Sony HD-PG5 External Hard Drive

The Sony HD-PG5 is the first series of external hard drives released by a company not really known for its memory storage devices. The external hard drive boasts 500 GB of storage, which is really useful if you are an avid downloader of torrents thought this can’t really compare with the 1TB offered by other more well-established brands in the external hard drive market.

However, the Sony HD-PG5 will impress you with its Data Transfer Accelerator software which promises to double the speed of data transfers on its USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 connections. If you are style-conscious, then you won’t be disappointed as the external hard drive comes in black and white finishes and has a scratch-resistant layer of paint to ensure its sleek look is maintained.

What is most impressive about the Sony HD-PG5 external hard drive is that its compatibility with the range of BRAVIA televisions enables you to directly record HD TV programs from the tuner or any connected cable or satellite service through USB connection. You can also transfer video footage directly from compatible Handycam camcorders with Direct Copy function without connecting through a computer thanks to the included USB adapter cable.

Additionally, you can hook up the Sony HD-PG5 to your PlayStation 3 to play videos and photos. It comes with a suite of security and backup software as well to ensure your stored data are well-protected and retrievable in case of any mishap. Fans will be delighted to know that this baby weighing 180 grams is expected to reach the United Kingdom, France and Germany by mid-July.

[Source: Sony]

Sans Digital 42TB External Storage System

Sans Digital have revealed details of their AccuRAID AR442F4 external storage system. The target audience is datacenters looking for massive storage capacity, i.e. 42TB and featuring RAID 6.

For those of you who don’t know Raid 6 (Wikipedia):

Striped set with dual distributed Parity. Provides fault tolerance from two drive failures; array continues to operate with up to two failed drives. This makes larger RAID groups  more practical, especially for high availability systems. This becomes increasingly important because large-capacity drives lengthen the time needed to recover from the failure of a single drive. Single parity RAID levels are vulnerable to data loss until the failed drive is rebuilt: the larger the drive, the longer the rebuild will take. Dual parity gives time to rebuild the array without the data being at risk if one drive, but no more, fails before the rebuild is complete.

The External Storage contains 42 bays, with each drive being hot-swappable. Bandwidth is provided by the fibre channel, that’s right normal USB or eSATA ports are not up to scratch for this beast.

Oh yeah, one thing i forgot to tell you, the Sans Digital AccuRAID AR442F4 external storage device has a price tag of $15,000. So how many do you want, one or two?

Sarotech: External Hard-Drive

How would you like an external hard-drive which doubles as hard book? Well Sarotechs latest computer gadget has done just that.  The hard-drive has up to 1TB capacity, supports 3.5 inch SATA drives, and a maximum data transfer of 480Mps. The hard-drive connects to you computer via a normal USB and features two LED indicator lights displaying its current status.

The hard-drive lacks an internal fan which could lead to a problem of overheating, however the large surface area design and the advanced aluminum fake book pages allows for efficient heat transfer making a fan unnecessary.

What else does it have to offer? Well it also has a write protection switch and one push backup button positioned on the rear of the hard-drive making your life easier.

So what is the purpose of the Sarotech hardbook? Well firstly I can clearly see a niche market for the hardbook for people who can’t stand the site of ugly external storage devices on their computer desk (and there are some rather unsightly external hard-drives out there on the market!).

Secondly, it has the potential to be more secure than a regular hardrive. For example a thief in a hurry looking to steal sensitive data or items of value is more likely to ignore the hard-drive mistaking it for book rather than a hard-drive.

The Sarotech hardbook retails at $300, included is the hardbook, ac cord, USB cable, and quick installation/backup software.