everything you ever wanted to watch … on one super-sized DVD

By Mick Webb

17:26 May 22, 2009 PDT

Until recently, the idea of holding your entire collection of movies on a single super-sized DVD was the stuff of science fiction. According to Australian researchers at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology, advances in their study of nanoparticles have raised the possibility of storing vast amounts of data on the one disc in the not-too-distant future. Read More

Putting the squeeze on crystals could see an end to computer boot stages

By Darren Quick

01:36 May 15, 2009 PDT

Nobody likes staring at a screen while they wait for their computer to boot up. Sure, you can spend those few minutes making a cup of coffee or ferreting the dirt out from under your fingernails, but if you’re raring to go those few minutes can be a frustrating waste of time. This could soon be a thing of the past however, thanks to a clever materials science technique that may allow a new class of electronic devices that remember their last state, even after power is turned off. Read More

LaCie releases new high capacity network storage drives

By Darren Quick

22:27 May 7, 2009 PDT

With the advantage of freeing up a server to concentrate on tasks besides file serving, Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices have become an increasingly popular option for small offices and home users over the last few years. LaCie has two new high capacity NAS solutions for anyone considering going this route – the Big Disk Network and d2 Network. The d2 Network supports up to 1.5TB capacity, while the Big Disk Network combines two drives in a RAID 0 setting, for up to 4TBs of storage. Read More

GE develops 500GB disc using holographic technology

By Darren Quick

22:05 April 28, 2009 PDT

Many pundits proclaimed Blu-ray would be the last optical disc based storage medium we would see before the seemingly inevitable move towards Flash-based drives and online storage. Apparently GE isn’t buying into that prediction, forging ahead with the development next generation optical storage technology that can store a massive 500GB of data before Blu-ray has even gained widespread adoption with consumers. Read More