Storage Hardware

So you've got your Windows 7 download, but your netbook has no DVD drive. Microsoft to the rescue! Now you can install from a USB flash drive / thumb drive / memory stick / thingamabob. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers would try WUDT if they could. Not to mention a different kind of Windows 7 party...
(MSFT)

Steve Ballmer hasn't exactly shined as Microsoft CEO, but he's confident enough in his business acumen to offer this stunningly bad piece of advice to IBM: It's time to get back into the hardware business. This, despite the fact that focusing on high-profit businesses like services and consulting has turned IBM back into a money-making powerhouse.

Every once in awhile a great technology idea comes along that makes me think: "Why didn't I think of that? " Last year's Pogoplug was certainly such an idea. It basically is small adapter that turns USB storage into not only a NAS, but it also turns it into a web file server share.

Well, this product just got better with their drive manufacturing partner Seagate.

The last time I checked, Seagate built and sold hard drives. So why would they market a backup solution that requires an exact duplicate drive instead of an upgrade when disaster strikes?

The wildfires in California are nothing new. They do however serve as a stark reminder that life is unpredictable and that data could be wiped out in an instant. Offsite storage of backup data is best and with today's high-speed Internet connections, they are relatively fast, too.

Toshiba's finally given in and will support Blu-Ray. It only took seven years. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers look forward to BD drives on their Tosh laptops.

By Richi Jennings. Your humble blogwatcher has selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention Helldog...

Think USB portable hard drives are the way to go? A test run with a Firewire 800 portable hard drive may change your mind.

Kingston's DataTraveler 300 is the "world's biggest" USB flash drive; it just launched in Europe. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers boggle over the size of the thing -- and at its insane price.

By Richi Jennings: your humble blogwatcher, who selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention movie mashups...

Weak privacy protections make the U.S. an unfriendly place for non-U.S. companies to host data.

Flashback to the early 1990s, when this IT pilot fish working at a regional campus of a big state university takes a field trip to the main campus's huge computer room -- along with some faculty members.

A few months ago, I detailed an excellent "file server in the Cloud" application called Egnyte. In a nutshell, Egnyte is a secure Software as a Service that takes the place of your file server, FTP Server and backup. It also offers file versioning and collaboration beyond what you'd find in your everyday NAS product. This is great for small businesses who might have moved other aspects of their IT infrastructure to the cloud already (ie. messaging servers to Gmail) but still have to keep that server room running for their file server.

Not anymore...

PowerFile will be unveiling an upgrade to its data center storage technology, claiming much higher capacities at very low operational expense.

While its price is still higher than most SSDs, Intel at least is making an effort to be more consumer friendly.

I recently inherited a base model $1,299 MacBook and wanted to make it a little snappier for day-to-day operations. So I snagged an OCZ SSD and swapped it in for the stock drive. Color me happy.

No wonder Sun had the audacity to up their price to IBM at the last minute. Question answered, but many more emerge.