Today LaCie announced the Mirror portable hard drive that is encased in mirrored Corning Gorilla Glass.  The Mirror features a 1TB hard drive and comes with an ebony wood base to be a functional mirror on your desk.

The Mirror portable hard drive has a capacity of 1TB but is not just about function, it is also about form.  The drive is encased in mirrored Corning Gorilla Glass giving the drive a striking look, it especially looks great if you take a look at it.  This drive comes with an ebony wood stand for the drive to sit in while on a desk, transforming it into a functional desk piece.  The ebony wood was sourced from Makassar and should really make a wonderful stand for the drive.  Users can rest assured that their drive will stay in great shape even with the mirror finish.  Thanks to the Corning Gorilla Glass used in the case the finish will stand up to even the roughest handling of the drive.  The drive is able to be used with all OSes, so you should not need to worry if this will work for your computer.  Even though LaCie did not disclose the connectivity options it is easy to see from the picture.  The power and data will be handled through a micro USB 3.0 cable which means you will only need to carry the drive and USB 3.0 cable to use it, there is no need for a power cord.

The LaCie Mirror portable hard drive will be available in 1TB capacity with a MSRP of $279.99 later this month from LaCie’s online store and authorized LaCie resellers.  The drive will carry a three-year limited warranty that users can extend or upgrade.  The warranty provides worldwide repair and/or replacement, so this drive is ready for your adventures around the world.

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Today LaCie announced the Rugged RAID mobile drive featuring user selectable RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration.  The new drive featuring Seagate hard drives will be available later this quarter.

The Rugged RAID mobile drive is a drive featuring two hard drives that can be put in RAID 0 for speed or RAID 1 for data redundancy.  RAID 0 uses two drives to store one piece of data, allowing it to read and write faster by storing half of it on both drives to form the single piece of data.  RAID 0 is much faster than a single hard drive (by about 2x) while being less secure for data since if one drive goes then the data is gone.  On the other hand RAID 1 stores the same data on two hard drives so that if one of them were to ever fail you will still have the data on the other.  This is a much more secure way to store sensitive data that is important for a user to protect.

The Rugged is exactly what it is called, rugged and that is thanks to its design.  The drive is resistant to shock, with it being able to withstand drops of up to 1.5m (about 5 feet) and 1 ton of pressure.  It is also resistant to water with its cap in place, and when it is the drive is IP 54 rated.  That IP 54 rating means that the drive is dust tight and will withstand splashes of water on the drive.  The drive also features USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connectivity, which means that users will be able to use RAID 0 to its fullest.  The drive in RAID 0 will be able to get up to 240MB/s sustain performance.  The drive is compatible with all operating systems and it also includes LaCie Private-Public software.  The software enables users to password protect the entire device or just certain volumes with AES-256 encryption.

The LaCie Rugged RAID will be available in 4TB capacity with a MSRP of $449.99 later this quarter from LaCie’s online store and authorized LaCie resellers.  The drive will carry a three-year limited warranty that users can extend or upgrade.  The warranty provides worldwide repair and/or replacement, so this drive is ready for your adventures around the world.

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Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX) today announced the launch of a new ultra-slim external hard drive that holds 500GB of data while only being 7mm thick.  The steel drive will be available in mid to late January at a MSRP of $99.99, and pre-orders can be made now at Seagate.com and Amazon.com.

The portable hard drive looks like a stylized 2.5” notebook hard drive with a smooth finished steel case. The Seagate Seven’s case is made entirely of steel to give it structural integrity while allowing it to be as thin as possible, with the added bonus of looking pretty stunning as well.  The 500GB capacity is held in the drive that is an amazing 7mm thick, really showing just how far hard drive technology has come these last few years.  The industrial design of the drive is very nice and evokes a lot of memories of bare hard drives that Seagate has been producing for years, 35 years in fact.  The drive will make for a nice addition to users who want to back up their files and take the data with them in a small package.  Notebook users will appreciate that they can store more data with the added plus of the drive barely adding any weight to the notebook bag.  The drive features a low profile motor technology that includes extreme gyro handling capabilities ensuring that the drive operates safely in a variety of environmental factors.

The MSRP of the Seagate Seven is $99.99 for the 500GB drive, equating to just 20 cents per Gigabyte of Storage. The drive will be widely available in mid to late January.  The Seagate Seven though can already be pre-ordered for those who want to get their orders secured.  The preorders can be made at Seagate.com and Amazon.com.

