Western Digital Corporation (“Western Digital”), today introduced modern and innovative redesigns of its My Passport, My Passport for Mac, and My Book hard drive lines, which have been highly recognized leading sellers for more than a decade. In partnership with fuseproject, an award-winning industrial design and branding firm, the reimagined products were built with the customer in mind. Developed to help make a connection between the device and user, the new drives also include password protection and hardware encryption so customers will love their hard drive as much as they cherish the content stored on it.

“As the storage landscape continues to rapidly evolve, and the bars for design and user-experience have increased, the team focused on the design and user experience to catapult My Passport and My Book to the next level,” said Jim Welsh, senior vice president, Content Solutions Business Unit, Western Digital. “Through the reimagined design language, we want to engage consumers in a conversation about how storage is core to their lives and how they feel more empowered by the real benefits of capturing, protecting and enjoying life’s precious memories.”

Launching today is the latest version of Nero 2017, the successful multimedia software for burning, copying, creating, editing, ripping, converting, playing and streaming media content.

This latest edition sees significant improvements such as ease of use, playback, video editing, transcoding and burning, as well as sharing videos, photos and music in the highest quality. Nero is positioning itself as users ‘best-friend’ for day-to-day digital life. For example, through support for the HEVC (H.265) format, SecurDisc 4.0 for the highest security standard for burned discs and the Nero KnowHow App, which enables users to get the best out of their Nero software.

Nero users have thousands of photos, videos and other multimedia files stored on lots of different devices such as smartphones, tablet PCs, laptops and desktops. Looking for a specific file can often be like searching for a needle in a haystack with users trying to remember where they saved it. The Classic and Platinum versions of Nero 2017 put an end to this by allowing users to search via timeline, faces, places and tags. While the Nero 2017 Classic multimedia suite includes extensive functions for mastering the day-to-day digital life, Nero 2017 Platinum delivers especially high-quality results thanks to cutting-edge technology (HEVC/H.265) and advanced functions.

Today, CDRLabs brings you a review of Crucial's new MX300 M.2 SSD. Designed for tablets and ultrabooks, this new addition to the MX300 line isn't much larger than a stick of gum. The drive is powered by Marvell's 88SS1074B1 controller and is available with up to 1050GB of Micron's 3D TLC NAND. The MX300 M.2 also shares many of the same features as its full size counterpart. In addition to Crucial's Dynamic Write Acceleration technology, it offers AES 256-bit encryption, thermal and power loss protection, TRIM support and active garbage collection. The MX300 M.2 also uses technologies like Data Defense and Redundant Array of Independent NAND (RAIN) to increase security and protection of data to a level that’s not typically found in consumer-class SSDs.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched the XPG SX8000 SSD, which uses an M.2 form factor loaded with 3D MLC NAND Flash and an SMI 2260 controller. The SX8000 meets NVMe 1.2 specifications and connects directly to motherboards via PCI Express 3.0 x4 (PCIe 3x4) to deliver 2.4GB/s read and 1GB/s write, with 100K/140K IOPS. The SX8000 arrives in diverse capacities (128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB), ensuring a new generation of SSD performance is available to more users. A slightly faster version fitted with an attractive XPG heatsink will release by the end of October, promising an aesthetic bonus for case modding enthusiasts.

Compact M.2 PCI 3x4 shatters speed barriers
The XPG SX8000 connects to desktop and notebook PCs via low profile M.2 2280 and channels data through PCI Express 3.0 x4 (four lane). The low latency and big bandwidth of PCIe enable up to 2.4GB/s read and 1GB/s write – four times the read and twice the write performance of average SATA 6Gb/s SSDs. Random 4K IOPS figures are 100K read and 140K write, also significantly more than SATA-based drives. The SX8000 features full NVMe 1.2 compatibility, powering a large performance boost that means users notice gains in real world scenarios, especially loading times within games that require heavy asset streaming and in professional applications such as graphics and audio rendering.