• Western Digital's TV HD Live got a slight update today. Besides the revamped casing, the biggest news here is the addition of DLNA and Bonjour support. Just like the previous generation, there's no onboard storage to speak of, but the better streaming support makes that much less of an issue. You can grab one at Best Buy now for $120. [Electronista]

The good news is that these things work well, despite the larger drive and lower power. They're not about performance—5400 rpm only—but when I tested moving a 1GB file to and from, I got it in under 30 seconds, just a hair slower than the same file moved to and from faster FireWire 800 drives. I didn't do any real benchmarking, but I am convinced that the USB is going to be the bottleneck, not the bigger drive (shown below with a 320GB USB-only and a 500GB FW800/USB combo). The FreeAgent was even designed to fit the USB dock and FreeAgent Theater+, though not subtly.

That brings us to the bad news, which many of you already know: Despite being portable bus-powered 2.5" drives, the three-platter HDDs inside these casings are not capable of being ripped out and stuck into your laptop, at least, not without some hackery I am not qualified to endorse. So, in lieu of a full review, I offer this: It works, it's not noticeably sluggish given the added weight, and it feels really good to be able to carry a whole terabyte wherever I want. [Seagate]

As cool as the e-labels concept is—soon to be found on My Book Elite (USB only, up to 2TB for $280) and My Book Studio (FW800 and USB, up to 2TB for $300)—I don't know how profound a single 12-character label on the face of such a massive drive can be. Then again, maybe you're supposed to buy them in identical pairs. The label, which, like the E-Ink found on Amazon's Kindle, stays visible when there's no power going to it, could in that case save you from embarrassment, possibly even job loss/misdemeanor charges/etc. Below the label is a status indicator—how many GB are left, plus a rough visual estimate.

The My Passport Elite line gets a visual refresh that first appeared in the less feature-bestowed Passport Essential. Slimmer and more rounded at the edges, the Elite line gets a metallic red, blue or charcoal finish and a dock—top price is $170 for a 640GB 2.5" USB 2.0 bus-powered drive. The dock thing makes sense in one particular situation: You have a laptop and a desktop that you regularly shuttle between. The Elites will show capacity status on an LED indicator, and will indicate encryption with a light-up key icon on the side, so you feel extra safe. Speaking of safe, all of the hard drives also come with 256-bit hardware encryption. [WD]

The lines are still separated by size, with the My Passports being portable 2.5-inch drives and the My Books taking the larger-capacity 3.5-inch size. My Passport now goes up to a 1TB capacity in a portable, USB-powered drive, and because of a few innovations they're remarkably small. Essentially, WD removed the USB-to-SATA-to-drive connection and made them direct to USB, which saves space—and WD promises there've been no compromises on speed.

Other changes: Security has been bumped up several notches. The security is now hardware-based, rather than merely software-encrypted, so WD actually has to warn users that if they forget their passwords, even WD can't access the drives. They also do incremental backups, so if for example you want to save a couple versions of a document and accidentally overwrite one of them, these drives will have saved all versions of your progress.

My favorite has to be that teeny 1TB 2.5" My Passport Essential SE. The triple platter drives (plus the direct-to-USB connection) make it much smaller than I expected. It'll cost $250 when it's released later this month (the 750GB version will cost $180). Others:

• My Passport Essential: 320/500/640GB ranging from $100 to $150, released this month with equivalent Mac version
• My Book Essential: 0.5/1/1.5/2TB from $99 to $250, with lighted capacity gauge and equivalent Mac version

We'll let you know when we have precise release dates, but you can expect all of these drives to be showing up in stores very soon. [WD]

Topping the list of new features are network playback over Ethernet, DTS audio encoding and a component plug (for better picture quality on SD displays).

No price or availability info arrived with the leaked pic and specs sheet, but from the looks of the case this thing is all but ready for retail shelves. [AVS Forum via Electric Echoes via Engadget]

LAKE FOREST, Calif., July 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD (NYSE: WDC) today announced two new mobile hard drives that reach new capacity extremes. The highlight is a one terabyte model — the industry's highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available. Industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology enables the new WD Scorpio® Blue(TM) SATA 2.5-inch hard drives to offer mobile storage device and notebook users an enormous 1 TB capacity. A 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue model also will be available.

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor(1) and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport(TM) Essential(TM) SE Portable USB Drives. Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.

"The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices," said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD. "Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives."

