hard drives in pictures

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  The evolution of hard disk drives

• Free Tools to Wipe Your Drives Securely

  By Alex Wawro | 26 April, 2012 23:29

  Your PC's hard drive is packed with your personal data. So when you want to get rid of your system or drive, you should permanently erase your storage device drives before you get rid of them. If your drives are encrypted and you trust the encryption protocol (full disk encryption is pretty safe), all you have to do is delete your encryption keys. If you want to safeguard your privacy further--and prevent data theft down the road--here are a few cheap and simple tools designed to wipe your hard drive, solid-state drive, or USB flash drive thoroughly before you dispose of it.

• Western Digital Puts 2TB of Storage in Palm of Your Hand for $250

  By John P. Mello Jr. | 21 March, 2012 06:50

  Who needs the cloud when you can have two terabytes of storage in the palm of your hand?

• Need more storage? Reach for the Cloud

  By Tony Bradley | 31 January, 2012 06:21

  When you start out with a fresh new hard drive, it may seem like it has virtually unlimited capacity. The reality, though, is that it won't take nearly as long to max out that drive as you might think, and you will need to find some way to expand your storage.

• Five high-tech items that will cost you more in 2012

  By John P. Mello Jr. | 18 January, 2012 01:29

  Every day, stories appear about a price drop for this or that tech gadget. As a result, consumers have a tendency to delay spending. After all, why buy something today that will be cheaper tomorrow?

• Build Your Own Network-Attached Storage System

  By Nate Ralph | 18 October, 2011 00:35

  With cheap storage readily available, the temptation to build vast libraries of music, movies, photos, and documents is ever present. But when each PC in your home is packed to its aluminum gills with gigabytes upon gigabytes of digital goods, managing all of that data can be a hassle.

• Seagate offers data recovery with hard drive purchase

  By John P. Mello Jr. | 09 August, 2011 03:43

  Hard drive crashes are a nightmare for computer users for many reasons. Not only can data held dear to one's heart be lost, but trying to recover it can cost an arm and a leg, if not more. Hard drive maker Seagate attempts to address both those problems with the release today of its GoFlex Turbo drive with SafetyNet data recovery services.

• 5 more PC upgrade mistakes (and how to avoid them)

  By Robert Strohmeyer | 29 July, 2011 00:08

  As PCs get more powerful and easier to use, the challenges involved with upgrading them have remained about the same. For the novice, a hard drive upgrade can appear downright daunting. For more experienced tinkerers, the upgrade itself may be easy, but it's easier still to overlook factors that could streamline the whole process and better protect both the hardware and the data stored on it.

• Seagate GoFlex Satellite portable hard drive

  By Melissa J. Perenson | 21 May, 2011 09:16

  The Seagate GoFlex Satellite hard drive takes the shackles off your tablet, freeing it to connect to a greater amount of storage capacity -- without having to go through any pesky wires. But although the hardware implementation is adequate, the software app struggles. A lot. At launch, Seagate is offering a messy, limited app for iPad and iPhone; an Android app equivalent is still in the works, so for now Android users must access the hard drive's contents using a comparatively crude Web-browser interface (admittedly, one not unlike the browser interface for standard network-attached drives).

• The evolution of hard disk drives

  By Lucas Mearian | 07 January, 2011 13:22

  A punched card was once the basis for digital information used for computer programs and data storage. They were widely used throughout the first half of the 20th century in processing machines to input data and to store it. Punch cards could be fed into the first commercial computer, IBM 305 system, which then stored the data on hard disks

• Acronis Drive Monitor Is S.M.A.R.T. about hard drives

  By Preston Gralla | 22 July, 2010 23:59

  Your hard disk is a time bomb, waiting to go off. If you're lucky, like most people, it will never detonate. But if you're unlucky, like some people, you could lose all of your files, works, and applications, with no warning when your hard disk crashes. Acronis Drive Monitor (free) promises to give you warning before that crash, so that you can take action before you're hit with disaster.

• Lab notes: Kingston vs. VelociRaptor storage smackdown

  By Alex Wawro | 15 July, 2010 10:44

  It's time for a storage upgrade, but your budget won't bear the burden of both a blazing new VelociRaptor hard drive and an extra injection of Kingston RAM. Decision time: if you're looking to improve general performance on the cheap, do you shell out for more RAM or a high-performance hard disk?

• Portable hard drive round-up: the best pocket storage options

  By Jon L. Jacobi, PCWorld | 30 December, 2009 20:17

  Good things come in small packages - and when it comes to storage, the saying couldn't be more true. No matter what size your data set is, you can find a stylish, pocketable wonder of modern miniaturization to store it and transport it.

• Despite the cost, SSDs are great value

  By Michael Scalisi | 05 December, 2009 11:09

  Solid-state drives recently hit the 1-terabyte mark with the release of the US$3,300 OCZ Colossus 1TB SSD. Obviously, drives at this price point are not aimed at masses. Yet, from a historical perspective the Colossus is remarkably cheap. It's easy to forget that just a few short years ago, neither mainstream SSDs nor 1TB drives existed at any price. It's also important to remember that smaller, affordable SSDs are available today and represent an incredible value.

• Storage stocking-stuffers for Christmas

  By Keith Shaw | 16 November, 2009 17:23

  The more digital content that we create (music, photos, movies, etc.) and the more we want to share it with others, the more likely it is we'll need some place to store it. You might be looking at digital cameras or music players on your holiday list, but just as important is storage that helps you keep the content stored or created with those gadgets safe and sound. Here are some storage products and concepts we liked:

• Seagate's FreeAgent DockStar: instant NAS, just add hard drive

  By Keith Shaw | 08 October, 2009 03:56

  The scoop: FreeAgent DockStar, by Seagate, about $US100

• Western Digital drive creates dilemma for laptop buyers

  By Jeff Bertolucci | 28 July, 2009 08:52

  It's pretty much a given that solid state drives (SSDs) are the future of PC storage, and that hard drives are on the way out. But if you're buying a laptop today, which option is best?