It’s hard to stand out in the world of external storage devices, and doubly-hard to compete with the hard disk drive makers themselves. This hasn’t stopped folks like Iomega, Verbatim, and LaCie from trying to impress customers with flashy cases, software bundles, and clever functionality. But clever new twist on the external hard drive concept just rolled into the Pack Rat lair: The ioSafe SoloPRO is fireproof and waterproof. Cool!
USB 2.0
How Fast Is It? A Storage Infographic
How fast is a hard disk drive? How about the various flavors of SATA and Fibre Channel? Check out this handy Pack Rat infographic to answer the question, “how fast is it?”
Will OS X 10.7 “Lion” Bring USB 3.0 To The Mac?
Apple is a funny company, happy to go their own way even as the rest of the industry piles on to the latest trend. Such is the case with storage, with Apple ditching floppy drives, optical drives, and even hard disks. On the expansion side, Apple was an early and aggressive proponent of USB but stubbornly ignored eSATA. Now that PC makers are turning to USB 3.0, many are wondering when Apple will follow suit. My sources tell me that “Super Speed” USB 3.0 is indeed coming to the Mac, and very soon!
ExpressCard: A Sure Thing That Failed
PCMCIA and CardBus slots were universal and popular a decade ago, but the advent of PCI Express meant reengineering the old standby. The result was ExpressCard, a never-popular compromise that mixes PCI Express and USB into a confusing and little-used mashup. With few modern laptops including an ExpressCard slot and fewer users, a fair question to ask is “where did it all go wrong?”
Lemons Into Lemonade: Seagate Repackages SATA As GoFlex
The external hard disk drive market is incredibly hot right now, but it’s also ultra-competitive. The latest trend is dockable multi-function drives that are friendlier to use and offer advanced features like video playback. Most docks rely on USB 2.0, but Seagate just dropped a bomb on the industry with a simple twist: They moved the intelligence outside the case, repackaging the standard internal SATA connector as GoFlex, an external link to a variety of docks and adapters.
