Seagate

We have tested a lot of hard drives over the years from SCSI to Thunderbolt, and the one thing most have in common is a lack of easy connectivity. In the past if you had a USB drive you were stuck with a USB drive in whatever version was in use at the time. Two years ago Seagate started to ship drives with a flexible docking system, utilizing the actual SATA connector on the hard drives. They have everything from faster-than-heck Thunderbolt docks, a NAS dock, FireWire 800, USB 2 and 3, and E-SATA docks. Is this the Holy Grail of flexibility and future proofing? It just might be! When we first started using the system, it seemed a bit odd. Why put a flexible dock on a USB drive? Why the extra components … the extra cost? After using it for a while it became clear what a lovely design they had come up with. Need to have an offline backup drive? Just buy the Backup Plus drive, and an extra drive, and use the same dock connected to your computer. I was able to leave docks in place at work and home and just carry drives around without having to hassle with plugging and configuring cables and connections. For a serious user, this is a major selling point and should be considered when strategizing your external storage workflow.

The supplied Seagate Dashboard software gives Mac users a nice boost in functionality, as it works perfectly with Time Machine and adds the ability for scheduled backups from sites such as Facebook and Flickr. This offers interesting options such as the ability to back up data from social networks, as well as to share data with them. Need some serious speed? Try the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter, which admittedly is pretty expensive at the moment, but if you are hammering on Photoshop or Lightroom with your files on your external drive, you will be in love with that Thunderbolt connectivity and speed. For working with video, then Thunderbolt is definitely worth a serious look-see. Just leave a note for Santa that says, “I need my hard drive to be as fast as Rudolph! Please bring me a Seagate Thunderbolt Dock!” One feature we liked was that Seagate has similar docks for both their desktop and portable drives, and with the power of laptops encroaching on desktop machines; this is a welcome addition to the portable power user. Highly recommended!

For more information on Seagate Backup Plus drives visit: www.seagate.com

Buffalo Technology

One of the best entry-level drives is the more affordable MiniStation Thunderbolt portable drive. Fast and efficient, the Buffalo MiniStation comes with something most other drives don’t have: a cable! For Thunderbolt newbies, the cable isn’t an inexpensive bit of wire with connectors. Most drive manufacturers don’t include a cable since they are rather expensive. One from the Apple website is $49.00 due in part to the active circuitry and recent introduction into the marketplace. By including the cable with their MiniStation it makes working with Thunderbolt much more affordable. The drive arrives preformatted for the Mac, so it’s plug-and-play, and with the included USB 3 port, you have the choice of two quick connection options built-in.

Not everyone needs Thunderbolt speed, but for folks seeking speed on a budget the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt drive deserves serious consideration. With a choice of 500GB or 1TB models, you can pick the size that meets your need and budget. Highly Recommended!

For more information on the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt visit: www.buffalotech.com

WiebeTech

For Mac techies, the name Wiebe conjures up James Wiebe a well-known figure in the Mac universe due in part to his bomb-proof docks and enclosures. WiebeTech was sold to Cru-Dataport, but they have continued the commitment to first-rate professionally built and designed gear. The WiebeTech ToughTech Duo QR is a portable RAID with two laptop drives installed that can run in either RAID 0 (Striped) or RAID 1 (Mirrored) mode. I had the opportunity to test the system during a long period of travel and no matter what I did it soldiered on, belying the impressive list of technological capabilities. Traveling and performing backups on the TranzAlpine New Zealand railway, or in flight, buses, or on location it didn’t hiccup. The unit I worked with sported two excellent Seagate Momentus 750 hard drives, and I ran it in RAID 0 mode, with hard drive redundancy more important to me than the expanded storage or speed, although running through the units FireWire 800 port, it was fast enough as a working drive, and certainly a speedy backup drive. It has dual FireWire ports so that it can be daisy-chained, an important consideration since it is pretty likely there will be times that it will either be the source of data, or receiving data from other drives.

Of course I could have used the E-SATA port for faster throughput, or USB, but I found the speed and reliability of FireWire a good match for my MacBook Pro 17-inch laptop. I brought the power supply with me on my travels that included differing voltages and plug adapters but in the end I never actually needed since it worked fine with just FireWire powering it. The power supply came with a slew of world adapters, which are great for globetrotting. The unit has a large display with the status of the drives, the RAID mode, and the temperature of the drives. The unit is admittedly more expensive than other units, but considering the design, build quality, and feature set, any professional on the move needing a sold backup or RAID for fast video work should give serious consideration to this unit. It ships with software that allows you to tweak the preferences on the unit, adjusting for example the temperature warning level. The moment you pick it up you can feel the quality at work in its design, implementation, and functionality. For the power user on the go, the WiebeTech ToughTech Duo QR comes highly recommended.

