Articles about Storage

Acronis International has announced the first public beta of its flagship backup tool, Acronis True Image 2014.

The big addition in this release is fully integrated support for backing up your system to Acronis Cloud, the company’s online storage service. Or some of your system, at least (the trial and full versions come with 5GB of storage space, free for 1 year).

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Cloud storage locker Mega has turned a blind eye to the ever increasing popularity of mobile devices, offering no official app for Android or iOS (let alone BlackBerry or Windows Phone) to complement its security-oriented service. Now, though, Mega looks to finally fix the oversight.

The cloud storage locker just introduced its first mobile app called Mega which, at least at the moment, is only available for Android devices. The offering, according to the changelog, was "acquired by MEGA and is now being maintainted [sic] by MEGA contractors". Let's take a look at the features.

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You may have seen the news that IBM has decided all enterprise Tier 1 storage should be flash-based and is putting in place plans to make the transition as fast as possible. Big Blue will be investing $1 million to integrate flash into all of its servers and storage systems and is introducing its own flash-only appliance.

Why the sudden move? Data centers increasingly demand the ability to process information more quickly, but traditional hard drives have only shown a small increase in speed over the last few years. IBM claims that flash solutions can speed up processing by around 90 percent for banking and trading applications. Other benefits include lower energy consumption, less maintenance and a smaller footprint.

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When you buy a program with “Total” in the name then you probably expect a very complete feature list, and Bitdefender Total Security 2014 certainly does not disappoint in this regard: the suite offers antivirus, firewall, anti-spam, browsing and social networking protection, privacy tools, parental controls, online storage, anti-theft service, PC tuneup module and more.

And although some people prefer to ignore the frills and assess security packages on their core essentials, Bitdefender does just as well here. An AV-TEST report on Bitdefender Internet Security 2013, for instance, shows it detecting 100% of the test malware samples -- this program is strong on the basics, too.

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Microsoft released the 256 GB Surface Pro in Japan almost a month ago and, since then, it left potential buyers puzzled as to when the new model arrives outside of the land of the rising sun. Well, the date is today, as Microsoft just expanded the availability of the latest Surface Pro version to include new major markets. There's a catch though.

Microsoft tells me that "there will be limited availability of a 256GB version of Surface Pro in the U.S. exclusively through the commercial channel and the authorized Surface resellers". This model runs for $1,199, making it $200 more expensive than the 128 GB Surface Pro which goes for $999. And, at least at the moment, the former cannot be purchased from Microsoft Store or any retail shop.

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Seagate, working with IBM, has launched the fastest enterprise hard drive in the form of a 2.5-inch solid-state hybrid drive (SSHD). Oddly it sneaked this news out last week on the company's blog rather than trumpeting it in a press release.

The drive, for IBM System x servers, is based on Seagate's existing 600GB 2.5-inch drive spinning at 10,000 RPM with a 6Gb/s interface. It has 16GB of NAND flash storage and 128MB of cache on board.

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Across the globe sales of external server storage have dropped for the first time since 2009 according to research company IDC. Its Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker reveals that revenues in the first quarter of 2013 showed a 0.9 percent decline over the same period last year.

Total storage sales for servers, including the smaller market for disks internal to server cabinets, slipped by 3.2 percent over the same period. EMC maintains its lead in the server storage field with a 30.4 percent revenue share, followed by NetApp with 14.9 and IBM at 10.4 percent. If you look at the market by all server storage not just external disks, EMC still leads with 23.2 percent ahead of HP which has 15.5 and Dell with 13.9 percent.

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Cloud backup and storage provider Dropbox has released Dropbox Experimental Edition 2.3.12, a pre-release version of its desktop client for Windows, Mac and Linux. The new build introduces several new features -- some restricted by OS -- designed to help simplify the import of photos and other images into the user’s Dropbox account.

At the same time, Dropbox 2.2.0 Release Candidate as quietly slipped out, confirming that the next stable release of Dropbox -- currently at version 2.0.26 -- will go straight to version 2.2, skipping the whole 2.1.x release branch that was previously being used to preview new features.

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Before Apple rolls out a new product the company usually announces it with much fan-fare at special events and issues bombastic press releases before the big launch. But that's no longer the case with the 16GB iPod touch which arrives quietly with its tail between its legs. It's almost like the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation doesn't want folks to rush into ordering one.

The 16 GB model bears an uncanny resemblance to the current iPod touch lineup, featuring the same elongated design (first seen on Apple's iPhone 5) and low physical footprint. But there are some differences.

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On Wednesday, cloud storage provider MediaFire, which now boasts 30 million users, launched support for native music playback and video streaming in its Android, iOS and web apps. The new feature is available through an update that is rolling out today.

MediaFire currently offers three plans -- basic (free), Pro and Business -- which come with 50GB, 100GB and 1TB of cloud storage, respectively. However, users who do not wish to shell out for a premium plan (either Pro or Business) are stuck with a 200 MB limit for uploaded files, which suggests that they are not able to take full advantage of both music playback and video streaming support.

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Research company IHS iSuppli has released figures showing that solid-state drives are set to claim 33 percent of the storage market by 2017. Over this time total worldwide sales of SSDs are expected to rise from 31 million units in 2012 to 227 million.

The growth is being driven by demand for ultrabooks and other slimline systems which need powerful, compact drives. Sales should also be helped by the falling price of flash memory and the faster performance and lower power requirements of SSDs. Increasing numbers of systems being launched with convertible and touch screen formats is likely to push things further too.

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Security products that work across all of your digital devices from PCs to smartphones are nothing new -- Norton One has been around for over a year -- but now McAfee has joined the fray. LiveSafe includes virus protection, a password manager and encrypted cloud storage in a single package.

The most interesting feature is the secure online Personal Locker that gives users 1GB of storage to hold their sensitive documents, financial records, IDs and so on. This is secured using biometric authentication with voice, face and device recognition. It works using Intel Identity Protection Technology. This is a hardware authentication mechanism that’s built into the latest Intel processors. To access a file you need to enter a PIN, take a photo for facial recognition and read two messages to confirm your voice.

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Late yesterday, cloud storage provider Box released updated apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. The latest iterations come with new features which are designed to "give users and businesses better control and enhanced security over their content". Let's take a look at the changes.

The most noteworthy feature introduced on Box for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 is the ability to manage (add, change and remove) access permissions for any collaborator in any folder, which the user owns. This functionality is aimed at both users, like students working together on an assignment, and businesses, which need in-depth collaboration features to manage a project.

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Late yesterday, Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 users from all over the world can now finally take advantage of the complete photo and video backup feature offered by its smartphone operating system. This comes a tad over six months after the Windows Phone 8 release in late-October, last year. A little too late, wouldn't you agree?

Previously, users from a number of regions were constricted to use a dumbed-down backup feature that only allowed automatically upload of low-resolution pictures (no video support) straight to SkyDrive. "We just started to light this up, so be patient if you don’t see it right away. The change could take a few days to roll out around the globe", Aaron Sauvé, Microsoft senior program manager says.

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Swiss cloud-storage browser tool Cyberduck 4.3.1 has been released for Mac and Windows. This open-source tool provides users with a user-friendly means of browsing FTP/SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Rackspace Cloud Files servers.

Version 4.3.1 builds on the recent 4.3 major update – the program’s first in around 18 months, which improved support for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, plus expanded support for various services, including S3 and Google Storage. However, support for Dropbox and Google Drive have been dropped alongside Microsoft’s Azure Blob Storage connections.

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