Introduction
All of us are hoarders – data hoarders that is. Every day we accumulate more and more files; some are useful and some are pure junk. Photos, videos, music, documents pile up on our PCs until we have nowhere else to put them. While some of us are moving files to external USB drives, many of us have found out the hard way (myself included) that these USB external drives aren’t infallible, and eventually turn around and die on you.

This is where Western Digital’s MyBook Live Duo comes in. The device may not look like much at first glance, but under that relatively simply exterior lies quite a robust little file server. The model I reviewed was the 4TB one, but there’s also a 6TB one available if you’re looking for even more space for all your digital essentials.

Build quality and features
So what is it that makes the Live Duo better than just an ordinary external drive? Well for one thing, at 4 and 6 terabytes of space, you’re not going to be running short any time soon, thanks to the two drives hidden away in the device. Secondly, the drive also features RAID0 or RAID1 support – in RAID0 mode you’ll have access to storage on both drives, so when one drive is full, your data will be diverted to the second drive. In RAID1 mode, you’ll only have half the storage capacity (2TB in this case), but anything you copy onto the device is mirrored on both drives. So in the event of one of the drives failing, you simply slot it out and add in a new one without losing a single byte of data.

The MyBook Live Duo looks like most of Western Digital’s storage devices, except this one is slightly thicker to accommodate both drives inside. The top grill can be pushed down gently to reveal the two drives inside, clearly labeled as Drive A and B to make it easier to replace a failed drive. Swapping out a drive is as simple as lifting the plastic tab firmly and tugging upwards to slide the drive out. The front of the Live Duo has the Western Digital logo and a very tiny status indicator light which glows green when the drive is online. At the back you have a small selection of ports such as power, gigabit Ethernet, a reset button, and a USB port which allows you to plug in an external drive to add a bit more storage to your device.

Installation and Software
Getting the Live Duo up and running was very simple – I just plugged the power in and connected it to my router, and then ran the supplied CD. The setup software detected my drive in a few seconds and automatically mapped a network drive to it in My Computer. It also gave me the option to install some of the available software, such as Western Digital’s own backup software and some other utilities, but I chose to skip this part.

Once the drive has booted up, you can access files by just double-clicking the network shortcut, or browsing your network shares. You also have the option to access the drive’s setup pages via a web browser, which allows you to rename the drive, setup users and shares, and also configure media streaming and remote access services. As somewhat of a Power User, I was able to navigate through the various pages with ease, but I think novice users will need to spend a bit of time going through each of the pages to understand what exactly everything does.

The Live Duo also includes a host of remote access options to securely access your content without making any adjustments to your firewall or ports. On iOs there is the W2Go Free and Premium apps to setup and access your Live Duo – the only difference between the apps is that the Premium app allows you to download files directly onto your device. You can also configure mobile access as well as direct file access through a web browser, so no matter what you’re using there’s at least one way for you to get your files from your drive as long as you have an Internet connection. The iOS apps means that you can technically add gigabytes of space to your device, accessing everything through your own personal cloud.

Performance
With the drive up and running, I decided to run some simple tests to see what my transfer speeds would be. In RAID0 mode, I was able to transfer a single 1.67GB file at about 52MB/s and with RAID1 mode the same file clocked roughly 43.2MB/s – this was with my test PC connected via LAN and not wirelessly. While the transfer speeds aren’t as fast as some larger network storage solutions, it’s nothing to be disappointed at; given the size and cost of the Live Duo, it performed respectfully well with reading and writing whatever I threw at it. Swapping between RAID0 and RAID1 mode was very simple, however the drive did warn me to take a backup of everything first before swapping over. The switch actually took about 4 minutes to accomplish, but after that the drive had to ‘reinitialize’, which took roughly 4 hours to finish.

You also have the option to stream content to both iTunes and DLNA devices, and this again was easy to accomplish. Streaming music and video to my PS3 was flawless, and I was listening to music on my laptop upstairs via iTunes without a hitch. You can of course turn these features off, but it’s handy that the Live Duo has streaming capabilities built in from the start.