WD Scorpio Blue hard drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation in portable applications. They are designed with WD features to be reliable and shock resistant while also delivering industry-leading capacity and performance.

WD Scorpio Blue Features

WhisperDrive(TM) - WD's exclusive WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to produce one of the quietest 2.5-inch drives available.

ShockGuard(TM) - Leading-edge ShockGuard technology combines firmware and hardware advancements to meet the highest combined shock tolerance specifications required for mobile and notebook applications.

SecurePark(TM) - Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface, resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear and improved shock tolerance.

Price and Availability

WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB drives (model WD7500KEVT) are available now through select distributors and resellers; the 1 TB capacity (model WD10TEVT) is available now configured into My Passport Essential SE USB drives. The manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB drive is $249.99 USD and for the 750 GB version it is $189.99 USD. WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty.

The Price: $700 (4TB), $400 (2TB)

The Verdict: It's a NAS for normal people. With a simple curved white design highlighted by a single hypnotic bar of white LED, the diminutive My Book plugs in to your router via ethernet to give you up to 4TB of networked storage. You plug it in, it shows up on your network, and that's that. (There's a more advanced CD installation that allows you to auto-backup your PC hard drive should you want the software.)
We tested the large, 4TB RAID 1 (mirrored drive) version of the My Book. In other words, you have about 2TB of recordable space that's backed up to another drive so that if one drive fails, you don't lose any data. If you wanted more speed/space, the drive can be reconfigured to RAID 0 (Striped) mode allowing you to access all 4TB. And it's easy to forget, if you choose to mainline the My Book right into your computer's ethernet jack, transfer speeds are fast. Gigabit ethernet reaches 1000Mbps, which is easily faster than USB but also quicker on paper than even Firewire 800. Still, transferring a 700MB file took 1:32. Transferring 8.2GB in files took 18:49. Not so fast in practice. (In other words, you won't actually be copying files at 1000Mbps, but the installed system has no trouble streaming HD media over Wi-Fi.)

You feel a bit of warmth dissipating out of the My Book's large top to rear vent panel (that we wish were metal instal of plastic), but system runs cool enough, offers easy access to the drives (you just pop the lid) and operates with very little noise. Quite simply, it works pretty well and makes a cute little media server (if you've got the scratch).

It's As Simple as RAIDs Get

Small, Quiet Formfactor

Mega Storage

Venting Could Feel More Durable, But It's Flexible and Thereby Easy to Pop Off

The My Books can connect either as an NAS through ethernet or simply as an external drive through USB, and both the 2TB and 4TB versions contain two drives to watch each other's backs in case one fails. So really, you're getting either 1TB or 2TB of space, respectively, since one drive is used as backup. They're available now and retail for either $400 (2TB) or $700 (4TB). Press release to follow. [Western Digital]

WD'S NEW DUAL-DRIVE MY BOOK® WORLD EDITION™ II NETWORK STORAGE SYSTEM ADDS EXTRA LEVEL OF PROTECTION
FOR A FAMILY'S VALUABLE DATA

Offers an Easy, Double-Safe Way to Backup Computers and Share Media
Throughout the Home

LAKE FOREST, Calif. - June 24, 2009 - WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its newly redesigned My Book® World Edition™ II dual- drive network storage system in capacities of up to 4 TB. With the double protection of two Mirrored (RAID 1) drives and continuous backup software, the My Book World Edition II network storage system provides an extra-safe place for users to back up and store the data and digital media from all the computers on their network in one central location. Available now at select retailers and the WD online store, the new dual-drive systems join the recently introduced (Feb. 2009) My Book World Edition and are compatible with PC and Mac® computers.

According to a July 2008 report by research firm Parks Associates, the number of households worldwide with data networks will grow from around 170 million in 2008 to 240 million by year-end 2012. The firm also reports that the average broadband household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900 GB by year-end 2012. In addition, consumers indicate that the most important feature for a network-attached storage (NAS) device is the amount of available storage. With its massive 4 TB capacity, the My Book World Edition II network storage system will serve this rapidly growing need for home data storage.

The My Book World Edition II network storage system uses RAID 1 (Mirrored1) technology to automatically and continuously maintain a second copy of user's data. If one drive in the two-drive system ever fails, the system continues to run and the data is safe. In addition, the new
My Book World Edition II network hard drive includes software that simplifies the task of setting up automatic and continuous data backup for all the PCs in the home. The My Book World Edition II storage systems ship in Mirrored mode and use half the capacity for file redundancy.