For more information on the WiebeTech ToughTech Duo QR visit: www.cru-dataport.com

Kingston

We think that folks sometime forget how important memory is to your computer’s operation. We all know that we need RAM, and often purchase a computer with the default amount from the manufacturer. Many users are well aware that the price of memory from computer manufacturers may be significantly more expensive than adding third party memory. Kingston, now celebrating its 25^th anniversary, is one of the best known names in memory, with a full line of products spanning CF cards, SD cards, Original Equipment Manufacture (OEM) spec’d memory, to ultra-high-performance tricked-out HyperX memory for gamers complete with the coolest heat sinks you can imagine. Over the past several years we have worked with their camera storage cards and RAM, and found it solid and reliable. Apple in particular is known for their very stringent specifications for memory, and Kingston has met those requirements.

We have also found their MobileLite G3 to be a well designed, small, fast, USB 3.0 compliant SD card reader that can download files quickly and reliably.

When the iPad and Android tablets first appeared, their one consistent limitation was memory. Every bump up in memory added at least $100 to the price, and even then there were limits on its use. Enter exterior drives with Wi-Fi connectivity. Kingston’s solution was an all solid-state unit, promising faster performance with lower battery drain in a smaller package. Since the first units shipped, the capacity has increased while the prices have dropped. If you have ever had to delete files to load that movie for your cross-country flight, consider the Kingston Wi-Drive, which adds up to 128GB of memory in your pocket with easy connectivity to your tablet.

Memory does fail on occasion which we discovered when our MacPro felt really, really sluggish despite running diagnostics and hard drive tools to rebuild directories, and keep the drives healthy. A quick check of the system revealed that we were running on 2GB of RAM, not ideal for hardcore Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 work! After swapping RAM and testing slots, I came to the conclusion that the memory needed replacement. Curious if memory vendors are different? One measure is how they treat their customers. Since our Kingston memory had a lifetime warranty I gave them a call, explained the situation, the tests we ran, and the memory swaps. The representative that I talked with cheerfully arranged for an overnight swap using my credit card as a deposit. And voila, the next morning at 9 am there was a FedEx driver with replacement RAM. We popped it in the machine and minutes later were up and running at full speed. Now, that’s what we call superb customer service! If you have some empty or underutilized slots on your desktop or laptop computer, your computer will surely benefit from a memory boost, and Kingston Memory comes highly recommended.

For more information on Kingston Technologies visit: www.kingston.com

Newer Technology

I'm a fan of E-SATA, but unfortunately it seems that Apple doesn't feel the same way. With the elimination of the ExpressCard Slot from the entire MacBook Pro line, and omission of an E-SATA port from its iMac line, the only product in the Mac universe to allow you to use E-SATA was a MacPro with an E-SATA PCI card. With the introduction of Thunderbolt one of the first products promised but not yet delivered has been a Thunderbolt to E-SATA adapter. So far, though this is only a promise. What to do if you have an external E-SATA drive or RAID and no want to connect a new Apple or other system to it? The answer is a nifty little device from Newer Technology, their Newer Technology(R) eSATA to USB3 Adaptor, which does just what you would expect, allow you to connect your E-SATA device to USB.

I found the device was backwards compatible, speedy, and platform agnostic. It worked as well on our HP Ultrabook with USB 3 as it did with a new Mac sporting USB 3 ports, and worked fine, albeit much slower with USB 2 equipped systems. At under $30 we think you might need a couple of them. One to connect to your desktop drives, and another to travel with you in case of that late night need to connect to an E-SATA drive and save the world, or at the very least gather some data that was formerly off-limits. With all the changes to the storage landscape, with protocols and hardware support changing almost weekly, the Newer Technology(R) eSATA to USB3 Adaptor is a great way to protect your existing investment in E-SATA, and keep those bytes moving rapidly to a newer system without the need for an expensive update, or even the need to install drivers. Highly Recommended.

For more information on the Newer Technology(R) eSATA to USB3 Adaptor visit: www.newertech.com