There are only two things that I found a bit puzzling about the Live Duo. For one, the USB port on the back isn’t USB 3.0, so transferring large files around does get a bit time-consuming. It would have also been great if the same USB port could have been used to share a printer as well, which I think would be perfect for a small business that might want to use the Live Duo in their environment. The other strange thing is that the Live Duo doesn’t have a power button at all – if you need to shut down the drive, you need to log into it via a web browser and click a button there to power it off. While not necessarily a deal breaker, I found it a bit odd considering the other two Western Digital drives I currently have at home are equipped with power buttons. Still, like I said it’s not a catastrophic loss, but could be something that Western Digital addresses in future models.

Conclusion
The Western Digital Live duo is a capable little network storage device with plenty of room for all your data. I would highly recommend running it in RAID1 mode – even if you have to sacrifice half your storage space, you can sleep soundly knowing that you’ve always got a backup of everything you’re storing. For a no-fuss network storage solution with whisper-quite operation that won’t break the bank, the Live Duo is the easiest choice to make.

How often have you been anxious about storing more songs or videos on your iOS devices because space is running out? At such times you either wish you had purchased the one with 32GB or even 64GB. What if you need more space than that? Well, we have already covered the Seagate GoFlex Satellite wireless drive for iOS devices. Today we’ll look at another option that’s just been made available in the market to expand you iOS device(s) storage space, the Kingston Wi-Drive.

The Kingston Wi-Drive is simply designed to expand the storage of your iOS devices by providing you an external, portable, hard drive for you to carry around.  The Wi-Drive, as the name suggests, is a wireless hard drive so that you can connect up to 3 devices simultaneously for streaming media off of it. You can connect both iOS as well as Android devices to the Wi-Drive; all you have to do is download the app from the App Store or Marketplace.

Now the Wi-Drive itself can only play media content that’s compatible with your iOS or Android device in the first place, so you have to be careful about what all you want to transfer in there. The Wi-Drive itself will show all the format media you have, but once you click on an unsupported format, it’ll simply stay there on screen like you never touched it.

Apart from the Home menu that shows all the files, you can view by Photos, Videos and Music. Apart from that you have settings menu where you can upgrade the firmware, connect to a network, and setup a password for your drive so that nobody random in a public place has access to your files. The password itself can be setup using WEP, WPA, WPA2 and WPA2 Mixed mode.

Going back to the Network Connections sub-menu; basically you connect your iOS or Android device to the Wi-Drive via a Wi-Fi connection. This essentially means you lose internet connection over your home or office Wi-Fi network. This is not an issue when you’re travelling outside, but when you’re at home or office, you’d also want internet access through your phone or tablet that’s connected to the Wi-Drive. Now the Seagate GoFlex Satellite had the exact same issue, but thankfully Kingston allows you to connect to your existing wireless connection from within the Wi-Drive app. You can basically piggyback your internet connection through the Wi-Drive, thereby having access to all your stored media on the Wi-Drive as well having internet connection through your usual Wi-Fi hotspot.

Of course, you won’t get the full speeds on this piggyback connection; the below SpeedTest results show the difference.

The first result is with the piggyback connection.

While connected to both an iPhone 4 and our recently tested Huawei Honor Android smartphone, continuously playing songs, the battery on the Wi-Drive lasted about 3 hours and 40 minutes. Kingston themselves have rated the battery at 4 hours, but with only one device connected. Not bad for short journeys.

There are two issues I want to mention before wrapping up this review. The first is that once the Wi-Drive is connected to a PC via the mini-USB port, the wireless connection will immediately stop. The Wi-Drive will act as a regular external storage device (formatted FAT32) and will also start charging simultaneously. Once unplugged, you can resume wireless operations again. However, be careful if you’re planning to put the Wi-Drive in your pockets because the area near the mini-USB port gets quite warm with the Wi-Fi on. Imaging you’re wearing double layers with a sweater on top during summer. It’s not impossibly hot, but very uncomfortable. Of course, this heat is concentrated in a small area, so that’s just something to think about.

