external

LAS VEGAS--Eight months after releasing its first USB 3.0 external hard drive, the MiniStation Cobalt, which was also one of the first on the market, Buffalo showed off today at CES 2011 a comprehensive family of external storage solutions based on the high-speed USB 3.0 connectivity.

USB 3.0 is the next generation of USB connectivity that's slated to replace, and is backward-compatible, with USB 2.0. USB 3.0 has a ceiling speed of 5Gbps, which is about 10 times the speed of of USB 2.0, which caps at 480Mbps. It's likely that most … Read more

Personal Web sites, blogs, and wikis have dramatically increased even casual surfers' opportunities to edit text, but the site-based editors often fall short. If you've ever wanted to edit text in a Web site using your own text editor, you need Doctor What's It's All Text. We like this free Firefox add-on; once you set it up, It's All Text will open a selected page's text content in the text editor of your choice, in the format of your choice, and post your changes to the site.

We downloaded and installed It's All Text, … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week we have questions on external disks no longer mounting even though they are recognized by the system, an iMac no longer turning on, and the latest Boot Camp update not installing. We continually answer e-mail questions, and while we present a few here, we certainly welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: External disk stops mounting

MacFixIt reader Arturo asks:

I have an external disk that suddenly stopped mounting. It shows under Disk … Read more

In recent months I've posted the occasional 1TB external hard drive for 50 bucks, but always with the caveat of having to wait for a rebate check--sometimes two of them.

That's what makes today's deal a little more exciting: Best Buy has the Seagate Expansion 1TB external hard drive for $49.99 shipped (plus sales tax in most states). Total number of rebates required: zero.

Update (12/3): This deal has long since expired. Please stop e-mailing me! :)

The aptly named Expansion is a pretty no-frills drive, offering a USB 2.0 interface and a better-than-average 7,… Read more

External hard disks have become a very convenient way to not only expand the storage capabilities of a system, but also expand options for booting, cloning, and performing various diagnostics. As a result, people may have a number of different external drives that they keep attached to the system. Though in most cases this setup results in normal behavior, a few people have found that restarting the system with certain USB drives connected results in the system not booting.

When this happens, the system may sit at a gray or black screen without showing an Apple symbol or any other … Read more

Some days, I can't decide on just one deal. Others, I don't find anything that's a real standout. Today is a little bit of both. Thus, I hereby inaugurate Triple-Deal Tuesday (not to be confused with Five-Deal Friday) with the following three-fer:

1. Remember my shock and awe last month upon seeing a 2TB external drive for under $100? Color me more shocked, more awed: Newegg has a 2TB Iomega Select USB hard drive for $89.99 shipped. That's after applying coupon code EMCZZYX42 (which is good only for newsletter subscribers). Man, oh, man, that is … Read more

Hard drive prices continue to creep lower and lower, as evidenced by this so-low-I-can't-believe-it deal from MacMall: the 1TB Fantom GreenDrive external eSATA/USB hard drive for $47.59 shipped.

That's after redeeming a pair of mail-in rebates totaling $30, but it's still the lowest net price I've ever seen on a 1TB external drive.

Update: Please be sure to read the comments before ordering. It seems a number of users have had problems in the past with one of the two rebates. Consequently, you might want to steer clear of this deal.

Although it's … Read more

Iomega today announced its--and possibly the world's--first portable storage solution that's based on a solid-state drive (SSD), the Iomega External USB 3.0 SSD Flash Drive.

Traditionally, most portable drives are based on internal laptop (2.5-inch) hard drives. As the name suggests, the new drive also supports USB 3.0, which offers a ceiling speed of up to 5Gbps.

According to Iomega, the new SSD Flash Drive features built-in 256-bit hardware encryption and rugged housing, and is bus-powered, meaning it uses only one USB cable for both data and power connections.

Iomega claims that the new drive'… Read more

External hard drives have become a very popular method of expanding your computer's storage capacity, but despite this convenience, they also can become a cluttered mess. I've seen users attach numerous external drives at once, with webs of daisy-chained drives connected through various hubs and keyboards as well as being directly connected to the computer.

With these setups, and even with simpler ones with only a few devices, people have reported some of the drives in the chain unmounting and giving a system error even when they are not the ones being accessed. This may happen randomly as … Read more