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HyperX, (a division of Kingston) recently released its new series of flash drives, the HyperX Fury USB 3.0 Flash Drive line. The flash drives are designed to appeal to budget-conscious gamers and enthusiasts, while providing solid performance. This review will be taking a look at the 64 GB version of the drive (model number HXF30/64GB).

The Fury drive feels solid in the hand. It has a lanyard loop on the back to attach to a lanyard or keychain. It also has a cap, as opposed to utilizing a slider to protect the USB plug. The cap can snap onto the back of the flash drive when the drive is in use to help prevent the user from losing the cap. It is this reviewers opinion that it would be better if USB drive caps had some sort of attachment to the body of the drive, in case the cap were to accidentally fall off the top of the bottom of the drive. However, in the case of the Fury, the cap appears to attach solidly to both the USB plug as well as the back (though not quite as securely on the back).

In order to test the Fury’s performance, two benchmarks were run: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark and CrystalDiskMark. The tests were run both while the drive was plugged into a USB 3.0 port as well as a USB 2.0 port. It should also be noted that the chipset used for the benchmarks was an Intel X79 board, which does not support native USB 3.0. It is possible that speeds would be slightly better in a USB 3.0 port on a newer chipset.

First up are the CrystalDiskMark results:

The Fury managed a sequential read speed of 186.8 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 144.0 MB/s while plugged into the USB 3.0 port. Both of these numbers far exceed the expectations of the listed specifications for the drive, but it is expected that the drive will lose some speed after some usage. Also, since most typical usage of a flash drive is not simply sequential reads and writes, the speeds will be diminished in general use cases.

In the USB 2.0 port, the drive had a sequential read speed of 34.50 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 30.26 MB/s. These numbers show that the limiting factor here was clearly the USB 2.0 specification, and those are approximately the speeds a user can expect from any drive running on USB 2.0 that would otherwise have higher speeds.

Next up are the AIDA64 Disk Benchmark results:

In the USB 3.0 port, the Fury 64 GB USB drive performed admirably, putting out linear reads of approximately 177 MB/s and a random read of just under 190 MB/s. It also had an average read access time of 0.81 ms, which is quite impressive.

The Fury plugged into the USB 2.0 port again performed as expected, with linear read speeds almost exactly 33 MB/s and a random read speed of 33.5 MB/s. The average read access time also took a hit in the USB 2.0 port, coming in at 1.22 ms, a 50% increase.

The HyperX Fury USB 3.0 64 GB flash drive currently retails at a price of $49.99. Other 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drives can be purchased online for as cheap as $25, but that does not mean the Fury is not worth it. Attributes to consider other than price include durability, warranty, reliability, fit and finish, and performance. Even though Kingston itself has other 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drives available for approximately $30, those tend to have a target audience of general consumers, whereas the Fury is marketed towards gamers and enthusiasts.

The drive itself is clearly nicer and more aggressive in appearance than a typical consumer flash drive. Also, as stated earlier, the drive itself feels very well made and sturdy. It also has solid performance, far exceeding its listed specifications. However, considering there are so many options available at under the $50 price point, it makes it difficult to suggest the difference in price is worth it for the Fury 64 GB USB 3.0 drive. Time will tell as the drive gets used, and its reliability will be tested. Also, the drive will eventually start to drop in price.

Considering the drive individually, it’s a solid product with great performance and this reviewer would highly recommend it. For those wanting to save more money, they can easily find some cheaper drives that may share similar performance and specifications.

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Today I’m taking another look at Western Digital’s WD RE 4 TB WD4000FYYZ enterprise drives. I reviewed a single WD4000FYYZ in our Western Digital 4 TB roundup, and Western Digital was kind enough to provide us with some more drives to put through their paces.

The WD RE 4 TB FYYZ was the highest performing drive in our earlier roundup, and as an enterprise drive, it’s rated for double the load/unload cycles of the consumer drives. As such, these drives are optimized for RAID arrays.

The specifications of the drive are below:

• Interface – SATA 6.0Gb/s
• Capacity – 4TB
• RPM – 7200 RPM
• Cache – 64MB
• Load/Unload Cycles – 600,000

I’ll start off with the basic configuration, a single FYYZ drive.