So eventually the Kingston Wi-Drive is a good product, but with capacities of only 16GB and 32GB, it definitely is limiting. The price difference from and 8GB to 16GB to 32GB or 64GB iOS device (basically doubling the storage) is AED 400. The 16GB Wi-Drive sells for AED 299 while the 32GB goes for AED 499. Now whether this extra storage is worth the price, or whether you’re better off buying a large capacity iOS device in the first place is a decision you’ll have to make yourself.

At a press event today Kingston revealed details on several emerging market trends and introduced a new wireless storage solution designed for smartphones, tablets, and PCs.

Antoine Harb, Business Development Team Manager, MENA, Kingston Technology kicked off the presentation with an introduction and a recap of the company’s history. He then went on to focus on four major trends that the company had observed from its various channels. Firstly was the increase in users moving from traditional hard drives to SSD storage. The introduction of the Ultrabook has seen an increase in the demand for SSDs to keep both power consumption and form factor to a minimum. Users are also realizing the significant speed boost in using SSDs, and Kingston have released several high performance SSDs catering to different usage scenarios. The other trend the company observed is the roll out of USB 3.0 flash drives and storage solutions. Given the significant speed boost of USB 3.0 over traditional USB speeds, Kingston is set to release a slew of USB 3.0 compatible flash drives in Q2 of this year. Lastly Harb revealed that the company had seen a steady increase in the demand for its Hyper X memory modules, which again illustrated user demand for high-performance RAM.

Harb then went on to talk about the company’s latest product, the Kingston Wi-Drive. This sleek device doubles as a wireless storage solution for devices such as smartphones, tablets, and even laptops and PCs. Released in 16GB and 32GB models, the device allows users to connect the device to a PC and store data on the drive like a traditional USB disk. When disconnected from the PC, the drive turns on its wi-fi signal, which allows tablets and smartphones to connect to the broadcasting wi-fi and access data on the drive via a specially designed app. The app is currently available for iOS and Android devices, and is free to download from the respective app stores.

Once downloaded, it’s a simple task of launching the app, connecting to the wireless drive, and then flipping through the various content folders. Music, pictures, movies – all of these can be streamed wirelessly to your device, effectively doubling or tripling the amount of storage space available to you. So instead of trying to cram all of your music or movies onto your iPad, you can store them on the Wi-Drive and stream them directly to your iPad. Most common file formats are supported, and playback is limited only to the device’s operating system.

The Wi-Drive 16GB will retail at AED 299, and the 32GB model will be priced at AED 499. With a four hour battery life with up to three users accessing and sharing data consecutively, the Wi-Drive is the perfect device for users who are looking for an affordable and portable storage expansion for their gadgets.

Stay tuned for our review of the Wi-Drive in coming weeks.

We like to think that our gadgets are invulnerable, that nothing will ever happen to them. What else would explain the fact that so few of us take full backups of everything on a regular basis?

I’ve had an external hard drive for a number of years now and it was working fine until recently. It’s a Buffalo DriveStation with four 500 GB drives in it, configured in two partitions, giving me two 1 TB volumes to save information to.

For the longest time I just threw files into the drive and everything was fine. It was connected to a PC in our home office and shared over the home network. It wasn’t the fastest drive, and it made quite a bit of noise, but it was working, and it swallowed a lot of data, which is always a good thing.

But then, a few months ago, the problems started.

The drive started to basically die at what seemed random times when it was writing or reading data. It could be in the middle of copying files, and it just shut down, or, it could be in the middle of emptying the trash, and it would die.

The strange thing was that it never seemed to happen when I was sitting in front of the computer, always when I had left it to work on something. But I ran different kinds of tool utilities and none of them found anything wrong. I connected the drive to a Mac instead, and it made no difference.

Copying the data off of the drive was a pain in the you know what, because I couldn’t just start to copy and leave it. Always when I came back, the drive had died and I had to start it again. The only way I got it done was to copy little by little, sitting in front of the computer, monitoring what was happening. But that meant it took a long time. In fact, the 1 GB plus worth of data took me over a month of copying it bit by bit.

Once the data was safe, I swapped the hard drives and see if it was them causing problems, but the problem happened even with four brand new drives in the cabinet. So it’s the actual DriveStation, and since it’s out of warranty, it’s now a worthless piece of metal and plastic.

