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usb 2.0

Toshiba gets colorful with external hard drives

Despite the no-frills name--Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive--the company's new line of pocket-size drives boast some unique and colorful designs and features.

The drives are housed in a sleek, glossy chassis embedded with contemporary graphics and available in four color schemes: Electric Blue & Black, Carbon Grey, Hot Rod Red, and Gecko Green. They offer storage capacity up to 400GB, larger than most existing products though still less than the 500GB OWC Mercury.

The new drives ship with NTI Shadow backup software, as well as internal shock sensor and ramp-loading technology that deliver extra … Read more

Buffalo's external hard drive serves the way of the ninja

With a name that recalls the famed Japanese ninja movie, the MiniStation Shinobi is arguably the thinnest and lightest external hard drive to date--merely .2 inches thick and weighing only 2 ounces.

Buffalo announced the drive on Monday. Unlike other pocket-size external hard drives that use the 2.5-inch drives found in most laptops, this one uses the 1.8-inch laptop hard drive that's more often associated with smaller devices such as portable media players. For this reason, the external hard drive is significantly more compact and lighter, but it also features limited capacity: up to only 60GB. This … Read more

DAS + NAS = Buffalo's DriveStation FlexNet

It can be a hard choice between a direct attached (DAS) and a network attached (NAS) external storage device. The former offers high-speed data throughput but requires a computer, while the latter can work by itself with a throughput speed that's limited by the network connection. How about not having to pick one over the other?

Buffalo Technology is offering that option on Monday with its new DriveStation FlexNet storage device. The device comes with both 10/100 Ethernet network storage functionality for it to be an NAS and a USB 2.0 connection for it to work as … Read more

Amazon.com has the Corsair 16GB Flash Survivor USB 2.0 Flash Drive for $31.66, after $14.33 savings and $20 mail-in rebate.

Amazon.com has Corsair 16GB Flash Survivor USB 2.0 Flash Drive for $31.66, after $14.33 savings and $20 mail-in rebate. >> Regular price is $65.99 >> Sale price is $31.66 >> Savings $34.33 (52.02%) >> Click here for deal

Connect external displays without cables

If you've always wanted to connect an external display to your laptop without having to physically hook a cable between the two, I have good news for you.

Iogear introduced on Tuesday its Wireless USB to VGA Kit for streaming PC content to an alternate display. This is going to be one of the first implementations of Wireless USB.

WUSB technology has been under development since 2004, and the first time I saw its demo was during Winhec 2006. As the name suggests, it's essentially the current USB 2.0 technology without USB cables. WUSB can operate at … Read more

WiebeTech's Forensic UltraDock V4: When drive docking gets serious

A while ago, I got my hands on WiebeTech's USB DriveDock V4 and was very impressed by its versatility. The device allows for quickly docking any IDE or SATA hard drive, 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch, to a computer via a USB 2.0 connection.

Today, WiebeTech introduced the Forensic UltraDock V4. The Forensic UltraDock supports all hard drives and all existing connections for external storage devices including USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA. This guarantees not only the versatility but also the speed, making recovering data much faster, especially considering the ever increasing capacity of … Read more

Are FireWire connections crave-worthy?

OK, I admit it. I want options, even though, most of the time I don't have much use for them. Take pocket-size external hard drives, for example. I want them to be compact, light, pretty, bus-powered, and especially I want them to support USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800. (I would take eSATA, too, though, that wouldn't make sense until it's bus-powered capable). However, the truth is, I've used mostly just the USB 2.0 connection for personal purposes. So today, I decided to find out if FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 are worth … Read more

HDTV tuner twofer

Two USB HDTV tuners are grabbing headlines today. Since we've yet to be truly impressed by the image quality of any variety of TV tuner (ATI's internal TV Wonder 650 card is the best we've seen to date), we're eager to test out these two new devices.

First up: from Taiwanese manufacturer Compro, the VideoMate U2700. This USB 2.0 hybrid device pulls in over-the-air HD content in 1080i along with standard-def broadcasts. It provides all the DVR features you'd expect, and it can record your shows straight to DVD. You can also select a … Read more