sata

There are a couple of reasons--besides replacing a broken drive--why you might consider swapping out your Mac's hard drive. One is to increase your available storage capacity, and another is to better the performance of your drive. While most Macs ship with 500GB to 1TB drives that should be adequate for most home purposes, you can now get up to 3TB of data on a single drive, and the standard 7,200rpm mechanical drive crawls in comparison to the performance of some SSD drives these days.

Generally if you are just looking to increase the storage capacity of your … Read more

In a blog posting by Mac-centric sales outfit Other World Computing (OWC), the company mentions that the latest firmware update for the new 2011 iMacs has unlocked SATA III capabilities in the systems, allowing for up to 6Gb/sec data throughput on the internal hard drive bays. The past iMac and MacBook Pro models have shipped with SATA II drive controllers that handle up to 3Gb/sec throughput, but the new systems apparently use updated controllers.

Apple's iMac technical specifications Web page for the new systems just states the hard drives use "Serial ATA" connections, but does … Read more

Western Digital has launched a new external drive that offers 6 terabytes of storage.

Unveiled today, the latest edition to the company's My Book Studio Edition II product line upgrades the storage space of 4TB and 2TB offered by earlier models. But by housing two hard disks internally, the new version maintains the same dimensions, shape, and weight as its lower-capacity cousins.

Selling for $549.99, the new My Book Studio Edition II 6TB drive is being geared more toward the Mac than Windows. Western Digital is targeting it specifically to creative pros and businesses that need to store … Read more

Ever have one of those days when you just couldn't make up your mind? You know: chocolate or vanilla? "Megamind" or "Despicable Me"? iPad 2 from Verizon or iPad 2 from AT&T? (Don't tell Mrs. Cheapskate about that last one.)

This morning, I couldn't make up my mind which deal to post--so I'm posting the three top candidates. (Also, like you, I hate it when stuff sells out right away, so this affords a little insurance.)

First up, Best Buy has the Dell Inspiron IN5030-2450B3D 15.6-inch laptop for $399.99 shipped (… Read more

Want to make your desktop faster, quieter, and greener? Need extra storage or a secondary internal drive for backups? Have I got a deal for you.

Dell has the 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA hard drive for $69.99 shipped (plus sales tax in some states). That's after a $20 mail-in rebate (PDF).

Yes, I'm once again going to channel my inner fogie and say, "Why, back in my day, we paid $250 for a 250-megabyte hard drive, and we liked it." Seventy bucks for two terabytes? That's just unreal, kids.

The Caviar Green … Read more

LAS VEGAS--You should by now have heard of Seagate's Momentus XT (if not, check out our review). It is the first mass-produced hybrid hard drive that offers some benefits of a solid-state drive (SSD) at a much lower cost and without the sacrifice of storage space.

The Momentus XT is called "hybrid" because it consists of a traditional platter-based hard drive and 4GB of flash memory, within one physical chassis. Now what if you want to create a hybrid package by combining an SSD and a traditional hard-disk drive (HDD)?

The answer is what Marvell announced today, … Read more

Consumers already have access to 3.5-inch desktop hard drives with up to 3TB of storage and portable external hard drives with 1.5TB, but business users have had to live with hard drives with much less space.

That changed today, as Seagate announced its latest in 2.5-inch enterprise hard drives, the 1TB Constellation.2.

According to the hard-drive maker, the drive is the first in its class to offer 1TB of storage and speeds of up to 6Gbps.

Note that 6Gbps hard drives already have been available from Seagate for consumers, but only in a larger 3.5-inch design. The advantage of the 2.5-inch design is the fact that it can be used in more compact applications as well as applications in which the 3.5-inch drives are used.… Read more

Hard drive prices continue to creep lower and lower, as evidenced by this so-low-I-can't-believe-it deal from MacMall: the 1TB Fantom GreenDrive external eSATA/USB hard drive for $47.59 shipped.

That's after redeeming a pair of mail-in rebates totaling $30, but it's still the lowest net price I've ever seen on a 1TB external drive.

Update: Please be sure to read the comments before ordering. It seems a number of users have had problems in the past with one of the two rebates. Consequently, you might want to steer clear of this deal.

Although it's … Read more

Transcend, a major manufacturer of flash memory cards, has begun selling models built with the new CFast interface designed to succeed the CompactFlash format.

CompactFlash is still widely used in high-end SLR cameras but is increasingly threatened by the more mainstream SD format, notably the new high-capacity SDXC variety. But CompactFlash allies are working to modernize the technology.

CompactFlash uses the same data transfer technology as hard drives--specifically, the older IDE interface and more recently, the slightly less old UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) variety. While computer hard drives long ago moved to the faster SATA (Serial ATA) version, the CompactFlash format is only making the jump now with a new version called CFast.

CFast offers significantly higher data-transfer speeds--about 375MB/sec compared with 90MB/sec for high-end CompactFlash cards today. Faster data transfer on a camera means the memory buffer can clear out faster when shooting bursts of photos, something that's handy, for example, with sports photographers trying to take multiple sequences.

Transcend's CFast cards, though, aren't for the consumer market. Instead, they're for industrial applications, such as inside train engines or slot machines. And CFast uses a different physical connection, which means the cards aren't compatible with today's CompactFlash. … Read more