Storage

While plastic storage may seem ubiquitous for food, there are plenty of people who aren't so fond of their Tupperware and other plastic containers. There are more than a few reasons for such displeasure: the environmental factor, the fact that plastic can stain, and the health concerns that make some people look for an alternative. And when you consider that it's worthwhile to try to save a little money in the kitchen, the fact that most households go through plastic containers as if they were paper makes it more important to look at options.

Life Without Plastic has … Read more

Over the past 10 years, we've watched as MP3 player flash memory crawled slowly up from its painful 64MB beginnings, to today's spacious 32GB devices. Hard-drive-lugging file hoarders will still scoff at the comparatively low capacity of flash-based MP3 players, but for many users, a slim 32GB player strikes the perfect balance of convenience and storage.

We expect to see a slew of 32GB MP3 players pop up throughout the year (such as the Samsung P3 and Sony X-Series), but for now, there are only five such MP3 players worth considering. Take a look.

You buy MP3s, take photos, write long love letters to Cloris Leachman, and you keep it all on your hard drive. If that hard drive crashes, you're done for. Unless you backed up. But what's the best way to back up? There are several ways to do this. We're going to discuss three. You can see some of them in action in our video.

Let's start with the external hard drive. Obviously, you don't want to back up to the same hard drive where the original files are. That's just silly.

The simplest method is to buy an external hard drive and back up to that. Our favorite here at CNET is the ClickFree portable backup. It makes the process of backing up as simple as you can imagine. The software is stored on the drive, so you just plug it in and tell it what to back up.

You can also do it yourself. If you have an old hard drive lying around, say from upgrading a notebook, just put it in a case. We show how to do it in this video on upgrading your hard drive.… Read more

I've complained before that network-attached storage (NAS) devices are just not easy enough to use. Most NAS servers further complicate the matter by offering a lot more than just simple plug-and-play network storage, which is what novice home users look for.

So far, I haven't seen any vendor do this right; however, Western Digital's newest NAS server might just be the first one.

The company introduced on Wednesday its newly redesigned, updated version of the My Book World Edition NAS server that offers plug-and-play installation and automatic continuous backup.

The new My Book World Edition comes in … Read more

Update at 9:03 a.m. PST: Comments from Sun added.

Barclays Global Investors has signed aboard as a new shareholder in Sun Microsystems, taking a 3.18 percent stake in the struggling hardware maker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday.

Sun, whose stock closed up 10.3 percent on Thursday, at $5.48, after heavy trading volume of 21.6 million shares, has seen its stock on the rise since January 30, when it traded at $4.16 a share.

On the day before Sun's shares started their northward trek, the company's … Read more

Polka dots, stripes and mosaics: French Bull's Storage Container Sets are a major change from the typical Tupperware most of us rely on to store food. They come in bright, cheerful colors--the polka-dotted set has bright reds, blues, oranges and more. Each set includes three containers of varying sizes. The smallest has a 5.5-inch diameter and a 2.5-inch height. The medium container is 6.5 inches in diameter and 2.75 inches high. The largest of the containers is 7 inches in diameter and 3 inches high. French Bull also offers a Mini Storage Container Set that … Read more

It's been awhile, but once again you can pick up a 1-terabyte external hard drive for under $100.

Specifically, Buy.com has the Fantom 1TB G-Force USB/eSATA hard drive for $99.99 shipped. That's an awful lotta storage for the money. And no rebates!

Though fairly industrial in design and not likely to win any beauty contests, the Fantom's got it where it counts: a 7,200-rpm drive, an 8.5-millisecond seek time, and your choice of USB or eSATA interfaces. It's compatible with most versions of Windows and the Mac OS.

A drive like … Read more

That's 2,000GB or 2,000,000MB of flash storage for noobs.

The Memory Sticks don't have an official name yet, and Sony and SanDisk are temporarily calling them collectively "Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity." Format licensing is expected to begin this year. Once completed, we'll see storage capacities for these flash media (Memory Stick Pro DUO, Memory Stick Pro-HG, Memory Stick Micro, and Memory Stick HG Micro) hit up to 2 terabytes, with maximum data transfer rates of 20MBps (on a 4-bit parallel interface) and 60MBps (on an 8-bit parallel interface) for … Read more

Yahoo plans to discontinue its Briefcase service, which allows people to store files online for free.

The service will be shut down on March 30, the company said Wednesday. Yahoo is warning users to retrieve or delete their documents before that date.

Briefcase, which offered 30MB of online storage, was launched almost 10 years ago. However, "usage has been significantly declining over the years, as users outgrew the need for Yahoo Briefcase and turned to offerings with much more storage and enhanced sharing capabilities," the company said in a statement.

There are now many alternative online storage services … Read more