In AIDA64, the single drive has a top linear read of 171.0 MB/s, a random read of 148.8 MB/s, and a buffered read of 345.2 MB/s. It has an average read access of 12.19 ms.

In CrystalDiskMark, the single drive provided a sequential read of 176.6 MB/s and a sequential write of 171.8 MB/s.

We had an issue with AIDA64 and the average read access times. For some reason they were coming out as 0.00 ms for the RAID 0 and 1 arrays, which is incorrect. The AIDA64 screenshots below still include the average read access, but any 0.00 ms times should be ignored

Moving on to two of the 4 TB FYYZ drives in RAID 1, a mirrored array, however, an NTFS RAID 1 array won’t provide any speed benefits.

In AIDA64, the two drive RAID 1 array has a top linear read of 173.6 MB/s, a random read of 130.7 MB/s, and a buffered read of 7278.0 MB/s.

In CrystalDiskMark, the two drive WD RE 4 TB RAID 1 array provided a sequential read of 176.5 MB/s and a sequential write of 166.8 MB/s.

Next up are the two WD RE 4 TB drives in RAID 0, a striped array, meaning performance should almost double.

In AIDA64, the two drive RAID 0 array has a top linear read of 339.3 MB/s, a random read of 289.1 MB/s, and a buffered read of 7359.2 MB/s.

In CrystalDiskMark, the two drive RAID 0 array provided a sequential read of 338.3 MB/s and a sequential write of 334.1 MB/s.

Now we get to the behemoth four 4 TB FYYZ drives in RAID 0, for an array 16 TB in size. The performance should be impressive.

In AIDA64, the four drive RAID 0 array has a top linear read of 713.5 MB/s, a random read of 559.7 MB/s, and a buffered read of 7440.5 MB/s.

In CrystalDiskMark, the four drive RAID 0 array provided a sequential read of 657.1 MB/s and a sequential write of 642.6 MB/s.

These figures are better than any consumer-grade SSD currently on the market, and certainly this array provides a much larger capacity.

We also tested four WD RE 4 TB drives in RAID 10. RAID 10 is the same as RAID 1 + 0, meaning that two pairs of drives are striped, and those pairs are mirrored. This array should yield similar performance to the two drive RAID 0 array, however, note the disclaimer below.

Disclaimer: It should be noted that the RAID 10 benchmarks were done via SATA 2.0 (3 Gbps) on an Intel X79 chipset, whereas the rest of the benchmarks in this review were done via SATA 3.0 (6 Gbps) on an AMD 990FX chipset. This will likely have some effect on the performance of the drives.

In AIDA64, the four drive RAID 10 array has a top linear read of 327.9 MB/s, a random read of 265.4 MB/s, and a buffered read of 6902.5 MB/s. It has an average read access of 11.92 ms.

In CrystalDiskMark, the four drive RAID 10 array provided a sequential read of 336.0 MB/s and a sequential write of 322.5 MB/s.

The drives themselves are very impressive, and scale well in RAID configurations. The WD RE 4 TB WD4000FYYZ currently retails for $300. While this might be a bit too pricey for the average consumer, prosumers and businesses interested in drive performance and guaranteed durability should definitely consider the WD RE 4 TB WD4000FYYZ.

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Microsoft has announced that they will be expanding OneDrive capacities for free users as well as subscribers and extending 1TB of storage to Office 365 subscribers, adding even more value to their Office 365 product.

In terms of OneDrive upgrades, the first upgrade comes by the way of free storage which was previously 7 GB (was originally 25 GB when it was first launched as SkyDrive) and is now 15 GB. So, Microsoft giveth, then Microsoft taketh, and then Microsoft giveth once again. I guess Microsoft just assumes that people have incredibly short memories or something, but this isn’t really much news other than the fact that they’re now more competitive with Dropbox and Google Drive in terms of free space.

Microsoft is also dropping their paid storage options by nearly 70% with their 100 GB plan costing $2 a month and $4 a month for 200 GB. There are no other options available for more storage, unless you get an Office 365 subscription which includes office and the newly announced 1 TB of storage on OneDrive. So, really, with Office 365 you get more value than you ever did before because you’re getting something like $20 a month worth of OneDrive storage as well as Office, which is technically $10 a month on its own. So, really, if you want to have 1 TB of cloud storage you’d be better off with an Office 365 account than actually trying to pay for any OneDrive storage at all.