With its media server capabilities and fast transfer speeds, this high-capacity system makes it simple to build a centralized digital media library that everyone can easily share. Music, photos and videos can be streamed directly from the My Book World Edition II storage system to any PC, Mac or connected DLNA® media player (such as TVs, Microsoft® Xbox 360 and Sony® PlayStation®3 game consoles or wireless digital pictures frames) using the integrated UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) media server and iTunes® Music server software. Users can also securely access their files from anywhere in the world through the Internet using the free MioNet® remote access service included with every My Book World Edition II storage system.

"Families have more and more digital media like movies, photos and music to store, share and protect. Having two drives inside the My Book World Edition II network storage system, instantaneously and automatically duplicating data, offers consumers the peace of mind of double safe, real-time protection of their valuable content," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group. "Families can relax knowing their valuable media is backed up while enjoying the ability to stream their content to a plethora of different devices from PCs and Macs to PS3s, Xbox 360s and the latest connected TVs."

Price and Availability

The new My Book World Edition II network storage systems are available now in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities at select retailers and WD's online store (www.shopwd.com). MSRP for the My Book World Edition II dual-drive storage system with 4 TB is $699.99 USD and 2 TB is $399.99 USD.

This announcement comes on the heels of Western Digital's acquisition of SiliconSystems back in March, and the company is now coming through with drives in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch sizes. The 2.5-inch drive use SATA/PATA transfer interfaces, while the 1.8-inch drive opts for the MicroSATA standard (its capacity also maxes out at 60 gigabytes).

Mums the word on pricing and retail availability, but I'm sure this will all make it's way to the general public soon enough.

WD(R) Begins Shipping New SATA/PATA SSDs Featuring Higher Speeds and Capacities for Embedded Systems and Data Streaming Applications

New Products Based on Third-Generation SiliconDrive Platform

LAKE FOREST, Calif., June 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC) today announced that it has begun shipping its new SiliconDrive® III SSD product family based on technology from its March 2009 acquisition of SiliconSystems. The company's new SiliconDrive III products feature faster read/write speeds and increased capacities, and offer mechanical scalability, making them a perfect storage solution for embedded system and data streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data center media appliances.

SiliconDrive III SSDs include 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) and Parallel ATA (PATA) and 1.8-inch Micro SATA products featuring native SATA 3.0 gigabits per second (Gbps) or ATA-7 interfaces with target read speeds up to 100 megabytes per second (MBps) and write speeds to 80 MBps in capacities up to 120 gigabytes (GB).

"SiliconDrive III is the first example of how WD plans to productize solid state technology developed by SiliconSystems. The launch of SiliconDrive III will also enable WD to leverage its global sales and distribution channels to accelerate the adoption of SSD technology beyond SiliconSystems' traditional embedded systems OEM customer base into data streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data center media appliances," said Michael Hajeck, senior vice president and general manager of WD's solid state storage business unit. "SiliconDrive III is an ideal solution for OEMs that require increased performance, capacity, reliability and data throughput in their applications."

SiliconDrive III has been designed and optimized for high performance and high reliability in demanding 24x7 applications in the embedded systems, media appliance and data streaming markets. Performance and reliability is achieved through the integration of the company's patented and patent-pending advanced storage technologies in every SiliconDrive III product. The company's patented and patent-pending PowerArmor®, SiSMART® and SolidStor® technologies address critical OEM design considerations such as the elimination of drive corruption due to power anomalies, the ability to monitor a SiliconDrive's useable life in real-time and integrated advanced storage technologies that ensure data integrity and SSD life for multi-year product deployments.

Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=21.

Am I pissed off? Yes, because Seagate just sent over this beautiful, whisper-quiet 1TB eSATA drive that's compatible with quite a few cable-co DVRs. Well, I don't want to test it with my crappy Motorola DVR, I want to test it with my TiVo HD, which, with a tiny built-in 160GB drive, is in dire need of extra space. I guess you could say I'm mad because I love TiVo. Oh TiVo, why did you have to go and complicate our beautiful relationship?

All I get on screen is a message saying the drive is "unsupported," despite it being a relatively generic eSATA configuration designed for CE products, currently supported by DVRs from Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, DirecTV and Dish, and even runs, though technically unsupported, on the original TiVo Series3. I followed up and TiVo said this:

Western Digital has gone through our testing and certification process. We know it will work 100% of the time, something we cannot guarantee with other expanders.

