When you’re working with lots video, one of the major roadblock can be how much storage you have access to. This problem is compounded when working with mobile devices that often have only a few gigabytes with which to store your data. Enter the Kingston Wi-Drive 64GB. This device feels like it’s tailor made for us. It’s extremely simple. Just save and access files directly to the Wi-Drive from any wi-fi enable device. It’s small, portable, and can be charged via USB, which means you’ll likely be able to use it with the charger you’re already lugging around for your phone. The battery will last for four to six hours, so if you’re out and about, you’ll want to make sure you keep that charger handy. Kingston hasn’t announced a release date or price, but if you absolutely need this type of storage solution and can’t wait, you can get the 32GB version for $89.99.

Well, it’s finally about to happen. Intel announced that they’re getting into the world of high capacity drives by releasing a new line of solid-state drives all the way up to 600 gigabytes. The new drives are the third generation of Intel’s SSD 320 Series. The new series is an upgrade to the high-performing X25-M SATA by using Intel’s new 25nm manufacturing process. With this process, Intel is able to shrink the size of the chips that the flash memory is held on making it possible to fit more flash memory within a standard 2.5 or 3.5 inch drive enclosure.

The new series comes in 40, 80, 120, 160, 300, and 600 GB flavors and will be using a 3 gigabit per second data interface for fast transfers. However, with 6 Gb/s SATA interfaces available, it’s curious why Intel decided to go with the much slower 3 Gb/s interface. The solid-state drives boast up to 39,500 input/output operations per second of random reads and drops to 23,000 IOPS of random writes for their high capacity drives.  Read and write speeds have also doubled from their last drives at 270 MB/s and 220 MB/s.

This announcement finally makes solid-state drives large enough to handle the typical HD workload at speeds much faster than any disk-based hard drive can achieve.  Though the drives are rather expensive going all the way from $89 for the 40 GB model to a whopping $1,069 for the 600 GB model, they can still be worth the cost for many who need better read/write times and reliability. Many of these drives will still be out of reach for the average video enthusiast, but this latest announcement from Intel shows that the technology is heading in the right direction. It’s no stretch of the imagination to think that someday a few years from now almost every video editor could be using a RAID full of inexpensive, 1 TB, solid-state drives.

Buffalo Technology has announced the revolutionary Buffalo CloudStor personal storage solution. Powered by Pogoplug, CloudStor goes beyond simple storage, creating a portal to freely access and share photos, videos, music and much more with anyone, anywhere through the cloud. Unlike online storage services, CloudStor has no capacity or service fees. Just plug it in, turn it on and create your free account at mycloudstor.com. CloudStor comes with everything you need to get started. You just have to be free to share.

CloudStor is secure because no content resides in the cloud; users own and store their files and decide what to share. Whether at home, the office or on the road, the CloudStor user experience remains the same. It looks and operates just like a hard drive inside your computer, accessible via a drive letter on PCs and as a device through Finder on Mac computers. And with Pogoplug apps for mobile devices and easy Facebook and Twitter integration, you’ll always be seconds away from your content.

At the center of every CloudStor is Pogoplug’s cloud service. The popular service connects users to their storage and allows them to freely access and share their storage anywhere in the world. CloudStor is the first and only Pogoplug device with integrated storage. Files are securely shared between people and there is no need for user setup; just email a link to your family and friends. Consumers’ digital content always resides on CloudStor and the online service is only used to connect users and guests to specified files on the device.

In addition, CloudStor offers many traditional consumer network attached storage features including private share support for LAN based network sharing and pairing with the popular µTorrent client, allowing users to offload the task of downloading torrent files from computers to CloudStor. Buffalo CloudStor can also stream to popular media devices, including Sony PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Plus, CloudStor has an integrated Time Machine backup system that allows Mac users to use Time Machine to backup their systems to CloudStor when at home.

The Buffalo CloudStor is backed by a limited one-year warranty that includes toll-free 24/7 US based technical support and will be available February 2011 at an estimated street price of $170 for the 1 TB CloudStor and $270 for the 2 TB CloudStor Pro.

Reprinted from a Verbatim press release

Verbatim Americas, LLC announced today its new ”TUFF-N-TINY” family of ultra-portable USB drives with capacities of 4GB in emerald green and 8GB in royal purple.  Among the most compact, durable USB flash drives on the market, the new TUFF-’N'-TINY drives measure about 1-inch long, one-half inch wide and are the thickness of a penny.  Ideal for storing, backing up, sharing and transporting data and multimedia files, Verbatim TUFF-’N'-TINY USB Drives are available with retail prices starting as low as $30.00.

The 8GB drive can be used to store nearly eight hours of MPEG-1 video, about 2,000 hours of MP3 music, about 4,000 300dpi color photos or 8GBs of personal and business files. Read the rest of this entry »