Articles about Storage

Western Digital makes a damn good hard disk drive. The company's quality is legendary -- it is a popular choice for both home and the enterprise. I am currently testing one of the company's latest external offerings -- a 20TB monster aimed at home users and enthusiasts.

But what about the enterprise? Don't worry, Western Digital is focused on business users too. In fact, today, it announces an enterprise hard disk drive with a massive 14TB of storage capacity! This is the largest capacity enterprise HDD ever, and follows its 12TB offering. Called "Ultrastar HS14," the helium-filled drive uses HGST (a subsidiary of WD) branding. This drive isn't just attractive because of its large capacity, however -- it is also very power efficient.

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Synology has expanded the DS418 line with the introduction of the new DS418play. The NAS, which joins the DS418 and DS418j in the consumer-oriented four-bay range, is optimized for multimedia content.

The claim to fame of the DS418play is that it can transcode up to two channels of H.265 or H.264 4K content at the same time, which basically means that you will be able to stream two 4K videos at the same time on a smartphone and tablet using the NAS' processing power.

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It's important for enterprises to correctly size their public clouds in order to control costs and optimize performance.

Cloud management company Turbonomic is using this week's Microsoft Ignite conference to announce a new version of its platform that delivers dynamic optimization and allocation of storage and relational database services.

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There are times when you may not want to use the App Store or the recovery mode to install macOS 10.13 High Sierra on your Mac. So Apple gives you the option of creating a bootable USB drive. You can use it anytime and anywhere to quickly get the operating system running on any compatible Mac. An Internet connection is not even required as everything you need is already on the drive.

Creating a bootable macOS 10.13 High Sierra USB drive is very easy. All you need is a Mac, as the tools provided for the process are only available on OS X and macOS, and a USB drive with a capacity of 8GB or more. I will also explain how to use a dedicated third-party tool, in case you decide that this option suits you better.

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Businesses are dealing with larger quantities of data than ever before, and this means an increase in the scale and complexity of storage required.

Developer cloud company DigitalOcean is launching a new storage product called Spaces which provides a scalable and cost-effective way to address complex storage needs within a developer-friendly and easy-to-use UI.

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Synology has updated its range of NAS devices aimed at prosumers, announcing the four-bay DS918+ and DS418 and the two-bay DS718+ and DS218+. Synology also unveiled its first six-bay tower NAS, called DS3018xs, which is designed with businesses in mind.

The DS918+, DS718+ and DS218+ are part of Synology's plus range, which is optimized for bigger workloads. The DS418, meanwhile, is meant to appeal to price-conscious buyers that are looking to store a significant amount of data.

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There are two very important technologies changing the computer landscape nowadays -- solid state drives and USB-C. SSDs are flash-based storage devices, meaning they are faster than traditional hard disk drives, while having no moving parts either. USB-C is just a connection type, but its reversible nature makes it an absolute dream for users -- Type-A connectors were a hassle as you had a 50-percent chance of inserting it incorrectly.

When these two things come together, you get a fast portable drive that can easily connect to the newest computers, such as the Apple MacBook Pro. I have been testing a very intriguing such external SSD lately from renowned company ADATA. This manufacturer is known for its high-quality memory products, such as RAM, flash drives, and solid state drives. The 512GB SSD I am testing, called "SE730H," is extremely small, very fast, and quite durable. It uses the USB 3.1 generation 2 interface.

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As many of you know, 2.5-inch notebook mechanical hard drives are largely obsolete. The larger 3.5-inch desktop variants have a lot of life left in them, however, as they offer much more capacity compared to a solid state drive. If you want the most storage from a single SATA drive, a desktop HDD is where it's at -- for now.

Today, Western Digital unveils a monstrous desktop HDD as a part of its Enterprise-class "WD Gold" line. This new 12TB SATA model (WD121KRYZ) has a large 256MB cache, 7200RPM disk speed, and an impressive five-year limited warranty. Of course, such a massive capacity comes with a rather high price tag.

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Look, mechanical hard disk drives are on their way out. The technology is quite outdated -- solid state storage is obviously the future. For the short term, however, these mechanical drives do have some value, mostly because they are inexpensive comparatively. With SSD storage capacities increasing, the need for a HDD -- especially the 2.5-inch form factor -- is entirely due to cost savings at this point.

Toshiba is happy to manufacture these HDDs as long as people and laptop makers are buying them, and today, the company unveils its latest offering. Called "MQ04," it is a 1TB 2.5-inch drive that is very slim at a mere 7mm. The small physical design is possible because internally, there is just a single spinning 1TB disk.

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Hyper-storage technology was developed to break the myths of the storage world. Trade-offs as to cost, capacity, functionality and performance that were absolute in the past, are no longer an issue with this modern storage approach. And capabilities enterprises could previously only hope and dream about, have now become reality, creating new opportunities.

The hyper-storage approach enables enterprises to achieve the highest data availability with lower costs, peak performance with infinite scalability and seamless ease of use. With hyper-storage, enterprises no longer need to compromise when making decisions about their storage architectures.

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IoT devices are generating huge amounts of data, and it’s leaving a mark across the enterprise IT industry.

That's according to a new report by analyst firm 451 Research, whose The Voice of the Enterprise: IoT -- Workloads and Key Projects report says a third of organizations is planning on increasing their storage capacity.

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In an ideal world, if you were the sole provider of any service through app and the users had unlimited resources on their devices, there would be no question of optimization and terms like agility and even user experience would be redundant. But as you might know, the current state of app industry is anything but ideal. There are dozens of apps competing for even the simplest of services and no matter how premium device a user has, there is always a limit to the number of apps it can operate smoothly.

The worst part, however, is scenario where after spending considerable amount of time, money and resources into developing and marketing an app, the users perceive it to be bulky and either never install it or uninstall after they find the memory it consumes is disproportionate to the value it brings.

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For a while, many Android device manufacturers were removing microSD card slots from their products. With the explosion of cloud storage, this sort of made sense. Not to mention, from a privacy perspective, removable storage can be seen as a weakness. Many consumers and tech reviewers spoke out against this trend, and, nowadays, plenty of Android smartphones continue to have expandable storage -- just look at the the Samsung Galaxy Note8 for example.

Today, SanDisk unveils a record-breaking microSDXC card. This new "Ultra" card features a massive 400GB capacity. Prior to it, the largest capacity for a microSD card was 256GB. This card will not only benefit Android users, but owners of other hardware too, such as cameras, drones, and more.

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In an effort to add a cloud component to its physical storage business, Western Digital has announced that it has acquired the cloud storage company Upthere.

Upthere was founded in 2011 and its app Upthere Home appeared on the App Store and Play Store in 2015. Since then, though, little has been heard from the company and it appears as if its app had a difficult time competing against the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft in the cloud space.

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Nowadays, many people leverage cloud storage for mobile devices. With Wi-Fi and high-speed cellular data being commonplace, this works fairly well -- until it doesn't. If you ever find yourself in a place without a reliable internet connection, it can be quite frustrating when you can't access needed files. It can also be a massive dilemma if your phone or tablet runs out of available storage and you don't have a connection to offload them to the cloud.

While many Android devices can use USB-C flash drives, iPhone and iPad users cannot, sadly. Luckily, some manufacturers make flash drives with a Lightning connector, enabling Apple users to both expand storage and move files without the need of the internet. Today, Kingston releases its latest such model, called DataTraveler Bolt Duo. This is a USB 3.0 flash drive that has both a Lightning connector and USB Type-A. With capacities up to 128GB, it could be a very useful product for iOS users.

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