Victorinox Swiss Army Releases Innovative Luxury USB Line

Need an expensive and colorful device to store your extremely important personal or professional data? Want a USB stick with a self-destruct function? Look no further. Consumers may be surprised to learn that Victorinox Swiss Army’s latest products, the Slim and Slim Duo USB lines, have just one function. Marketed as an innovative and decidedly “Bond-esque” luxury flash drive, the new Swiss Army USBs are ready for anything, that is, unless you need a can opener or knife. Buyers can now not only store their personal data, but also keep it protected via passwords and a vaguely described “unhackable” feature….

News

Verbatim Offers Digital Data Storage and Backup Solutions This Tax Season

Death and Taxes – oh how we hear that phrase overused, and for my purposes here I plead guilty. Fortunately I am here to talk about the latter and not the former. Our friends over at Verbatim, maker of digital data storage and backup products, want loyal US taxpayers (or at least tax filers) to remember to back up all your data. Recent springtime storms across the center of the country bring that suggestion even more to light as this will be one less thing to worry about when Mother Nature turns nasty and you are faced with putting your…

Reviews

Review: Seagate GoFlex Slim Performance Drive

Judie’s and my first meeting at CES 2011 was with Seagate. (We posted about it here.) Toward the end of the visit we came upon a hard drive that was as stylish as it was function. At the time all we were allowed to write about it was this: Concept drive – We also saw a drive that is not yet named but will be out late spring (pictured above). The concept drive is super thin and will be $99.99 for 320. Black for PC. Silver for Mac. Also has premium backup for data security. This is an image of…

Events, News

CES: SanDisk Meeting

By now you have likely seen that at CES, SanDisk announced their amazing new 128GB Compact Flash Card, a size that still boggles my mind. Available later this quarter for a MSRP of $1499.99, this card isn’t for the feint-hearted. But when you consider that it wasn’t too long ago that a 5GB PCMCIA card retailed for $500 plus, the realization is staggering that this amount of memory is available in something so small. While meeting with SanDisk, I had the opportunity to take a look at their new CRUZER Slider which along with other features also has “error-proof insertion”,…

Gear Bits

IoSafe Has Got My Back; Do They Have Yours?

Freshly arrived back from CES, I found waiting for me an IoSafe 1TB fireproof, waterproof, and — as has been demonstrated multiple times by this site (and many others) — a virtually indestructible SoloPRO Desktop External Hard Drive. I’m looking forward to setting up this beast and putting it to work protecting my data. Knowing that any files, pictures, movies and music stored on it will be kept safe — even if something unimaginable and catastrophic should happen to Kev’s and my home — gives me a peace of mind that is hard to describe. Check out the IoSafe site,…

Reviews

Silicon Power Armor A80 Waterproof & Shockproof Hard Drive Review

If you’re anything like me keeping your data safe and secure is of the utmost importance. I’m talking about keeping it safe from hackers though. Sure that’s important but what I’m talking about it keeping it safe from life. With three kids at home I’ve got thousands and thousands of memories, in the form of digital pictures, stored on various hard drives. From time to time I take one of the portable hard drives with me, to a family members house, or on the road. Life has a tendency to throw bumps and bruises our way from time to time…

News

Win a Mystery Item That You KNOW You’ll Want from ioSafe

This is obnoxious! I am absolutely awful at those “guess what this is” type games where they show you the tiniest portion of a product and expect you to figure out what it is … and this one happens to come with a prize that I am sure I would love to win! ioSafe, makers of the fantastic hard drives that are impervious to fire, water, crushing — or any other disaster man or nature can throw at them (and you had better believe that we have tried!) — is giving away a mystery item that they will soon be…

Reviews

ioSafe SoloPRO Fire & Water Proof External Hard Drive Review

Our love of ioSafe‘s fire proof and water proof external hard drives is no secret. I mean how can one not love something that’s able to survive this, or this? I’d been using ioSafe’s original product, their Solo model, since I first tested it back in August of last year (they sent me a replacement after I’d burned the original up in the car.) So when they asked if I was interested in being upgraded to one of their newer Pro models I happily accepted. The SoloPRO is available with either eSATA/USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 connectivity and you can…

News

LaCie’s MosKeyto Has a Tiny Memory

It’s cute, it’s tiny … it’s the LaCie MosKeyto, one of the most compact USB flash drives I’ve ever seen! Available in 4, 8 and 16GB (the one capacity which isn’t showing on the site quite yet), the MosKeyto is an inexpensive backup flash drive that you can stick in a laptop’s USB port and forget about. I like that they stuck the keyring on the side with the memory, not the side which serves as a cap. 😉 The stealthy MosKeyto becomes nearly invisible when plugged into your computer, and can even travel with the computer in a protective…

Reviews

StarTech Standalone IDE/SATA Hard Drive Duplicator Review

As a Systems Administrator I spend of a lot of time building and distributing workstation images. After the initial build is completed and tested the worst part of it all (for me at least) is the distribution to all the machines that need it. There has been cases where I had a few hundred machines, and then sometimes it’s as little as 12-15. Either way, my favorite methods of imaging machines are the ones that are the most hands off. I’ve been through my share of software solutions that work very well, but the worst part is all the setup…

