To be more specific, this is the Western Digital My Book Essential 3TB Desktop External Hard Drive (model number WDBACW0030HBK-NESN). It’s a black block filled with three terabytes of storage and you can connect to your computer via either USB 2.0 or, preferably, via USB 3.0 for data transfers that are up to three times faster.

This external drive from Western Digital also has automatic, continuous backup software. This means that when you connect it to your computer, you can have it so that it keeps backing up your data so you don’t have to do it manually. That’s really handy, but you can choose to disable that feature if you want too. You also get WD SmartWare visual backup software to provide a visual display of your backup as it happens. You can keep your data safe with password protection and encryption too.

You can pick up this WD 3TB drive at Newegg.com for $140. It comes with a 2-year limited warranty, plus a 1-year extended warranty and free shipping.

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The Octane SSD uses the standard 2.5-inch size that you find in most notebook computers. In addition to the higher capacity, this SSD also uses the new Indlinx Everest controller, which provides an “instant on” feature for up to 50% faster booting.

OCZ says that the Octane SSD will sell for somewhere between $1.10 and $1.30 per gigabyte, so a 128GB model would sell for $166. That would put the terabyte drive barely into the four figure range, so that certainly would be appropriate for the budget-minded PC builder. It’ll also be sold in 256GB and 512GB flavors.

The SSD will be available with SATA 3.0 (6Gbps) or with SATA 2.0 (3Gbps), surely with prices to match. If you go with the faster one, you can expect maximum sequential read and writes at 560MB/s and 400MB/s with 45,000 read IOPS using 4K blocks.

[OCZ]

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The portable storage solution follows the branding scheme of other Asus Lamborghini products. You don’t really get the keys to a supercar when you buy this drive, but it certainly has more personality than the conventional grey box of an external drive.

In terms of specs, the shiny package (which is available in your choice of black or white; no cherry red or vibrant yellow options just yet) features a 750GB 2.5-inch drive (either 5400rpm or 7200rpm) that you can access either through USB 2.0 or the speedier USB 3.0. The FlexSave tech makes for easy data backups too.

Not everyone is going to want such a gawdy external hard drive, but it’ll go well with your Asus Lamborghini notebook when you pull up to the local Starbucks in your Jetta. The 750GB model sells for $139 or you can go smaller with the $119 version with 500GB. Both of those are just USB 2.0, though, as the USB 3.0 iterations aren’t quite ready yet. I wonder if Acer will fire back with a Ferrari drive that’s “more than you can afford pal.”

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On the other hand, Hard Disk Drive (HDD) prices have gone up substantially in the fourth quarter of 2010. The rise in HDD pricing can be attributed to the fact that all major Hard Disk Drive manufacturers, including the likes of Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and Hitachi GST, have recently cut down their production capacity in the final quarter of 2010. Judging by unofficial figures, the price rise in the HDD segment is estimated to be as high as 4-5% (for 500 GB models).

Since the SSD prices have shown a decline and most major manufacturers — such as Samsung Electronics, Micron, Intel, Toshiba and Hynix — have all shown an affection for the development of 20nm processes, it is expected that the sales of SSDs shall rise by year end.

So does this imply that SSD may finally pose a threat to HDD? No, definitely not. With Solid State Drives still 10 times costlier than traditional Hard Disk Drives, the fall in price won’t affect the HDD sales much. Yet, for those who were inhibited by the awkwardly high pricing of Solid State Drives, 2010 year end may perhaps be the much anticipated and eagerly awaited ‘auspicious’ occasion to buy one!

Source: Digitimes

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If you’re an IT Technician or part of your companies hardware deployment team, nothing takes longer then setting up the software for each and every individual workstation.  If your on a service call at a of  clients remote location and they run into drive problems, its never an easy situation to backup all of their data before popping in a new drive.

Just released this week, Aleratec’s 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser is a portable, lightweight external hard disk drive duplicator that allows you to easily clone a 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA I/II hard disk drives for backing up.  You can even clone from IDE to SATA or vice-versa.  It includes a Dual Disk RAID Controller which allows for 2 drives to be hooked up simultaneously, connect it to your PC via USB and it becomes an external storage adapter.  With support for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac 10.3+, and Linux, you will have most of your bases covered.

A 2-line LCD display gives you access to the features, and important status information and processes. With one push of the button, the 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser start to clone the drive sector-by-sector process that includes disk partition and boot sector information.

Aleratec’a 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser weighs only 8 oz and has a pricetag of $249.

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