The irony there is that when I did have a WD drive on a TiVo about a year ago, it actually malfunctioned once and I had to reset it, losing TV shows in the process. I pressed TiVo for a list of other companies it was testing. Turns out, there isn't one. This is all I could get:

The class of Western Digital drive in the DVR expander is designed specifically for 24/7 use in a CE device. It is optimized for constant read/write cycles and is designed to last much longer when used in a DVR application. Un-optimized or unknown drives add risk to system stability and would reduce expected lifetime.

I have to say, this logic only works when we're talking about drives intended for something other than DVRs, or drives from companies that do not have a reputation as a great hard drive maker, as Seagate does. The question is, why did TiVo stop testing CE eSATA drives after falling in love with WD's? I can only think of two reasons, sheer laziness or cash money dolla dolla bills, and of course, I'm not going to get a confirmation of either.

I have absolutely nothing against WD (even though that one did fail in my TiVo back in 2008). I like a lot of their products. I just can't believe that there's any merit to this exclusive partnership. When I buy an electronic toothbrush from Braun or Philips, am I restricted to using a particular kind of toothpaste? No. The understanding is that I will use toothpaste, but not what kind. Ditto here. There's an eSATA port, so the understanding is that I will use it. But, within reason, the brand choice should be up to me.

I will continue talking to both companies about this issue, because I feel strongly that the ban on Seagate drives be lifted here, especially for a totally legitimate means of adding extremely necessary additional storage. All this does is promote hackery. Speaking of which, anybody got any good tips for hacking a Seagate DVR expander onto my otherwise awesome TiVo HD? [Seagate Product Page]

Instead of the nice, new Western Digital VelociRaptor he ordered, Jon received an ancient 30GB Quantum Fireball, a product discontinued by Maxtor nine years ago. Best Buy told Jon that WD must have packaged the oddball drive, and he should take it up with them. He stayed in the store and was shunted back and forth between Western Digital's and Best Buy's customer service lines, with nobody willing to refund his $225. Said Jon:

Finally, I spoke to a third-level Customer Service rep, who told me nothing could be done since 'it is Western Digital's responsibility', however the best he could do would be to offer me a gift card for half the value of the drive (the total purchase price was $225). I told him this was unacceptable, and that all I wanted was either the actual drive I had (tried) to purchase, or a refund so I could buy it elsewhere. He told me that was 'not going to happen'. I told him that Best Buy was, in effect, stealing my money, to which he replied 'yep, that's basically right'. I told "John" that I would be filing a police report and pursuing help from my credit card company, and left.

He's currently working through his credit card company to get his money back, but it's looking like he might have to take Best Buy to small claims court (!).

Best Buy has been known in the past to package clearly used, bizarre items as new, but this is taking it to a whole new level of abhorrent customer service. [Consumerist]

By using a 2TB disk instead of, say, two 1TB disks, the drives take up less space on your desk and are generally simpler (one instead of two). These will hit the My Book Studio, My Book Mac, My Book Home and My Book Essential editions of Western Digital's lineup.

My Book Studio Edition & My Book Mac Edition
Formatted[1] for Mac computers, these drives are an ideal solution for creative professionals and video editors. The My Book Studio Edition is equipped with high speed FireWire® 400/800 and eSATA interfaces as well as the popular USB 2.0 interface and a 5-year limited warranty. My Book Mac Edition external drives feature a USB 2.0 interface and a 1-year limited warranty.

My Book Home Edition
Equipped with continuous backup software and high-speed eSATA and FireWire 400 as well as USB 2.0 interfaces, My Book Home Edition carries a 3-year limited warranty. My Book Home Edition is designed for PC users that need an effortless way to preserve digital pictures.

My Book Essential Edition
My Book Essential Edition offers an easy way to add storage capacity to home or office computers. The drives are equipped with a USB 2.0 interface that provides convenience and compatibility among multiple computers.
The entire family of My Book external hard drives features:
- New 2 TB capacities allowing users to store and backup all their data in one central location;
- Elegant, small footprint design;
- Capacity gauge to see at a glance how much capacity is available on the drive (not available on the My Book Essential Edition drive);
- Environmentally friendly design that saves power by going into standby mode after 10 minutes of inactivity;
- SmartPower™ features that turns the drive on and off with the computer and Safe Shutdown™ that prevents the drive from being powered down until all the data has been written[2];
- Kensington® Security Slot that allows users to secure drive to their desk with the separate purchase of a Kensington lock kit; and,
- 1-year limited warranty.

