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Networking and storage at CES 2011: Faster, more connected

Knowing I was going to Las Vegas for CES, my friends said, "Have fun!" The truth is, friends, fun, whether or not the kind that stays in Las Vegas, is not the first thing one can expect from covering CES. It's always a lot of work.

I did have fun seeing my colleagues all in one place, however, especially those from the East Coast, whom I don't get to see very often. Now that we've all returned home or are on the way back, here are the things in the networking and storage categories that are sticking with me from the show.

In the networking department, faster is the main theme, and this is true for both wireless and powerline networking. Powerline networking is now pumped up to support 500Mbps by adhering to the latest IEEE 1901 standard  (up from the 200Mbps of the HomePlug AV standard). There were several 500Mbps powerline products announced at CES this year, such as the Trendnet TPL 401E and Netgear's XAVB5004.

Networking vendors also introduced the first hybrid wireless routers that have built-in support for powerline technology, such as the WNXR200 from Netgear.

Wireless networking this year is seeing many vendors moving to the three-stream standard that offers a throughput speed of up to 450Mbps (as opposed to the 300Mbps of the popularly used dual-stream standard). Examples of these are Netgear with the WNDR4000, Trendnet with the TEW-692GR, and D-Link with its HD Media routers.

On the client side, the three-stream wireless standard is supported by Intel's Centrino N-5300 and Centrino N-6300 Wi-Fi adapters. These two Wi-Fi chipsets, also known as Intel's Ultimate N Wi-Fi Link family, can handle all standards of Wi-Fi, including the three-stream standard. Trendnet also released the first 450Mbps gaming adapter. In the future, networking vendors will also release USB adapters that support this higher speed.

D-Link's HD Media routers, by the way, are the first that sport an SD card reader, and some of them are also the first with built-in USB 3.0 to support faster network storage performance.

Speaking of USB 3.0, most storage vendors have now moved to this standard for their external drives. This is a natural move, as USB 3.0 offers a speed that's easily 10 times that of USB 2.0 and is backward-compatible with all previous versions of USB standards. External drives are now also getting tinier, and many of them now are also based on solid-state drives. Examples of these are the GoFlex Slim from Seagate, Verbatim's Titan XS, and the i-Disk Rex 100 from Pretec.… Read more

CES: Seagate demos Momentus XT hybrid drive

LAS VEGAS--Since the review of the Seagate Momentus XT, the first and only mass-produced solid-state hybrid hard drive on the market, I've received many e-mails asking when computer makers will start building it into machines. I have the answer now.

At CES 2011, Seagate demoed the performance of the 7200rpm Momentum XT drive against a regular 5400rpm hard drive. The demonstration was done with two Asus laptops with exactly the same specs, other than the main hard drives.

The demo consists of a script that automatically executed a series of tasks as soon as the computers booted up and … Read more

Seagate to launch iPhone app for GoFlex TV media streamer

LAS VEGAS--Some of you who own a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV media streamer may have noticed that the company has recently added Pandora to its channel lineup. Now the company says it will release a free iPhone app later this month that allows you to control the box with an iPhone or iPod Touch.

We reviewed the GoFlex TV earlier this ear and gave it pretty high marks. It's got some similar features to the Roku Player, with Netflix streaming capabilities, but, as its name implies, it's designed to play video files from a Seagate GoFlex drive that … Read more

Seagate's GoFlex drive goes superslim

LAS VEGAS--Seagate made a huge splash in the pond of external hard drives during 2010 with the GoFlex family, which includes the GoFlex Desk and the GoFlex Ultra-portable. These new drives don't just look good and offer high capacities; they are also superflexible, allowing for use of virtually any type of connectivity via interchangeable adapters.

The company today announced a new member of this GoFlex family of portable hard drives: the GoFlex Slim, which is arguably the slimmest portable drive that's based on the 2.5-inch internal hard drive. The new drive is just 9 millimeters thin, about … Read more

Seagate's 2.5-inch enterprise hard drive hits 1TB

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

Seagate to remain a public company after all

After considering its options, Seagate has decided to stick it out as a public company.

The Scotts Valley, Calif.-based hard-drive maker said today that after taking a look at what private equity firms were offering, it will not take the company private, and will instead buy back $2 billion worth of stock from shareholders.

"We appreciate the interest shown by the private equity firms and our dialogues with them were extensive and thoughtful," Seagate CEO Stephen Luczo said in a statement. "However, management and the board have chosen to cease discussions concerning a private equity-led leveraged … Read more

Hybrid hard-disk market set to take off

The hybrid hard-disk drive market is expected to reach 600 million units in 2016, according to market researcher Objective Analysis. This would mean an explosion of mainstream drives that integrate the performance-boosting benefits of flash memory.

The first generation of hybrid drive technology was "well conceived but poorly implemented," according to a report released on Monday by Objective Analysis. "Now that working versions have been implemented the hybrid drive promises to sweep the PC hard drive market."

"We expect the hybrid drive market to nearly double every year for the five years following its initial adoption, reaching 600 million units by 2016," said analyst Jim Handy, who authored the report, in a statement. "This blazing growth will result from hybrid drives replacing standard HDDs in mainstream PCs."

Hybrid drives, in their current form, add a small amount of flash memory to a traditional spinning HDD. But this pinch of flash can deliver a big boost to performance on certain tasks at relatively little extra cost, as CNET Reviews demonstrated with the 500GB Seagate Momentus XT and as other reviews of the Seagate drive have shown.

"The NAND [flash memory] in these hybrid drives will be pretty small. Seagate's Momentus XT does a really good job with only 4GB of flash, and Nvelo's Dataplex software accelerates HDDs very well with only 16GB of NAND," said Handy, responding to an e-mail query. … Read more

Seagate: Why it makes sense to go private now

Seagate is pondering a move to go private again and the timing makes a lot of sense given the hard drive market could face a wrenching change amid the popularity of tablets.

In a short statement, Seagate confirmed reports that it may go private. The company said "it has received a preliminary indication of interest regarding a going private transaction." Bloomberg reported that TPG and KKR were the parties interested in buying out Seagate.

In 2000, Seagate went private right before the tech bust in a complicated deal valued at $20 billion. Going private allowed Seagate to ride … Read more

Seagate ships BlackArmor NAS with 3TB drives

A few months ago, Seagate unveiled its, and probably the world's, first single-volume 3TB external hard drive, the FreeAgent GoFlex Desk. It was just a matter of time before the new super-high-capacity hard drives became available to the company's flagship NAS server, the BlackArmor 440 and BlackArmor 420.

And that day is today, as the company introduced the highest-capacity four-bay NAS server on the market by starting to sell the new BlackArmor 440 and 420 NAS servers preloaded with its 3TB hard drives. These two NAS server are essential the same, except the 440 is preloaded with four hard drives (12TB total), while the 420 is preloaded with only two drives (6TB total).

Apart from the new internal hard drives, the servers themselves are the same as those released more than a year ago. However, they come with the latest firmware to support the internal hard drives' high capacity.

According to Seagate, owners of existing BlackArmor NAS servers can also upgrade to the latest firmware. However, they will not be able to upgrade to the new capacity as Seagate is not selling the 3TB internal hard drives separately. This is because most computers are unable to handle hard drives that have more than 2.1TB of storage due to some legacy standard set back in 1980.

That said, the new BlackArmor 440/420 servers and the GoFlex Desk are the only ways for now for users to benefit from Seagate's 3TB hard drives. So for those looking for a workhorse four-bay NAS server with maximum amount of storage available, the BlackArmor 440 is currently the only choice on the market. … Read more