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Western Digital ships new desktop My Book external hard drives

Another day, another external hard drive. I thought by now, storage vendors had exhausted ideas for new external hard drives. I was wrong.

Western Digital announced on Thursday its new and refreshed lines of My Book external hard dives, including the My Book Essential and My Book for Mac. Both hard drives are for desktops, and most importantly, they come with the new WD SmartWare software that's designed to ease the job of backing up your data.

Both new external hard drives are available in capacities ranging from 500GB to 2TB and feature user-selected password protection combined with military-grade … Read more

Unsure of what kind of display adaptor you need?

Over the years Apple has used several display connections with their laptop computers. Older Mac models had full-size VGA and DVI ports, which easily connected to external monitors through standard display cables. In recent years, Apple has conserved space in laptops by using a variety of smaller connections that require adaptors in order to use external displays.… Read more

MSI X600 thinbook throws in an optical drive

Despite many Netbooks and thin-and-lights ditching optical drives in favor of more compact computers, corporate folks are apparently still concerned and looking out for us suddenly-DVD-free folk. MSI has announced availability of a new thin-and-light ULV (ultra-low voltage) notebook, the MSI X600, which comes with its own external DVD/CD drive right in the box.

For $899, the X600 comes with a 1.4GHz Intel SU3500 ULV processor, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, ATI HD 4330 graphics, and a 15.6-inch 1366x768 screen. It includes a six-cell battery, an improvement on the X340, which had a somewhat … Read more

Get a 1-terabyte external drive for $69.99

First up, some important business: I'm on vacation this week! But I couldn't leave you hanging without one more sweet deal, so here's my farewell post. See you next Monday! (Unless I just can't stay away... you never know.)

Holy ridiculously cheap storage, Batman! Buy.com has a Fantom G-Force 1-terabyte external hard drive for $69.99 shipped.

The catch? Yep, you guessed it: There's a $20 mail-in rebate [PDF]. I know that's a deal-breaker for some, but even in the unlikely event you get the short end of the rebate stick, $89.99'… Read more

HP SimpleSave: Backup solution for dummies

Backing up a computer can be tricky for many people, especially those who access data via the software applications without knowing where the actual data files or folders reside on the hard drive. I have some friends who used to believe that you could back up all your office documents just by dragging and dropping the icons of Microsoft Excel, Word, and Outlook over to an external hard drive.

This is where products such as the SimpleSave external hard drive series, like the SimpleSave Portable that Hewlett-Packard made available Monday, comes into play. (The other drive in the series, the SimpleSave desktop, will be available in September.)

… Read more

New Hitachi external drives withstand 1-ton truck, live to write another day

I had a chance on Friday to chat with reps from Hitachi, who told me about some new products in conjunction with the SimpleTech acquisition earlier this year. We've reviewed SimpleTech hard drives in the past, with positive results, so we're anxious to see how these two new drives compare to their predecessors.

Up to bat first is the SimpleTOUGH portable hard drive, a tough guy that claims to be one of the most rugged drives for an excessively abusive environment. The Hitachi reps claimed the drive can withstand a 10-foot drop, more than 5 feet more than … Read more

Seagate refreshes external storage lineup for Mac

Mac users have had many options for external storage lately. Two weeks ago, Western Digital unveiled its new My Book Studio II for Mac, and Seagate just now released a few of its own.

The company announced Wednesday a new lineup of portable and desktop FreeAgent external hard drives designed specifically for Macs. This includes two portable external hard drives, a regular-size external hard drive, and a docking station. … Read more

Toshiba adds intuitive backup software to personal storage devices

Toshiba's newest additions to their line of external portable hard drives come in 500GB($150) and 320GB($120) capacities with an array of new color choices including green and blue, but the most notable feature is all the enhanced backup software you get in the package.

The hard drive comes with backup solutions for both Mac and Windows OS. Windows users get the benefit of NTI's BackupNow EZ software for one-touch data backups and even grants the user the ability to create a boot disc or even boot directly off the drive itself. In addition, the software also … Read more

Iomega earns CNET's distinguished Editors' Choice award for excellence in HDD

I'm very proud to announce CNET's most recent Editors' Choice product, the Iomega eGo Portable Mac Edition. Iomega has always registered excellent marks in our throughput and cost-per-gigabyte ratings, but this particular HDD uniquely combines three different ways to connect the drive to a computer: USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800.

The drive comes in three versions: a 500GB in ruby red, a 320GB in a cobalt blue, and a 250GB in alpine white. All of the drives come formatted to work with Macs out of the box, but you can easily format the drive back … Read more