Over the weekends both Western Digital and Seagate announced that they will be reducing the warranty periods on specific hard drive models from next year onward.

First off, Western Digital has said that from 2nd January 2012, all Caviar Green, Caviar Blue and Scorpio Blue drives will have their warranty reduced from 3 to 2 years. Caviar Black and Scorpio Black, along with VelociRaptors will continue to have the existing 5 years warranty period.

Obviously there will be a time int he next couple of months where the market will have the Caviar Green, Blue and Scorpio Blue with both 3 and 2 year warranty periods. If you want to confirm the warranty period on your drive, just check out WD’s support page.

Meanwhile Seagate has also told retail partners that warranty on many of their hard drives will also carry reduced warranties. From 31st December 2011, most of the hard drives that carried 5 years warranty has been reduced to 3, and those with 3 years down to 2 and in some cases 1 year only.

The Seagate Barracuda XT, Momentus XT and Constellation 2 drives will all now carry 3 years warranty instead of 5. The Pipeline HD series has 2 years of warranty and the Barracuda, Barracuda Green and Momentus drives will now carry 1 year of warranty instead of 3.

We have contacted both Western Digital and Seagate to get confirmation on whether these reduced warranties apply to the Middle Market as well or not, and will update the article as soon as we get confirmation.

One of the worst decisions to make while getting an iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch is that extra bit of storage is going to cost you a lot. Jumping from 16GB to 64GB seems an awful lot when you consider the price hike. However, Seagate wants to remedy this problem with their GoFlex Satellite wireless hard drive, where you can purchase 500GB for $200. That price would net you an extra 48GB on iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

The GoFlex Satellite is basically an external 500GB HDD but with built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, which is why it looks chunkier than the average pocket HDD. Well, that and the rechargeable battery. There are two LEDs on the top to indicate power and wireless activity. On the top there’s a SATA power connector whereby you can connect the GoFlex USB 3.0 adapter to connect the hard drive to your PC or Mac to transfer files. On the right there’s the power button and on the left there’s the DC adapter plug.

Now the way the GoFlex Satellite works is very simple: you simply turn it on, connect to it via WiFi and playback everything on the device. Now playback of the type of files depends on your device. For instance on my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 I couldn’t playback .mkv or .avi files, but when connected to my laptop, I could playback any type of video file. Furthermore while compatible videos, like .mp4, would stream immediately on my iOS devices, on my computer I actually had to download the video files first, and then WMP11 would play it back. The same happens when trying to view video files on a MacBook Air. Images and songs streamed immediately, with certain .mp4 files streaming instantaneously.

Press Release:

Kingston Digital Europe Ltd, an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced Kingston urDrive, a free pre-loaded application available on a variety of its DataTraveler® USB Flash drives. Kingston urDrive transforms USB drives from passive storage to engaged, active storage, allowing consumers to easily access and organise their personal files, photos, music, games and videos. A built-in photo viewer and MP3 player makes looking at pictures and listening to music easy.

“USB drives have historically served as digital couriers, transporting data from one device to another. Kingston is taking the lead in transforming the way consumers interact with those devices,” said Antoine Harb, Business Development Manager – MEA, Kingston Technology. “urDrive enables consumers of all ages to make the USB Flash drive an interactive experience beyond just storing and transferring data between devices.”
urDrive enhances security on the PC with Norton™ PC Checkup. The diagnostic tool scans for virus infections (including spyware, worms and adware) and checks for slow performance and risks to identity and data. urDrive further enhances the digital experience with the Maxthon 3 Web browser. Maxthon 3 boasts industry-leading startup and rendering speeds, and architecture that gives users a truly portable, safe browsing experience. All temporary files, history and cookies remain on the drive, keeping browsing private particularly on public computers.
“Consumer computing habits have evolved and urDrive brings a new level of sophistication to mobile storage that is fresh, functional and different,” said Kevin Chapman, general manager and vice president, Norton Consumer Services. “Integrating Norton PC Checkup with urDrive allows users to interact with content in an engaging way with an additional layer of security and performance analysis added to the experience. We are proud to be a part of this new evolution of active USB storage with Norton PC Checkup offering peace-of-mind to mobile users wherever they go.”
“Maxthon 3 offers urDrive customers a truly safe and portable browsing experience,” said Karl Mattson, general manager and chief of product, Maxthon International LTD. “Now, with urDrive, your browsing history, bookmarks and settings follow you wherever you go.”
urDrive appeals to consumers of all ages, whether they are at work, home or travelling. For example, business professionals can easily access content at work or home and even extend storage capacity beyond the USB with free, additional online backup. The service syncs files from USB to cloud offering backup and access. For family entertainment, urDrive provides access to the latest casual game titles from EA™ Games and PopCap Games. Busy moms can rest assured that their kids can safely engage in online activities with the Fooz Kids kid-safe web browsing application. Travelers can view, manage and share their growing photo and video albums on the go, while carrying digital copies of critical documents, like passports.
urDrive is available as a free, pre-loaded application on Kingston’s entry-level DataTraveler 109, DataTraveler 101 Generation 2 (G2) and DataTraveler 108 USB Flash drives, and soon on the DataTraveler Generation 3 (G3). These devices offer consumers a choice in design and capacity, from 4GB to 32GB.

