A-DATA announced today that it is has begun to ship the industry’s first waterproof and shock resistant portable hard disk drive. Designed specifically for students, road warriors and sports enthusiasts, the SH93 incorporates a rubber-plastic mix and special cushion materials.

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This super strong hard disk drive can be submerged in water to a depth of 1m for 30 minutes and meets the U.S. military's MIL-STD-810F drop test standard. The MIL-STD-810 test addresses a broad range of environmental conditions to generate confidence in the overall durability of a system design. With the USB cable cord tucking into the slit that goes around the side of the HDD, the SH93 is beautifully designed with a finish paint in racing car yellow. It is easy for users to conveniently carry around massive documents without the fear of damaging files stored in the HDD in the incident of accidental drop or water spills.

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Due to numerous customer requests, Sharkoon has expanded their "QuickPort" hard drive adapter-series with a model that now includes an additional IDE-interface: The Sharkoon QuickPort Combo now offers an interface for IDE-devices located beside the SATA-hard drive connection port.

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Sharkoon's QuickPort models are the ideal solutions for hard drive collectors, allowing them to attach their external storage mediums quickly and easily to their PC or notebooks- perhaps occasionally for a fast HD-backup or for also accessing the private hard drive media center as an application for a TV streaming client. The hard drive is simply inserted into the QuickPort and immediately recognized as a device, therefore eliminating time consuming installation to a computer or external housings. The adapter itself is attached via USB to the computer. Like the previous models, the QuickPort Combo also accommodates SATA-Hard Drives in both 2.5 and 3.5 inch formats. A folding mechanism ensures a secure hold on either size model. When finished, users can simply take the hard drive with them by utilizing the eject button.

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Freecom, a Mitsubishi Kagaku Media company and award-winning manufacturer of external hard drives and portable storage devices, today announced the ‘Hard Drive XS 3.0’ – the first external hard drive in the world to offer ‘SuperSpeed USB’ technology. Using USB 3.0, Freecom is offering transfer speeds of approximately 130 MB/s – significantly faster than existing solutions – enabling users to back up and upload information in a matter of seconds.

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Ideal for both home and professional users who want to transfer large files quickly and carry their data on the move, the Hard Drive XS 3.0 is also the smallest 3.5” desktop hard drive available, allowing users to reliably expand their storage capacity with a product that is not only the fastest, but is also compact, portable and easy to use.

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Seagate Technology today announced worldwide availability of the Seagate Secure™ Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) option across its portfolio of enterprise-class hard drives. Products with the Seagate Secure option include: Savvio™ 15K.2, Savvio 10K.3, Constellation™ and Cheetah™ 15K.7 drives.

These enterprise-class products are an extension of Seagate’s first-to-market leadership with Seagate Secure Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) technology, designed to deliver data-at-rest security for servers and storage systems.

“Self-Encrypting Drives are one of the easiest, most cost-effective security measures companies can implement,” said Eric Ouellet, vice president at Gartner. “The use of SEDs provides businesses with complete data-at-rest protection against information breaches that can occur in drives and systems that have been repurposed, decommissioned, disposed of, sent for repair, misplaced or stolen. Because all disk media eventually leaves a company’s control, the use of SEDs ensures that data is protected at these critical stages of a system’s life cycle.”

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Seagate Technology today began global shipments of the world’s fastest, largest-capacity mainstream desktop hard drive – Barracuda® XT, a 7200RPM product featuring 2TB of storage capacity and a blazing fast Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/second interface. The 3.5-inch desktop drive, the industry’s first to feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface, meets the capacity demands of gaming, digital video-environments and other storage-hungry desktop computing applications while delivering the highest performance in its class.

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The introduction of the Barracuda XT drive marks the shift to the next generation of desktop computing speed as Seagate doubles the storage bandwidth of current computers.

“Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office,” said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate. “Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200RPM desktop hard drive to combine 2TB of storage capacity with the fastest Serial ATA interface to date.”

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Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. and the pioneer in small form factor hard disk drives (HDDs), today announced a new family of high-performance 7,200 RPM 2.5-inch HDDs, including a top-end half-terabyte capacity.

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The four-model line-up delivers more than a 13 percent performance improvement in disk operations compared to Toshiba's previous 7,200 RPM family, while decreasing environmental impact by eliminating or reducing the use of certain toxic and hazardous chemicals. The series also carries the SATA-certified 3Gb/s logo, which indicates successful completion of stringent interface compliance testing defined by the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the industry body responsible for setting the standards for Serial ATA interface technologies.

