Unless you go SSD, you don’t usually buy a mobile hard drive for performance – you buy them for the compact form factor and, well, the storage. But what if you want some performance to go with that portable form factor and sub-1 Terabyte combo? Well, here’s your answer: Seagate just announced the GoFlex Turbo, a mobile hard drive built for better-than-usual speed, thanks to a USB 3.0 port and a 2.5-inch 7,299rpm drive.
So here’s a situation: you rushed through the latest iPad or iPhone launch day and opted for the cheapest model with the least amount of storage because you didn’t want to spend so much up front. Problem is, you’ve been downloading so much apps and multimedia (seriously, how can you resist not watching high-resolution videos on the iPhone 4’s screen?) that you’re quickly running out of built-in storage. Actually, the problem really lies with Apple not designing SD card slots on their mobile devices. Can’t be helped though. If you buy Apple, you gotta live with Apple. But here’s a solution: Seagate just launched the GoFlex Satellite. It’s basically a 500GB wireless mobile drive that specifically works with iOS devices, allowing you to stream media to an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
In a world where everyone wants to pack all their data wherever they go, mobile drives are a must-have. They can store a lot of data, they’re relatively affordable, you can buy them everywhere, and, more importantly, they’re compact enough to take anywhere. But what if your bag won’t fit, say, a regular 14.5mm-thick drive? Yeah, it’s a stretch, but Seagate did come out with a drive that’s slimmer. Measuring only 9mm thick (it’s as thick as a #2 pencil, Seagate points out), the GoFlex Slim Performance Drive isn’t just slim, it’s pretty fast too. At least fast enough for Seagate to label it as the ‘world’s slimmest high-performance drive.’
Seagate recently claimed a world first by launching the 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex Desk, an external drive that packs a unique 3-Terabyte drive. That’s pretty much it for this one—basically a massive 3TBs’ worth of storage in a single frame that shouldn’t take up any more desktop space than any average external drive would. The package comes a USB 2.0 interface as its standard, but like the rest of the GoFlex line, it can be fitted with other faster interface standards like USB 3.0, eSATA or FireWire 800 after you pick up the right adapter kit.
Before we get to the promised awesomeness of Seagate’s new hybrid drive for laptops, let’s get into laptop storage basics. Traditional hard disk drives (HDD) will give you the best price-per-gigabyte storage ratio, although they’re considerably slower than solid state drives. SSD on the other hand, come with a lower storage ceiling and are much more expensive, but offer faster performance, are more robust and energy-efficient—thanks mainly to the absence of moving parts. Now that that’s out of the way, here’s what this drive is all about: Seagate managed to merge SSD and HDD tech into the Momentus XT’s 2.5-inch frame, making for a laptop drive that’s cheaper than SSDs, faster than HDDs, and with a storage ceiling that tops off at 500GBs.
