Category: Storage

External static or removable media storage units

Creative Zen Release Credit Card Sized Player

Creative Zen Release Credit Card Sized PlayerShinier than the beady eye of a well groomed Magpie, Creative’s new Zen looks a snappy number in its all-black suit, weighing just 65g and sporting credit credit card-sized dimensions.

The 11.3mm thick mini-player doesn’t shirk when it comes to storage space, with three models offering 4GB, 8GB and 16GB options, backed by a SD memory expansion slot. According to Zen’s calculations, you’ll be able wedge in 4,000 MP3s at 128kps on the 16GB model, which converts into 266 hours of non-stop music listening action/.
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The World’s First Revving Motorcycle USB Hub!

The World's First Revving Motorcycle USB Hub!We’ve always got time for thoroughly pointless USB gadgets and they don’t come much more pointless than the Cube Collection’s USB Engine Hub.

Designed for people dissatisfied with the aesthetic experience of plugging in USB peripherals, the USB Engine Hub turns the everyday act of plugging in a printer or a scanner into a piece of high octane motorcycle performance art, complete with sound effects, a working kickstart and gears.
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GDrive Launches? Good Margins For Google

GDrive Launches? Good Margins For GoogleWe covered the launch of the pay for addition for Google’s Gmail, where they ‘let you’ pay for additional storage beyond the 2.8Gb that they give you for free.

We’ve been wondering if this is an under cover launch of the long-rumoured GDrive service from Google – utilising Google huge, worldwide server infrastructure to host your data, for easy recall using any Internet connection.
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Cheap SD memory – Don’t Do It!

Cheap memory - Don't Do It!We’ve recently had an horrific experience. Having recorded a few great interviews using the excellent Zoom H4 digital audio recorder, gone to download them to the Mac for processing, only to find that some of them were zero length – apparently completely inaccessible.

The sinking of the heart that occurs and the sheer blind panic shouldn’t be experienced by anyone, so we’re going to pass on our experience to you in the hope that you don’t ever have to live through the same.

The Zoom H4 has always performed well for us. it produces excellent quality stereo recordings with no hint of data lost.
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SanDisk microSD 1GB: Gosh It’s Small

SanDisk microSD 1GB: Gosh It's SmallWe received our first Micro-SD memory today. The SanDisk microSD/Transflash is _tiny_. Truly minuscule.

Obviously we’d seen a few press shots of them around, but that doesn’t prepare you for actually getting them in your hands – or fingertips.

It’s not news that the capacity of memory in increasing and that the amount of physical space needed for that memory is reducing, so we thought it would be fun to do a comparison.

We dug out some old memory – NEC D41256C-12 to be precise – which was the state of the art circa 1979/1980. It has been bought on eBay five or so years back as parts insurance for the in-house Stargate Defender machine we love sooo much.

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NetGear Buying Infrant, RAID & NAS Vendor: UPDATED

NetGear Buying Infrant, RAID & NAS Vendor: UPDATEDNetGear have announced the execution of a definitive agreement to acquire the privately-held Infrant Technologies, Inc, maker of RAID and NAS technology.

Netgear will be putting $60m cash on the table, with a chance for the Infrant shareholders to gain an additional $20m in cash for over the next three years if, in the oft-used phrase, “specific revenue targets are reached”.
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USB Roll-Up Keyboard And Drum Kit

USB Roll-Up Keyboard And Drum KitYou can always rely on Brando to bring a smile to your face with some completely daft USB gizmo, and once again they haven’t disappointed with the release of their USB Roll-Up Drum Kit and keyboard.

Ginger Baker on a mat
We can’t imagine many people sitting at home and thinking to themselves, “You know what? I could really use a plastic roll up drumkit to hit”, but if you are one of those strange people, prepare to get percussin’
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DeskStar 7K1000: Hitachi 1Tb Hard Drive Reviewed

DeskStar 7K1000: Hitachi 1Tb Hard Drive ReviewedThere’s a common thought that Moore’s Law in relation to processing power has now become irrelevant, due to the now-attained high processing speeds. In it’s place is a form of Moore’s Law for storage and how important it’s rapid growth is.

In proof of this new Law, Hitachi have released the first 1Tb (1,000 Gb) hard drive named the DeskStar 7K1000. Tom’s Hardware have been running tests on the new drive and have recently reported on it.

There’s 9 pages of the review which reach the conclusion that in terms of the cost per gigabyte it’s not the best value hitting around £230 / €330, which clearly doesn’t compare well with £100 / €150 that 500Gb drives now give.

The reviewers, Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos, feel that having a single 1Gb drive will be easier to handle, but as a data drive rather than one to run the operating system from.

Their view is to hold on for a little while until other manufacturers get their 1Gb drives out, such as Seagate, which will come with a five year warranty, that is lacking in the Hitachi.

DeskStar 7K1000
Tom’s Hardware review