It’s not surprising that in today’s world, a lot of people, especially corporations, would want their sensitive data to be stored in a safe place. Given the mobility of data of the average corporate user, it’s not hard to imagine why USB sticks would need something as sophisticated as 256-bit AES hardware encryption. And the Kingston DataTraveler 6000 does just that, but with the added benefit of having the FIPS 140-2 Security Level 3 certification.

For those of you who don’t know, the FIPS 140-2 standard is an encryption standard required on storage devices by the US federal government employees.  In particular, the DataTraveler 6000 uses elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) which is what the NSA (National Security Agency) recommends as a suite B cryptographic algorithm for data protection. This standard is also followed by many firms who require storage devices, such as USB and hard drives used by their employees to have FIPS 140-2 certification. And despite FIPS 140-2 being in existence for over a decade, the 256-bit AES encryption is still the industry standard for one of the toughest security encryption to beat. If you want to know more about the FIPS 140-2 standard, check out the 140-2 standard in detail.

Coming back to the DataTraveler 6000, it comes in a titanium coated stainless steel casing, looking rather sinister indeed. The DataTraveler 6000 is dustproof and waterproof, and with the rugged titanium coating, it feels like the security of data was not only considered on the inside, but outside as well. Incidentally the DataTraveler 6000 is also the only USB flash drive I have seen to date which was assembled in the USA. I guess FIPS 140-2 Level 3 hardware encryption is better done there (?).

The first time you plug in the DataTraveler 6000 into your PC, it asks for you name, company name, a password and a password hint. The password itself needs to have some specific alphanumeric values and special characters, so it isn’t something easily breakable. Oh, and if you enter the incorrect password 10 times, the data encryption key will be reset and the drive will require a format in order to be operable again.

The Western Digital My Book series of external hard drives have been a part of our daily lives since a good part of the last decade. The WD My Book hard drives are the household standard for data storage and backup, easily available in every high street retailer and for a very reasonable price as well. So today, I’ll be looking at the next generation of My Book external hard drive, the USB 3.0 equipped, 3TB My Book Essential.

As usual, the design of the My Book Essential is a love or hate affair, with my personal opinion skewing towards the former given the hard drive’s simple, and rather elegant design. That, and the fact that when stacked together, the My Book Essentials give a very neat appearance. Although, given the 3TB capacity of our test unit, I can’t see anybody stacking this HDD, at least not for another good year.

The completely fanless design of the My Book Essential means that it’s running at a cool 5400RPM, which for an external storage/ backup HDD is a completely acceptable speed. We won’t be running games off of this oil tanker of a HDD. That said, it’s always interesting to test a HDD to see how fast it really is. However, you will hear the occasional read/write heads clicking loudly every once in a while as it starts to write large data.

For our benchmarks, I have used CrystalDiskMark to get the sequential read and write speeds, and HD Tach for the Burst speeds. To compare the My Book Essential USB 3.0 3TB, I have used one of its main competitor, the Buffalo DriveStation Axis USB 3.0 1TB  external HDD (which understandably costs AED 380). Furthermore to give an idea of the performance extremes, I have also added the numbers of the Kingston HyperMAX 3.0 128GB USB3.0 SSD (which costs AED 1,289) and the TwinMOS A3 USB3.0 8GB flash stick (which costs AED 75).

As you can see, the My Book Essential USB3.0 3TB is one hell of a performer, which is great given its major use of data storage and backup. The huge sequential read and write speeds are extremely impressive because this means you can transfer large amounts of data files to and from the My Book Essential to your PC.

The high burst speeds will ensure that regular backups of small files using the included WD SmartWareSoftware are promptly stored to the My Book Essential, ensuring a smooth experience in daily usage.

The Western Digital My Book Essential USB3.0 3TB external HDD is a step in the right direction, with WD providing a very fast, quiet and relatively cool HDD in a smart looking external enclosure. For the price, there’s nothing in the market that provides this much value for money when storage capacity and overall speed is concerned.

Being a first generation PS3 owner, I’m not really a fan of standalone blu-ray players. Well, mainly because at the time of the blu-ray emergence, standalone players seemed as expensive as a PS3, if not more; and unlike the PS3 they were limited in their capabilities. I’m simply referring to the PS3’s ability to expand its playback capabilities due to frequent (and admittedly annoying) firmware updates.

The game has changed a lot since those days, most high-end blu-ray players nowadays only lack the capability to playback video games, matching a PS3 and outperforming it in every aspect. Take the LG BD670 blu-ray player for instance. It’s got 3D playback, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, DLNA streaming as well as the ability to stream videos from the net.

When looking at the LG BD670 for the first time, one can easily write it off as another run of the mill blu-ray player because of how diminutive it looks. Heck, it doesn’t even weigh 3 kgs. But once you take a closer look at all the inscriptions on the top, you’ll see that this little player is huge when it comes to features.

First off, it can play 3D movies, in case that wasn’t obvious from the name. Next up, it has dual-band Wi-Fi (b/g/n), so you can connect to your existing home setup and can access the various channels and Smart functionalities of this player without any signal drops. Also, firmware updates. Being a high-end player means that it can also upscale DVDs, but that’s limited to HDMI connectivity.