The good news out of this short story is that I actually didn’t lose any data. Instead, I had a great opportunity to get rid of a lot of digital stuff that was just gathering dust. And I also realized how much I really love the online services I use for storing some of my files like DropBox and Amazon S3.

If you take anything with you from my story, it should be that sooner or later all technology breaks. Yes, that includes Apple stuff as well. So make sure you back up your data to keep your valuable memories alive.

And your backup strategy should include an offline element as well as an online one. That will make sure, as much as possible, that you stay safe.

At the end of 2011, according to Apple’s latest financial statement, it had $97.6 billion in cash. By now that is most assuredly more than $100 billion.

Of course, it’s not like Apple is actually sitting on a pile of actual cash worth that much. Instead, the money is in cash, “cash equivalents and marketable securities.” In any case, it’s funds that Apple could use for purchasing other companies, buy back stock, and similar things.

So what do you think Apple should do with all it’s money, besides giving some of it to you?

Judging by the frequent headlines, Apple could buy Greece, at least if it got a good discount. That comparison, which is often made, is, of course, totally false, and what would Apple do with a country anyway?

Apple would be better suited to spend more money on building iCloud. It’s a service, which seems to be just an embryo of what it could, or perhaps will be. Perhaps Apple is already doing this, but I think iCloud could become the de facto cloud service for end users, if Apple plays its cards right.

Personally, I think one of the best things Apple can do is to keep doing what it has been doing: invest in development of hardware components as well as the supply thereof.

Apple has for many years been buying up stock of components, like memory and processors, to assure that it has access to what it needs for its products. Flash memory is the best example of this, but the practice probably goes way beyond that. This practice assures Apple has access to the components, at a certain price and at a certain volume. It also assures that competitors will not.

This is one reason why it will be difficult for anyone else to match Apple on the price and specs of the new iPad:  the new high resolution display will be in very short supply for anyone else but Apple.

Very likely is that Apple will continue to buy other companies. Don’t expect Apple to buy any company you’ve ever heard of though. Apple tends to buy small, independent companies, with important technologies and people, rather than spending money on other brands. For example, in 2011, it acquired the small startup C3 Technologies in Sweden. C3 made photo realistic 3D mapping software, which is now, presumably, somehow used in Apple’s iOS.

Besides, it could of course be that Apple is just sitting on so much cash to be able to weather any financial storm that may be coming. Having cash on hand makes you more flexible as a company, at least to a point.

In any case, if you own some Apple stock, don’t expect dividends any time soon. Apple is on a roll, and with CEO Tim Cook’s tight grip on the leash, it will spend the cash wisely, which does not involve paying anything out to shareholders.

Nowadays, one of the biggest concerns people have when transporting their data is security. Well, not everybody is carrying military grade sensitive data that needs an extraordinary amount of security, so SanDisk has come up with a simple solution with their Cruzer USB flash drives.

The Cruzer itself looks like a standard flash drive, with a slide out USB head and a pulsating red LED inside the slide button. The LED flashes continuously when transferring files. The body itself is plastic, and I doubt it’ll survive any serious damage.

The goodies on the Cruzer come on the inside, with the encryption software. Inserting the Cruzer, the USB will be recognized as a regular flash drive. Inside you can transfer any file, but the encryption bit comes from the SanDisk Secure Access software.

Installing the software on your PC takes a couple of seconds, after which the ‘vault’ opens up. This is the point where you setup your alphanumeric password, and that’s it. A desktop widget opens up (which can be hidden) where you can drag any file from your PC and drop it in there. The file is encrypted as its being transferred, and that’s it. Instant 128-bit AES security.

So what happens on the Cruzer itself is that a new folder called ‘My Vault’ is created, where all the encrypted files are stored. Interestingly, the file size remains the same, and you can still see the encrypted files, even deleted! However, nothing can open up those files except logging in to the Secure Access software again. You can even create a YuuWaa account to get 2GB of free online storage, creating a cloud backup of your file. Although these aren’t encrypted.

The ease of use is incredible, files can be dragged and dropped directly into the folder (that opens up with Secure Access) or just the vault widget on the desktop. Sadly, to edit these files, you’ll have to copy them onto the PC and then save them back again. And this reminder pops up every time you try to open a file.