They're all available now between $330 and $380.

The new 8TB model is available as of this week for $1,700, which is a lot of money for a networked storage device until you do the math: 12 cents per GB. That ain't too shabby.

The ShareSpace is DLNA Certified for media streaming to devices like the Xbox 360 and PS3, and features improved read/write speeds of up to 30% for large media files. Current ShareSpace owners can download a firmware patch to get these improvements for themselves.

It's pricey, yes, but if you get this thing configured as a RAID array and load it up with all of your music and video, it'd be the ultimate centralized streaming storage box for your home. I want one. [Western Digital]

The 3.5-inch SATA drive features a 32 MB cache and about 1.8TB of actual space once you get things up and running. When Hot Hardware tested the WD drive against its 1TB, 7200RPM peers, the 2TB Caviar more than held its ground in general testing. Read more about those results in the second link. [Western Digital via Hot Hardware]

Some say that the end of the trusty hard drive is near, killed by SSD. But let's not be so quick to give up on a technology that stores a whole terabyte for $100.

It'll be years before solid-state flash-memory disks (in this case usually referred to as SSDs) let us cheaply bank the same amounts of data as trusty old hard disk drives for a reasonable price. So, you might as well know how they work, 'cause honestly, they'll have a place on or next to your desk holding all the crap that won't fit on daintier solid state drives—HD movies, huge pictures, music and who knows what else if you're Jason Chen.

What Goes on Inside
The reason hard drive is abbreviated as HDD is that it's really a hard disk drive. Inside you've got what's called a "platter," which is a magnetized recording surface that spins around really really fast, with a head that zooms across the disk to read and write data, think kinda like a record player, except that the head never actually touches the disk except, as you will see below, when bad things happen. [Image via Wikipedia]

Hard drives also come in a few different sizes, with 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5" being the most common, but they've been bigger (and smaller). 3.5" is for desktops, 2.5" is for notebooks (or obsessively quiet desktops), and 1.8" is what goes in classic iPods, MacBook Airs and other small portable devices.

The more platters a drive has, the more data it can hold, but most advances in storage have focused on increasing storage density. A really high-capacity drive can have four platters, while many 3.5" desktop models and some elite laptop 2.5" drives have three platters. Most laptop drives and all the 1.8" portable-device drives that we know of are limited to two platters.

The real catalyst for those 1TB and 1.5TB monster drives pooped out by Hitachi and Seagate wasn't platter stacking, though. It was perpendicular magnetic recording, which allows for triple storage density by storing data vertically (or perpendicularly) along the platter's recording layer, rather than spreading it out across it horizontally (parallel-ly?). However, data is more fragile and susceptible to erasure when stored vertically, hence the slow creep in precision allowing for greater storage densities and capacities.

What All Those Numbers and Letters Mean
You might've noticed hard drives are often labeled as IDE or SATA or PATA or PITA (kidding), with specs like 5400RPM or 7200RPM, plus they come in various sizes, like 1.8, 2.5 or 3.5-inches. Confusing, no? So here's all that crap means.

RPM means the same thing it does in cars, rotations revolutions per minute. In hard drives it's important because the faster the disk spins, the faster it can read and write data. 7200RPM is the standard for desktop drives, but performance models run at 10,000RPM or 15,000RPM. Notebook drives typically run at 5400RPM, because they're smaller, but recently, you can order them with 7200RPM to get more performance at the cost of battery life.

A higher RPM is the single greatest performance variable, since the faster it spins, the more data it can read or write within whatever time frame—it also makes access faster, since the head doesn't have to wait as long to pass over the right data once it's moved to the right spot. And a faster (lower) seek time, basically, refers to how long it takes for the drive to move its head where it needs to go to read or write data. High end drives have a seek time of just 2ms, while typical consumer drives are close to 9ms. Also, the higher the buffer—most typically 8, 16 or 32MB—the more data it can pre-cache, though Tom's Hardware found that you getdiminishing returns there.

How They Connect
The various kinds of drives essentially refers to how it interfaces or connects with your computer's motherboard. There are a bunch, but only a few worth knowing. Up until the last few years, the dominant standard was ATA, or Advanced Technology Attachment. Once SATA, or serial ATA, came onto the map (more on that in a sec), regular ATA picked up the alternative name parallel ATA.