Reviews

The Lexar USB JumpDrive Secure II Plus Review

Can you ever have enough memory? These days the answer always seems to be ‘no’. Whether for our computers, our smartphones, external backup drives, camcorders, cameras, digital music players, laptops, netbooks, digital picture frames, or any other device that is meant to hold data, the need for more memory continues to be never-ending. But we don’t just need more memory, we need ways to keep the stored data secure. Which brings us to the Lexar JumpDrive Secure II Plus, a USB flash drive available in denominations from 2GB all the way to 64GB which has built-in 256-bit AES encryption; I…

Reviews

Toshiba 640GB Portable Hard Drive Review

Update: This giveaway is now closed and timtim is the winner. Thank you for entering, and please keep an eye out for future Gear Diary giveaways! 🙂 I was sent a Toshiba 640GB Portable Hard Drive in “Rocket Red” to review, but since this one will also be given away, I was hesitant to use and abuse it like I might a memory device I would be keeping. Therefore, in return for this micro-review, you get a chance to win a pocket-size time capsule just waiting to be filled with your important documents and digital memories.

News

Corsair Introduces High Speed, Monster Capacity Flash Drives

How would you like a USB flash memory thumb drive that could back up your netbook’s entire 120GB hard drive? If you’ve got $460 to spare, then the Corsair Voyager GTR 128 can take care of that task for you … and get it done quickly. The quad-channel architecture employed by the Flash Voyager GTR series delivers read speeds up to 34MB/s and write speeds up to 28MB/s, approaching the maximum transfer rates supported by the USB 2.0 interface. The outstanding performance numbers translate into genuine, real-world results. In the Corsair Labs, using a typical Windows 7-based PC, the Flash…

Reviews

Review: Sandisk SlotRadio+ Billboard Hits

Some companies continue to try to find a way to replace audio CD’s in brick and mortar stores like Wal-Mart. For most of the Gear Diary staff, digital downloads via iTunes Music store, Amazon MP3 Store or the Zune store have all but replaced audio CD’s. What could be easier than downloading a MP3 and putting it on your player? SanDisk is trying again to do this with SlotRadio+. SlotRadio+ is basically very similar to SlotRadio, but not only has 1000 music tracks on it, it also has 4 Gigs of storage for your own music. This sounds pretty cool…

Reviews

Active Media Wink USB Drive Review

One of the things I like to do when attending shows like CES is collect flash memory press kit thumbdrives to use again once I get home. In years past, it was considered a huge score if I was given a drive larger than 1GB, and this year I actually got several which were 2GB – along with a single 4GB drive, but alas … the thrill was almost gone, because at home I had a 16GB flash drive which was smaller and cuter than anything I was handed at CES.

Events

ioSafe SSD Demo, fun in the desert unless you’re a hard drive

Gear Diary is no stranger to the ioSafe hard drive. We tested the fire proof and water proof, original ioSafe drive by burning it up in the back of a car and then dousing it with several thousand gallons of water straight from a fire hose. While at CES 2010 ioSafe took the Gear Diary team to a special, top secret location, deep in the desert (okay, it was really three miles south of the strip) where they demoed their newest release, the all new ioSafe SSD drive. The new drive is not only water and fire proof like its…

Reviews

Seagate Dockstar – Review

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to review the Seagate FreeAgent Go. It is a small, pocket-sized external hard drive that looks sleek and has a tremendous capacity. One of the nice features of the hard drive is that it has only one port- a Mini USB. You can, however, purchase an optional dock for the hard drive that lets you simply slip the hard drive into the cradle when you’re ready to use it. The company offers a similar looking cradle that does much more, however. By incorporating a PogoPlug into the cradle Seagate has created a…

Reviews

HP MediaSmart Server EX495 Review

Back in August, I reviewed the HP MediaSmart Server LX195. I, the resident Linux Geek here at Gear Diary, was pleasantly surprised by how useful the little server was. Even so, I still thought there was a little something missing from that great device. HP has addressed a lot of this with the HP MediaSmart Server EX495.

Reviews

Seagate FreeAgent Go – Review

More and more of our digital lives is left sitting on our computers. As a result we need a better way to access it. Seagate has that covered with a system that is not only simple to use but simple to set up as well. It consists of three parts. The first is Seagate’s FreeAgent Go portable hard drive. (You can use any USB hard drive but the system is designed for the FreeAgent Go). The second is the FreeAgent DockStar that incorporates a PogoPlug for anywhere access to your data. The third, if you are an iPhone or iPod…

Reviews

A-DATA sh93 Waterproof Hard Drive Review

A-DATA recently announced the release of a waterproof and shock resistant hard drive. The sh93 Incorporates rubber and plastic along with special cushion materials that allow it to withstand a 1M waterproof test for 30 minutes and military standard MIL-STD-810F drop test. The SH93 comes in two colors : racing car yellow and chili pepper red. With capacity up to 640GB, it is designed for users to conveniently carry around massive documents without the fear of damaging files stored in the drive in the incident of accidental drop or water spills. I’m quite familiar putting hard drives to the “test”…

Reviews

Unboxing – Seagate’s FreeAgent Go and DockStar

Seagate was kind enough to send me both the FreeAgent Go and the FreeAgent DockStar to review and the continue using. I’m quite impressed with the combination which now allows me to access over 600GB of content from anywhere in the world. Here is a quick unboxing video…

Hard Drives and SSDs