In one instance I simply opened an Excel file directly from the vault software, however after editing it I could save it anywhere, even the USB itself, but I have to manually transfer the edited file back through Secure Access.

In case you (or someone else) actually format the Cruzer, you can always download the software again from SanDisk.

The SanDisk Cruzer is a good USB drive for providing decent security. The online 2GB cloud storage isn’t bad either. Transfer rates remained 32Mbps for read and 3Mbps for write speeds. The build quality isn’t the best in the world, but it gets the job done nicely. At AED 42 for the 8GB and AED 77 for the 16GB version, the SanDisk Cruzer is an adequate storage solution if you want decent level of hardware encryption. [UPDATE: The encryption is completely software based using the YuuWaa Secure Access encryption application.]

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.

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.

The transition that we are going through is between the extremely popular USB 2.0 standard and the upcoming and insanely fast USB 3.0 standard that offers almost ten times the speed of USB 2.0. The problem is that your current computer might not be USB 3.0 ready so you’re left wondering if you should spend a bit extra and get a USB 3.0 drive that you might never use or get the cheaper USB 2.0 drive but regret later when you upgrade your computer that does support USB 3.0. To add to the confusion, some people are switching from PCs to Macs that offer a Firewire port that is potentially faster than USB or shifting to an eSATA port found in many new laptops.

To explain what Seagate has done, you need to know one more thing- these external hard drives that you use on your computers are basically internal hard drives in an enclosure. They are very much the same drives as the ones found inside your laptops and desktops connected through a SATA interface. So, in essence, these external hard drives are, more of less, an enclosure that converts the internal SATA interface to a connector that can be easily connected to your computer externally through USB2.0 or USB 3.0 or Firewire.

So when you buy a portable external hard drive, you usually get the hard drive along with the USB or Firewire cable- depending on the type of connection that hard drive supports. What Seagate has done with their GoFlex drive is, instead of just bundling a cable, they bundle a cable and a converter. The converter attaches to the SATA interface of the included hard drive and USB 2.0 on your computer. So now, when you switch to a USB 3.0 or Firewire or eSATA interface, all you need to do is buy this converter instead of a whole new drive. Seagate calls these converters as “Upgrade cables”

Now that you hopefully have a grasp on Seagate’s GoFlex concept, lets take a look at their 500GB USB 2.0 FreeAgent GoFlex Hard Drive.

Back in the day, ok, about 2 years ago, when everybody was stuck with 7,400 RPM hard drives in their PCs, it was Western Digital who rocked the market with their first VelociRaptor SATA hard drives running at 10,000 RPM with 32MB cache. While initially designed for enterprise solutions, the Velociraptor HDDs found a huge and eager audience in the PC enthusiast industry who could finally have SCSI level of performance without shelling out ridiculous amounts of money on the HDD and controller cards.

Two years later after the introduction of the first VelociRaptor HDD and Western Digital have introduced the 450GB and 600GB models for the masses. These 10,000 RPM hard drives are in the face of stiff competition from SSDs which have become less expensive over the years. Still, the performance of a VelociRaptor is nothing to sneeze at, neither is the price of an SSD which still up in the skies.

Western Digital’s new 600GB VelociRaptor is compatible with SATA 3 (6GB/s) speeds, however, I’ve tested it on our regular SATA motherboard as the difference between SATA 2 and 3 is absolutely negligible on traditional HDDs; it is the SSDs where SATA 3 really shines. The new 600GB VelociRaptor also has a claimed MTBF (mean time between failure) of 1.4 million hours, compared to 1.2 million of the previous gen 300GB VelociRaptor as well the Intel X-25M 160GB (G2) SSD I’ve used for the benchmarks.

For testing the WD 600GB SATA Velociraptor, I ran on it our usual testbed which comprises of an Intel Core i7 965EE @ 3.2GHz on an ASUS Rampage II Extreme motherboard, packing 3x 1GB Corsairs XMS3-1333 ram, a Kingston 64GB V-Series SSD running Windows 7 Ultimate; all of which is powered by a Corsair HX1000W PSU.