Further revisions to the ATA spec allowed for hard drives with greater storage and faster transfer speeds, and you might see drives using the later spec revisions called "Ultra ATA" or something similar, and they can transfer data at 133MBps (which is slooooow). ATA drives are commonly called IDE (integrated drive electronics), but ATA is more precise. If you've ever messed around inside a computer, you'd recognize them because they connected to fatass ribbon cables that take up a lot of room. The third major interface, which you should know of, but not necessarily about, is SCSI (pronounced "scuzzy"), which was primarily used in the enterprise or high-end space when ATA was still king. The ATA/IDE interface also confused some with its master/slave assignations, which, as you'll see, is no longer a problem.

Okay, so the current hard drive standard in consumer PCs as of a few years ago is SATA, which is worlds better than ATA. For one, it's faster—first-gen devices ran at 1.5Gbps, but now they're up to 3Gbps, and are on the road to hitting 6Gbps. Also, their cables are way thinner, for better air flow and less tangly crap inside your case. And because they're smarter and don't depend on a lot of configuration, they're easy to work with, and are even hot-swappable. Newer external drives use a variant of SATA, eSATA (e for external) that essentially just moves the port to the outside of the computer case, delivering SATA speed for peripherals. Soon, eSATA will come in a bus-powered format, much like the smaller portable USB drives you see today.

Fast seek times are different than fast transfer times from a good interface—one pertains to how quickly the data can be located on the disk, and the other is how fast it can be sent over. To describe it in somewhat oversimplified terms, you can see how a slow interface on a fast seek drive would be better for a system that's constantly shifting tiny bits of data, where a fast interface on a relatively slower drive is good for moving really large files around.

Why They Die
Remember how I said the head usually never touches the drive's platter surface? When the head actually does touch the drive platter, it's what's called a head crash (check out the video above), and it means you're skee-rewed. Normally the head flies on a tiny pocket of air, but a single particle can make the head bounce on the disk, totally hosing the magnetic layer, especially at higher RPMs. And it just gets worse from there, because stuff scraped away by a head crash making it more likely that more head crashes will happen. More mundanely, the delicate mechanical parts eventually just wear out over time, which is typically measured by the the drive's rated mean time between failures. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do to predict when your drive is gonna go down in flames, unless you bought a drive from a series suffering manufacturing defects.

So what is really the single most important thing you should know about hard drives? Back your crap up, they may be awesome, but that doesn't mean they're without weakness.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about drives, personal storage or other hard things to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

Network-attached storage options are more abundant than ever, but jumping into the copious bush of NAS can be quite a task, especially if you want a system that plays nice with both PC and Mac. Macs have historically been an unreasonably complex challenge for many networking products, and NAS was no exception. Here I've assessed the usefulness of three different cash-conscious strategies for setting up a Mac-and-PC-friendly NAS: Building a NAS out of an old PC, using a router with an external USB drive and buying a dedicated product.

Maybe you're wondering why you need a NAS at all. The answer is that you have too much stuff to not have one. How do I know? Because even my parents have a billion photos on their hard drive, and they know nothing of BitTorrent and Handbrake. An NAS sits there in a corner, a blinking, quietly purring guardian of all those song, video and photo files. It holds it all, streams it to just about anything else on the network, and even keeps a redundant copy safe on a separate mirrored RAID drive in case the shit really hits the fan. So yeah, you need one.

Here are the three systems I pieced together:
• My DIY system was concocted using FreeNAS software and an older ThinkPad I had lying around. This was technically the cheapest of the bunch.
• My router-based system was an AirPort Extreme with attached WD and LaCie USB drives, which was also "recycling" but cost a bit more.
• The dedicated NAS appliance I tested was a two-drive Synology DS207+, $330 for the box but the drives themselves are sold separately.

To evaluate the usefulness of each financial step up, I used three main criteria: Overall performance, availability of redundant data via RAID 1, and whether it's possible to add in features like media streaming, remote access or integrated BitTorrent.

In a mixed Mac/Windows environment, the main performance factor for Macs is support for Apple File Protocol for connecting network shares. AFP support is becoming more and more common in nicer NAS rigs, but it is still not a given in the cheaper range—every NAS alive supports SMB/CIFS, the more Windows-friendly protocol, so PCs generally don't have a problem. While Macs can connect to NAS using SMB—and also NFS Unix, which you may also run across—performance wise, OS X's SMB implementation is still shoddy compared to the apparently seamless AFP. (SMB also includes foibles such as filename length restrictions that can throw a Mac into fits.) If you're using an NAS to its highest potential, moving a lot of data around, SMB will cause more spinning death wheels and system hangs in OS X than AFP will.