OneDrive Office 365

So, as you can see, even an Office 365 University account will be eligible for this 1TB extra storage (on top of the 15 GB free) which actually makes Office 365 and 1 TB of OneDrive storage cost something like less than $1 a month ($80/96 months).

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Today I’m taking a look at the Seagate Backup Plus FAST 4 TB portable hard drive. However, referring to it as a hard drive is a bit misleading, as the Backup Plus FAST is actually two 2 TB 2.5” drives in a RAID 0 array. This contributes to the speeds the drives can provide, as a striped RAID 0 array improves performance to up to double of what a single drive would be capable of.

The drive comes in basic packaging, which includes a quick-start guide, an 18” USB 3.0 cable, and a USB 3.0 Y cable, which has two USB connectors: one for power and one for data. The reason it comes with two separate cables is that some USB 3.0 ports alone will not have enough power for the drive, so in those cases, the Y cable should be used.

The drive itself is 4.6×2.35” (116.9×82.5mm). It comes in a single color, black, and has a sleek metal exterior. I took some pictures with it next to and on top of my Nexus 5 to provide some reference.

The Backup Plus FAST 4 TB comes with the Seagate Dashboard software preloaded for easy registration of the product and installation of the software.

The Seagate Dashboard has been recently redone, and Seagate has certainly made some improvements to the UI and functionality of the software.

In addition to backing up computers over the network, the software also allows for backing up social media accounts as well as mobile devices. A really cool feature for the mobile backup is the ability to back up to the hard drive over WiFi, or to set up the phone to back up to a cloud service such as Dropbox or Google Drive, allowing the mobile device to be constantly backed up on those services. This is a huge feature since phones are often lost, stolen, or broken. It provides a really easy and simple way to keep the contents of your phone backed up. I especially like the fact that Seagate doesn’t require you to sign up for their own cloud service for backup, but allows you to utilize Dropbox or Google Drive instead, as they’re much more commonly used cloud services.

Seagate Dashboard supports Windows and Mac, and the mobile app (necessary for mobile backup) is available for Android and iOS. Getting to the performance side of things, the Seagate Backup Plus FAST 4 TB is accurately labeled “FAST”. It should be noted that all our benchmarks were done using USB 3.0 to maximize the capabilities of the drive.

CrystalDiskMark showed sequential reads of 245 MB/s, and sequential writes of 250 MB/s, most hard drives provide half those speeds, even when connected via SATA rather than USB. Clearly the RAID 0 array is speeding things up nicely.

AIDA64 showed a Maximum Linear Read at 238 MB/s, a Random Read of 179 MB/s, a Buffered Read of 310 MB/s, and an Average Read Access of 0.00 ms. To put that in perspective, a single new SSD usually gets an Average Read Access of 0.09 ms. The RAIDed Backup Plus FAST truly provides some awesome performance, especially for a portable external hard drive.

Now to the bad news: the Seagate Backup Plus FAST 4 TB has an MSRP of $270, and currently retails for the same price. Compared to Seagate’s other offerings, such as a 2 TB Backup Plus that is lighter, thinner, and currently retails for around $120, two of which could be had for $240, you may want to consider if the $30 premium for a single, thicker drive is worth is. A Seagate desktop (non-portable) 4 TB drive currently retails for $170, creating a $100 differential with the portable drive. However, it’s important to remember that the Backup Plus FAST provides things these other offerings do not. The Backup Plus FAST is much smaller and lighter, and obviously more portable than the desktop external drive, as well as significantly faster. Also, compared to the other portable drives, the performance of the FAST far exceeds them, and a $30 premium to have a single device rather than two separate ones, and one that is much faster than the other two would be seems like a small price to pay.

One has to consider if they need that level of performance or that capacity in their drive, and also if they want their external drive to be portable or not. If those are all requirements, the Seagate Backup Plus FAST 4 TB is hard to beat. Western Digital recently released its My Passport Pro 4 TB that also utilizes a RAID 0 array for similar performance, but uses a Thunderbolt connector rather than USB 3.0. Also, the Western Digital has an MSRP of $430, a far cry from $270. For those looking on the high end, we highly recommend the Seagate Backup Plus FAST 4 TB.

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