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wd my book essential.pngWD®, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its new, smaller, sleeker My Book® Essential™ and My Book for Mac® desktop external hard drives equipped with the new WD SmartWare™ software and hardware-based encryption. The new appliances visually present consumers' data in a software control center, providing them peace of mind that their precious photos, videos and files are securely protected. Available now at select retailers and the WD online store (shopwd.com), the new My Book Essential and My Book for Mac drives are offered in capacities ranging from 500 GB to 2 TB.

According to research firm Parks Associates, the average U.S. broadband household currently has over 120 gigabytes (GB) of digital media and files, which is expected to grow to over 1 terabyte (TB) of data by 2013. The accelerating shift from physical media (such as photo negatives, CDs and DVDs) to digital media (such as digital photos, videos and downloads) means that consumers' real lives and digital lives are increasingly overlapping. And while 70 percent of consumers back up their content, the majority of these people are using manual, cumbersome methods such as copying and pasting to multiple CDs and DVDs, and less than 18 percent use software that automatically and continuously backs up their content. As a result, many consumers' digital lives are unprotected and at risk.

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Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., the industry pioneer in small form factor hard disk drives (HDDs), today introduced a new line of 1.8-inch HDDs with up to 160GB of capacity in a single-platter, five-millimeter-high design targeted for next-generation portable media players, digital video cameras and other consumer electronics products.

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Toshiba's new MKxx34GAL family of 1.8-inch HDDs offers consumer electronics manufacturers a thin and light package with the industry's highest storage capacity, best power consumption efficiency, most durability and quietest seek operation of any HDD on the market.

Equipped with a PATA interface, 4,200 RPM rotational speed and acoustic-reduction features, Toshiba's MKxx34GAL HDD is ideal for audio and video playback applications that require high-capacity in a small footprint with quiet operation to maximize the entertainment experience of the host device. Leveraging Toshiba's long history of technology expertise in miniaturization and the 1.8-inch HDD form factor, the MKxx34GAL is the quietest hard drive produced because of its size and the advanced acoustic management techniques that Toshiba has incorporated into all of its recent mobile HDD platforms.

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WD®, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its smaller, smarter and more secure My Passport™ Essential™ and My Passport for Mac® ultra-portable external hard drives featuring WD's new WD SmartWare™ software and equipped with hardware-based encryption. The new My Passport drives are more than 20 percent smaller than the previous generation My Passport.

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The new portable drives with WD SmartWare software visually present consumers' data in a control center, providing them peace of mind that their precious photos, videos and files are securely protected. Available now at select retailers and the WD online store (shopwd.com), the new My Passport Essential and My Passport for Mac drives are offered in capacities ranging from 320 GB to 1 TB and come in a range of colors including Pacific Blue, Real Red, Cool Silver and Midnight Black.

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Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today rolled out the red carpet for the newest members of its celebrated CinemaStar™ family of 3.5-inch hard disk drives (HDD). Based on 500GB per platter technology, the new Hitachi CinemaStar product line-up consists of the 7200 RPM, 1TB CinemaStar 7K1000.C and its 1TB, CinemaStar 5K1000 CoolSpin™ companion.

Both product families are built to handle the most demanding high definition (HD) video streams and offer reliable performance, large capacity, quiet operation, advanced AV features, and low power and temperatures that help manufacturers meet design, price and performance objectives for their consumer electronics devices. Along with these benefits, these 1TB performers are able to store nearly 250 hours of MPEG-41 HD video and can handle multiple streams of video simultaneously, making the CinemaStar 7K1000.C and the CinemaStar 5K1000 the perfect drives for consumer electronics applications such as HD DVRs, DVD/HDD recorders, DVR-enabled TVs, media centers, and video surveillance systems.

Now with an expanded capacity range of 160GB to 1TB, the new CinemaStar 5K1000 family features innovative Hitachi CoolSpin Technology, which relies on motor speed optimization to provide a unique balance of performance, power utilization and acoustics. By tuning the motor to make the drive spin slower, thereby reducing harmonic resonance, the CinemaStar 5K1000 is nearly silent at 2.4 bels during operation, draws 3.3 watts or less idle power and generates less heat, which are all critical factors when designing environmentally friendly digital video solutions.

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