It's up to you whether you want to go RAID 1 or not—you can also merge or stripe the drives for more storage but less protection. For me, redundancy is a must. I want to be able to give a NAS's drives a workout and still breathe easy in the not entirely unlikely event of a drive blow-out. NAS add-ons like BitTorrent, remote access and integrated UPnP are nice higher-end features, but they may not be as important to you.

DIY NAS With FreeNAS
I took an old IBM ThinkPad X31 I had lying around and installed FreeNAS—an open-source operating system based on FreeBSD that is similar to the OS you'll find in most NAS boxes. It offers similar features like RAID if the machine it's installed on has multiple drives, and can do UPnP, FTP access and the like via a web-based admin panel just like most dedicated rigs.

Initial installation is actually not too tough—just burn the FreeNAS live CD and boot it, then follow the install instructions. FreeNAS will re-format your drives to the somewhat obscure UFS file system it prefers (don’t try to run it on already-formatted drives, it’s not worth the immense hassle). I was up and running with AFP and SMB sharing without too much sweat. Like Linux, FreeNAS runs on a ton of hardware, so unless you’ve got something obscure you’ll likely be in business.Verdict: If you're heavy on outdated PCs and you derive pleasure from thrift and tinkering, you should give FreeNAS a try. That said, don't expect your pig in lipstick to be a screamer. Most aging desktops would be an improvement over my 5-year-old laptop with its slow 2.5” disk, obviously, but even considering that, my real-world tests were pretty rough. Browsing large folders of files hung the system on numerous occasions, and streaming of video files (especially seeking) was choppy. As far as extras go, my PS3 recognized FreeNAS's UPnP server but could not read any media, which would probably take some serious hackery to diagnose. Extras like an integrated BitTorrent client are available as well as open-source add-ons, but again, expect some heavy tinkering. Still, if you have unused hardware, try this option first.

Total Cost: Free, ideally; factor in $150 bucks for a few new drives.

Router with Shared External USB Drive
I've had bad luck in my previous, brief attempts at attaching USB storage to routers—rough performance and dropped connections abounded. This was with a few older non-Apple 802.11g routers, but naturally, I assumed the AirPort Extreme base station's AirPort Disk feature for connecting external drives was going to suck as bad. I was wrong.

Verdict: In day-to-day use for media storing, sharing and streaming, the AirPort Disk works pretty much without a hitch. I connected both a WD MyBook Mirror with RAID 1 and an older LaCie 300GB single-disk drive. In both cases, setup took literally 15 seconds after plugging in the drive—there are only a few config options to deal with in the AirPort Utility app to set access controls—and after that, it appeared as a shared volume source on Windows machines and Macs automatically. Browsing files and loading music in iTunes loaded without any noticeable difference from when my library was connected via USB, and streaming large video files to a PS3 with UPnP was skip-free.

Total Cost: $200 WD MyBook Mirror 1TB + $165 for AirPort Extreme on Amazon, so you're looking at $365. Chances are, you already have a USB drive and maybe even the AirPort, so the cost goes down considerably. (I do recommend acquiring a RAID 1 dual-drive, though.) Keep in mind, part of this sunk cost includes a solid 802.11n router, which you need anyway. There are, of course, several other 802.11n routers from the networking biggies that offer a USB connection for sharing. If you've had a good experience with any of these when connecting via both PCs and Macs, let us know in the comments.

Dedicated NAS
A ready-to-go NAS is the most obvious choice for adding network storage, but it can also be the most perilous. Go too cheap, and your box probably won’t support the Mac-tastic AFP. And even if it does, its performance may still be under par and its add-on features may not be good enough to warrant the added expense.

One of the most affordable AFP-equipped, well-reviewed NAS devices is the Synology DS207+ which, at $330 before you even buy the drives, isn't cheap at all. (If you don't have some drives lying around, the total cost will approach $500.) I picked it because, according to NAS aficionados like the folks at Small Network Builder with their handy NAS Charts, it yielded the best value in what I was looking for. Above the improved compatibility, it throws in tasty perks like a BitTorrent manager for downloading directly to the NAS, UPnP for streaming to a compatible TV or PS3, and a nice web-based control interface you can access from anywhere.
Verdict: Performance was the sour note here, surprisingly. While a large file transfer took roughly same amount of time as it did on the other configurations, doing things that required many quick reads, like opening my iTunes music folder with thousands of artist subfolders in Finder, took days on either a MacBook Pro via AFP, or a PS3 via UPnP. Using iTunes to locate the source MP3 file of a song playing hung up the Finder for so long it crashed. Loading a photo library in Aperture or Lightroom was equally painful, with frequent stalls.

