usb

Computing industry powers are doubling the data-transfer speed of USB 3.0 from today's 5 gigabits per second rate to 10Gbps.

The move will uncork speed bottlenecks of external SSD storage devices, open up options such second monitors, and help confine the even faster Thunderbolt interface to a high-end niche.

But it won't happen immediately. The specification should be done in mid-2013, which "will enable initial products to appear in late 2014 with a much broader availability of products in 2015," according to the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, which announced the faster Universal Serial Bus … Read more

Regular readers know that flash-drive prices have plummeted in the past year. But you know what all those dirt-cheap drives have had in common? A USB 2.0 interface.

What is this, 2001? USB 2.0 is over, man. It's the digital equivalent of the horse and buggy. And yet it's still pretty rare to find flash drives that support the newer, faster USB 3.0 spec.

That's why I'm jazzed about today's deal. While supplies last, Ice Monkey has the Super Talent ST3U32ST1K 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive for $19.99 shipped. Elsewhere … Read more

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On this episode of Crave, we check out the Burrito Bomber engineered by Darwin Aerospace that literally bombs burritos into geo-tagged locations. We also get some NASA reassurance that the world may not end this month, which means we may actually get the chance to wear Lacoste's awesome polo shirts of the future. Also, dogs that drive? Yep. … Read more

The single-purpose gadget is very much alive and well. Case in point, this USB tentacle. It squirms. That's all it does.

The USB tentacle is not a hub. It won't open a beer bottle. It won't fire foam rockets at your cubicle mates. It won't charge your smartphone. It just squirms. To improve the visual impact, you might want to invest in multiple tentacles to adorn each port on your computer. … Read more

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series, for the other parts, check out the related stories. This post was updated on March 29, 2013, to add more information on backing up.

One of a storage device's most important roles, if not the most important, is to keep the information stored on it safe, especially from hardware failure. Redundancy and backup are the two popular types of data protection. They are not the same, however, and it's important to understand the differences between the two.

In a nutshell, redundancy in consumer-grade digital storage means using … Read more

I know a lot of people don't care for rebates, but if you shift your perception a bit, they can seem like icing on the cake.

For example, Newegg has the Patriot PSF32GAUSB 32GB USB flash drive for $18.99 shipped. Right from the get-go, that's a great deal.

And here's the icing: a $10 mail-in rebate (PDF) brings your total cost down to $8.99, which is an unheard-of price for a 32GB drive. Heck, even a 16GB drive is a find at that price.

That rebate comes in the form of an American Express prepaid … Read more

The efficiency of USB Reverse Tethering lies in the fact that wireless may not be the most available form of Web communication at all times. If you need to update your device and there are only DSL connections around, for example, USB Reverse Tethering can provide the much-needed connection.

The interface of USB Reverse Tethering looks simple, since there are only the status graphics and connectivity buttons in the home area. The process of making it work is quite complex, though. First you'll have to configure the app properly to the PC, and the target PC must also be … Read more

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series. For the other parts, check out the related stories.

Now that you have some ideas about internal storage vs. memory after reading Part 1, here in Part 2 I'll talk about the two main types of external storage devices: direct-attached storage (DAS) and network-attached storage (NAS).

DAS and NAS share a few things in common. They both use one or more internal drives (hard drives or SSDs) on the inside, and they utilize the same methods to combine drives' storage space (when multiple drives are used). But before we … Read more

For those of you who own one of Apple's new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro systems that were released in June, Apple has made a software update available. The update is around 127MB in size and includes bug fixes and performance enhancements for the systems' graphics, and their ability to communicate with some USB devices.

While Apple didn't reveal the specific problems addressed by this update, recently a few owners of the new MacBooks have reported noticing flashing displays when waking the system, washed-out or high-contrast colors when using external displays, and odd graphical artifacts when using some … Read more