Articles about Storage

While internal hard drives are great if you are OK with data remaining in a computer 24/7, sometimes you want to physically secure data at the end of the day. No, I don't mean encryption; I am talking literally locking a hard drive or solid state disk in a safe or desk drawer. This is essential for some businesses, where theft of a drive could be catastrophic.

Today, Startech unveils a clever new product that makes this practice easy. It is a 2.5-inch drive enclosure that plugs into a bay adapter on the front of a PC. The adapter itself can fit in both 3.5- or 5.25-inch openings thanks to the included accessory. While the drive connects to the adapter via SATA, the enclosure also has a micro-B USB 3.1 port. In other words, it can be easily removed and then connected to a PC that doesn't have the bay adapter.

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Microsoft has announced a new tie-up with Box that will extend the intelligence and reach of its Azure cloud platform.

Under the terms of the deal, Box will now use Azure as a strategic cloud platform, with a new "Box on Azure" now being offered out to enterprise customers around the world.

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Embracing cloud storage is a smart move -- it ensures your data is safe even if your computer fails or if there is a disaster that impacts your home. Quite frankly, it helps me to sleep better at night knowing my precious family photos and videos are stored in the cloud.

When you keep your files exclusively in the cloud, however, you lose control. If the storage company goes out of business or gets hacked, you could potentially lose everything. That's why it is wise to embrace a redundancy strategy of storing files both in the cloud and locally. Today, Western Digital launches the My Passport Ultra for that exact usage case -- it comes with free specialized software for cloud backups. With capacities up to 4TB, it should meet the needs of many consumers.

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UK businesses are putting almost no effort into securing the data they keep on USB drives, which is not in line with what GDPR demands, potentially putting them at risk of being hit with huge fines.

That's according to data storage firm Kingston, which concluded after polling 480 employees from companies in various industries.

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Today is a historic day for gaming, as earlier, Microsoft revealed its newest video game console -- Xbox One X. The latest variant of Xbox is smaller and more powerful than any model before it. It is backwards compatible with all Xbox One titles, and it also works with Microsoft's "Game Pass" subscription service, which offers over 100 downloadable games.

Regardless of which version of the console you have -- Xbox One, Xbox One S, or Xbox One X -- there is a good chance you might fill the internal hard drive. While 500GB or 1TB seems like a lot, it can fill quickly -- especially with the aforementioned subscription service. Today, Seagate announces a special USB hard drive for Xbox One. Called "Game Drive Hub," it features a 3.5-inch 8TB drive and a front-facing two-port USB hub.

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It used to be that laptops were pretty much just for portability. If you wanted, say, tons of storage, a desktop tower was the way to go. Thanks to faster external options using USB and Thunderbolt, it can be easy to add 3.5-inch hard drives with large capacities to a notebook setup. For instance, you can keep an enclosure on your desk, and when you get home or to the office, you can connect it for access.

USB 3.1 Generation 2 is the fastest such USB connection, and it will allow a very seamless experience when connecting an external storage device. True, when using mechanical hard drives, you won't be saturating the 3.1 gen 2 interface, but it can't hurt to have. Today, Startech launches a new such product -- the USB 3.1 Dual 3.5-inch SATA HDD Enclosure with RAID. It can accommodate two 3.5-inch mechanical hard drives. As the "Raid" in the name implies, it can do RAID 0, RAID 1, SPAN(BIG) and JBOD. It even includes both Type-A and Type-C cables depending on your connection needs.

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If you are a hardcore user of Apple products and you need cloud storage, iCloud is your best bet. True, a solution like Dropbox offers better cross-platform support -- including for Linux desktop -- but if you have, for instance, a Mac, iPhone, and iPad, iCloud just works so smoothly. If you are all-in on Apple, choosing anything else will lead to a lesser experience.

Today, iCloud gets even better, as Apple lowers the 2TB monthly price to $9.99 -- what was previously the cost of the now-eliminated 1TB option. Best of all, if you are already signed up for the 1TB tier, you have been upgraded at no extra cost. In other words, Apple has automatically doubled your available storage without the need to jump through any hoops! How cool is that?

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In its quest to make its laptops smaller, lighter and faster, Apple has made modern MacBooks harder -- if not impossible -- to upgrade. Take my mid-2013 MacBook Air for example. It comes with an SSD design for which there are only a handful of aftermarket options around -- and the cost of buying new storage may be higher than what my laptop is now worth. Some newer MacBooks are even worse though, leaving no such option on the table.

TarDisk is a very interesting alternative to the replacement route. It fits into the SD card slot and can be used either as an external drive, that you would not even know is there, or as combined storage. In the "Pear" mode, as TarDisk calls it, the internal drive and the TarDisk are merged, giving you a single drive with their combined capacity to play with. And, unlike a replacement drive, it does not put your warranty at risk.

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With growing numbers of data breaches and increasing pressure from regulations like GDPR, companies need to enact stricter security policies.

Object and cloud storage specialist Scality is addressing this with the launch of Scality RING7, a new software-defined, multi-site file system and object storage solution.

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Businesses fear that, with the speed at which technology changes, they won't be able to read their corporate data in the near future. And that seems to be a big issue, as many businesses want to be able to read its archived data for at least 50 years in the past.

This is according to a new report released recently by Crown Records Management.

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Quantum computing is not the only large leap in computing the human race is currently working on, there's also the crazy and amazing research in storing data in DNA.

According to media reports, Microsoft is now planning on building, "an operational storage system based on DNA working inside a data center," by the next decade.

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If you are planning to buy a OnePlus 3T, you should know that, at least in some markets, there will only be one storage option available in the foreseeable future. OnePlus has dropped the 128GB model from the line, leaving only the 64GB version on the table for prospective buyers in some markets.

The 64GB OnePlus 3T continues to be available in both Gunmetal and Soft Gold, so you at least have two color options to choose from -- just like before. The 128GB OnePlus 3T was only launched in Gunmetal -- as well as black, if you count the limited editions announced this year.

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Solid state drives are changing data centers for the better. These drives are not only faster, but more energy efficient too. While not necessarily more cost effective for businesses, prices are slowly on the decline. It is only a matter of time before mechanical hard drives are dead entirely. The death of HDD may not be in the immediate future, but make no mistake, it is coming.

Intel has been an SSD leader for a while, and the company has two new drives that are designed for data centers. Both the DC P4500 and P4600 feature 3D NAND, and can be had with two connection types -- a PCIe NVMe add-in card or 2.5-inch U.2. Both series of solid state drives offer capacities up to 4TB. Read speeds are up to 3270 MB/s, with write reaching 2100 MB/s -- depending on model and capacity, of course.

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IBM is warning customers of its Storwize hybrid enterprise storage solutions that it has accidentally sent out some malware infected USB sticks.

Companies ordering the Storwize V3500, V3700 and V5000 Gen 1 flash storage solutions may have been sent the infected sticks. The malware is contained in the directory for the initialization tool and when the tool is run it gets copied to a temporary directory on the computer’s hard drive.

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Thanks to media streaming and cloud storage, many home consumers no longer need massive hard disk drives. Instead, a fast SSD with a lesser capacity can often meet needs. Of course that isn't a fact for everyone -- some folks still prefer local storage, and mechanical HDDs are ideal from a cost perspective.

Home users aside, businesses still largely have a need for hard drives with large capacities. Trade secrets and customer information can't always be stored in the cloud. While some data centers are embracing solid state drives for better performance, that is not really cost effective at this time. Today, Western Digital begins shipping the 12TB HGST Ultrastar He12 Helium 7200 RPM hard disk drive. This is a HDD with monstrous capacity that is designed for the enterprise.

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