I shouldn’t fully write-off an unseen quirk with my particular network setup. The folks at Synology thought everything sounded kosher, but did point out that the AirPort Extreme router I used for testing does not support jumbo frames (a way of optimizing gigabit ethernet traffic) so some gains could be reaped there with a different router. Also, much of my testing was done over 802.11g—browsing on a wireless N connection may fare better, although slowness was apparent on both the PS3 and my laptop when both were connected via gigabit ethernet, which should be blazing.

Dedicated NAS systems do provide extras such as UPnP, remote access via FTP or SSH, a built-in web server, and more. Still, your computer can already handle those just as well. With the drive attached as a network volume, your computer can act as the conduit even if it’s got nothing stored locally, serving media via a local UPnP server (like Tversity for Windows or MediaLink for OS X) and giving remote access to a local drive. A built-in Torrent client is the one I could see being useful, so if you’re a heavy Torrenter, consider that.

Total Cost: $330 for the NAS + approximately $160 (2 x 500GB drive) = $490. Yes, you can go cheaper (especially if you only need a single drive), but you will likely lose the Mac's AFP speed advantage.

Final Verdict
The quickest and simplest route out of the three is definitely an AirPort Disk, and it’s also, somewhat surprisingly, a performance winner in my real-world testing. Still, on a different network setup—if your primary machines are wired, for instance—the results could swing heavily back toward a dedicated box like the DS207+, so this isn't to say dedicated rigs should be written off completely. It’s important to pick the best performing NAS for your setup, but do it while sticking to our strategy: Start by spending as little as possible; if you’re unsatisfied, move up in baby steps.

And yes, Windows-only networks don’t have to jump through quite so many hoops when it comes to network storage, since SMB/CIFS support is the default in low-cost boxes, which works just fine in a Windows-only environment. If you don’t have a network with both Macs and PCs, there are a number of different routes you can take here that may be cheaper or more suited to what you need. Our three options offer a good balance of performance while keeping both platforms (and Linux, too) relatively happy.

NAS-land can get pretty crazy, and subject to the particular interactions of each person's own gear, so by all means throw in your own experiences and recommendations in the comments, and further help folks who are jumping into the NAS game for the first time.

The Price: $699 for 2TB, $999 for 4TB (tested)

Verdict It's a cubular vault of 4TB of basically enterprise-class networked storage that sits on your desk and feels like it could stop a round from the world's deadliest carbine—what's not to like?

It's basically impossible to test actual drive reliability in the short span of review time (though everyone has their own opinion about which companies they love or loathe), so really what it comes down to here is ease of installation—which WD is touting heavily, so you won't need an IT geek—and features.

Western Digital's software walks you through most of the setup, though I still had to manually map the network drives in Vista, and Bonjour didn't automatically pick it up on my roommate's Mac. More frustrating is that despite having a gigabit router and using gigabit cables, I did not see gigabit speeds out of the box—or at all, with transfer speeds hovering around 10.5MB/s writing and 12MB/s pulling data. The default RAID5 configuration in the 4TB model (which balances redundancy against eating whole hard drives, leaving you with 2.66TB actually free) is noted for its relatively poor write performance compared to RAID1, and you'd be better off performance-wise with the latter if you're planning on doing a lot of write-intensive stuff, but that still doesn't explain the gap here.

It also comes with their automatic backup and remote access programs, Anywhere Backup and Mionet, though they annoyingly only give you three licenses for the latter, so if you've got four computers you want to continuously back up, you'll have to get another license. But whatever, the best feature is the built-in iTunes music server, which worked flawlessly. Dump a whole bunch of music into the shared music folder and it automatically shows up as a networked source in iTunes and showed up like magic on my PC and roommate's Mac.

Another (small) aggravation is that it's not hot swappable, so if you want to pop out one of the drives and maybe drop in a 1.5TB drive, you have to power the whole thing down. But I can almost forgive that since three USB ports let you plug other external drives into the box to expand storage even further.

While it's definitely overkill for average home usage, if you're that serious about centralized storage (like if you're if prosumer photographer) or you know, actually running a small business, despite its handful of flaws, if you've got the cash, it's definitely worth looking at. [Western Digital]