Articles about Storage

Microsoft and Lenovo have teamed up to expand Cortana's usefulness on the Chinese maker's Windows 10 PCs, giving users the ability to call up the personal assistant to search files stored on popular cloud storage lockers.

Considering that each of the major cloud storage services has its fair share of supporters, it is a smart play to give customers the option to use their favorite locker with Cortana. It enhances the user experience and, at the same time, sets Microsoft up to gain more Cortana supporters.

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Cloud storage service Dropbox has turned its Windows and Windows Phone apps into a single universal app, giving users a consistent experience across smartphones, PCs and tablets that are running Microsoft's tiled operating systems.

The latest version of Dropbox bridges the gap between the Windows and Windows Phone versions of the app, sharing most of the code, also gaining a number of new features in the transition to universal app status. The most important changes are aimed at the Windows Phone-toting crowd. Some are long-overdue, being mentioned in my initial coverage of the Windows Phone client in mid-January.

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The absolute best upgrade for any computer that's operating system is running from a hard disk drive, is a solid state drive. Why? The performance increase is significant, while SSD prices are decreasing. In other words, you can speed up your PC without hurting your wallet.

The problem, however, is deciding which SSD to buy. While affordability and speed are important qualities, I tend to put a premium on reliability. Of course I want the drive to be fast, but the contents of the drive -- important documents and family photos -- trump anything else. Luckily, Samung's offerings have proven to be both reliable and fast, while also being reasonably priced. Today, I am taking a look at the latest and greatest SATA variant; the 850 EVO.

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If you work in IT, you know how laborious it can be to get new computers up and running. The best way to do it is with a single image, so you do not need to manually; one by one. In other words, you install a disk image to multiple machines; the image not only has Windows, but other software and settings too

While this can be done in many ways, including over network or using optical media, a hard drive duplicator is probably the fastest. StarTech.com announces a new product that not only serves as a duplicator, but as 6-drive dock too. Offering USB 3.0 and eSata connectivity, it is sure to meet the needs of many businesses and some home users too.

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If you began your IT career in the 1980s or before you probably have fond memories of spooling up half-inch, nine-track magnetic tapes. You'd be forgiven for thinking that in the age of affordable large capacity hard disks and SSDs tape storage was now firmly confined to the past, but not so.

IBM scientists working with FUJIFILM of Japan, have demonstrated a recording density of 123 billion bits per square inch on tape, the equivalent of a palm-sized 220 TB tape cartridge.

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Today is World Backup Day, I'm not sure if it's significant that it comes just before April Fool's Day, but it does seem that the backup message isn't getting through to everyone.

A new survey of 1,000 UK adults by digital storage manufacturer Verbatim reveals that one in five have never backed up their home computers and more than a third never back up their mobiles.

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You can of course buy ready to use external hard drives, but should you have a spare 2.5 inch disk from an old machine lying around it's easy enough to pop it in a case so you can use it for backups or transferring files.

There's lots of choice when it comes to buying an external enclosure and most of them aren't very expensive, so what makes this offering from German company Inateck attractive?

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Enterprise standard data storage and recovery can be beyond the reach of smaller businesses with the result that they end up using compromise solutions often based on consumer products.

UK-based managed services provider ITS is launching two new services -- BlackCloud and BlackVault -- to offer affordable off-site data backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service on its private cloud platform in the company's dedicated, secure data center.

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It's easy to get excited about the new USB Type-C connector. It's small, making even slimmer designs possible, it can be used to charge power-hungry devices, removing the need for dedicated charging ports, and, best of all, it can be plugged in both ways, making it easier to charge mobile devices at night. The last feature is certainly the highlight for most of us.

It all sounds great until we think about backwards compatibility. USB-C, as it's also known, is not compatible with older connectors, used on most PCs, laptops and consumer electronics, which severely diminishes its appeal. However, storage company Emtec has come up with an interesting workaround, announcing a USB-C flash drive which also features a full-size USB connector.

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The average family has multiple devices capable of taking photos and videos. Seagate Personal Cloud from Ebuyer provides a central repository for all of this media, and can automatically back up content from your computers, smartphones and tablets.

You can access movies, music, photos and files from any supported device on your network, and stream media directly to Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, and some Smart TVs. You can also access your files remotely over the internet, and sync content with cloud storage services.

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If you've been around the PC world for a while you’ll no doubt have encountered Diskeeper, the unattended defrag tool. With modern server storage using RAID controllers and SSDs you may think that the need for this kind of software is over, but Condusiv, the company behind Diskeeper, believes otherwise.

It's launching Diskeeper 15 Server, a fragmentation prevention solution for storage area network (SAN) systems connected to physical servers to keep both servers and storage running like new.

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It's reckoned that as much as 90 percent of the world's data has been created in the last two years. That's not only a frightening rate of expansion, it's a problem for IT administrators who need to think about storage on a much larger scale.

Storage specialist PROMISE Technology is launching its latest VSky A-Series product aimed at overcoming the limitations of existing storage solutions.

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As the manager of a small business or an entrepreneur just starting out, you should always be on the lookout for anything that can improve your productivity, time management, organization, and ultimately make day to day tasks easier to manage.

It can be hard enough trying to run things in the office without also having to worry about your online presence. But like it or not, today’s business needs an online presence in order to ultimately succeed, or at least remain competitive.

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Colder regions make great places for building data centers. Operators can leverage the colder air outside to cool those hot servers, without relying much on costly tools like air conditioners and the like. When we're talking about thousands of servers all running in the same place, the savings are substantial. And so is the positive impact on the environment, thanks to a healthy decrease in energy requirements and emissions.

It should come as no surprise that Apple has announced Denmark and Ireland as the locations of choice for its two new European data centers. The two countries are also favored by other players in the tech industry, like Google and Microsoft. Apple's new data centers will power online services for European customers.

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You can easily increase the amount of storage that's available with your OneDrive for free. Bonus space can be unlocked by referring the service to your friends and enabling the auto camera upload feature in the mobile apps. The most that you can get though is 20 GB. Those of us who have been using the service from the early days also get a loyalty bonus of 10 GB. But maybe that's still not enough.

As you may know, Microsoft has recently started to give Bing Rewards users the option to unlock a further 100 GB of free OneDrive storage. The catch? Only folks using the service in US have been welcome. However, now you can get the same treatment worldwide. Here's how.

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