Do you need a bus-powered 1 TB hard disk? You're in luck - LaCie announced the Little Big Disk Quadra today.
Available in early July, the Little Big Disk Quadra uses a pair of drives in a RAID 0 configuration for speedy response. My personal concern is that if one of the two RAID drives goes out, you'd lose all of the data in the array. Although LaCie states that it's "Compatible with Time Machine", the Little Big Disk Quadra is probably better-suited as a scratch drive for video work on the go.
This is a tiny drive considering the capacity - the outside dimensions are 1.6 x 3.3 x 5.5 in. (40 x 85 x 140 mm) and it tips the scales at 1.4 lbs (650 g). You don't need to use the included AC adapter when using the Little Big Disk Quadra with FireWire 400 or 800, but you will need it when using the drive with eSATA or USB 2.0.
Some sites are stating immediate availability, but LaCie has confirmed that it will be several weeks before the Little Big Disk is available.
Are you looking for a tiny portable hard drive for doing Time Machine backups on the road? I do a lot of traveling with my MacBook Air and don't often get a chance to back it up to the 1 TB monster at home. Although there are several other diminutive hard drives on the market, when I saw the My Passport Studio line of portable drives announced today by Western Digital, I ordered one. After all, the case matches my AirBook!
Available in 160 ($129.99), 250 ($189.99), and 320 GB ($219.99) flavors, My Passport Studio drives are about 3.2" x 5.0" x .71" (81mm x 127 mm x 18 mm) in size and weigh a featherweight 6.4 ounces (.18 kg). The drives are bus powered -- USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 -- so there's no need to tote a power brick when you're traveling. They're formatted as HFS+ Journaled, requiring Mac OS X 10.4.11+ or 10.5.2+.
The drives are available from Western Digital, and through a variety of online and brick-and-mortar stores. The 250 and 320 GB drives are showing back-order status.
Thanks to Denver pal Mike for the phone call tip this morning!
UK drive recovery company Retrodata is warning customers of a rash of failures involving a particular Seagate drive model, a SATA unit made in China and used in Apple laptops. This specific mechanism, according to Retrodata's intake notes, seems to be prone to a spectacular self-destruct where the drive heads auger into the platter, rendering the data mostly dead.
How to spot the potentially affected drive: check System Profiler under Serial ATA, and if you have a Seagate drive with a 7.01 firmware revision... well, double-check those backups.
Two days after Apple TV Hacks published the much sought-after USB hard drive hack for the Apple TV, the site is making a call for help to polish the modification. For now, the hack isn't for the faint of heart - it requires some mucking around at the command line, not to mention an Intel Mac to apply the patch (i.e. - PowerPC Mac and Windows owners seem to be out of luck for now). It also appears that the hack is confirmed to not work on Apple TVs that have had their software updated to the 1.1 YouTube edition.
Specifically, Apple TV Hacks is looking for help to simplify the hack's process and, ideally, bundle it in a GUI to make it a lot easier for all users to apply. Compatibility with the 1.1 Apple TV software is also on the todo list, since reverting one's Apple TV back to the original software and losing all the new features isn't the first thing most users want to do.
If you have any skills with helping out on hacks or bundling them into a GUI, or if you know a developer who might, send them over to the Apple TV Hacks post to see if they can lend a hand.
If you've got a MacBook with a cramped hard drive, and you're kind of handy, check out this official DIY manual from Apple. As someone who has changed the drives on beastly Nubus Macs and 1st generation iMacs, I can tell you that the process described here is a breeze.
So pick up a drive and save yourself some labor fees. This one is a piece of cake.
WeaKnees is now shipping a do-it-yourself Apple TV upgrade kit. If you're not afraid of cracking open your new Apple TV and doing a little work on your own, this is a great way to save some time and perform the upgrade in a safe fashion. WeaKnees provides a pre-formatted Apple TV-compatible 160GB 2.5" Seagate drive, a couple of Torx screwdrivers, installation and a hefty amount of support (via phone, e-mail and forums).
You remove the rubber backing from your Apple TV, unscrew a few screws, replace the hard drive and put it all back together. Plug it back in and you're upgraded. You don't have to spend hours copying disks, expanding partitions or any of the difficult or tedious steps involved in upgrading. Best of all, WeaKness says it provides a six month warranty.
Let's do the math here. If you were to walk into a CompUSA to buy a 160 GB Seagate, it would set you back $140. A couple of Torx screwdrivers? About $5-$10 at Lowes. So for that extra $50 or so, you save yourself some gas and a day of work (and, trust me, I've *been* there doing that disk copying and restoring--and it's overrated and boring and can fail if you don't have the proper external enclosures). And you get that warranty as well.
So if you've hesitated about doing the upgrade but you're not afraid of opening a computer, this may be the opportunity you've been waiting for. I'm thinking about doing this myself.
Yesterday we found a couple of companies who are offering hard drive upgrade plans for Apple TVs. For those of us who already scored one of Apple's latest gadgets, this post-purchase service is music to our ears (though maybe not to our wallets) - but for potential buyers, PowerMax does one better by selling Apple TVs straight out the gate with a pre-upgraded 120GB hard drive for $449. This is a serious advantage over both MacService and TechRestore, as their post-Apple TV purchase upgrade services raise your total investment to $534 and $497.99 for the same size drive, respectively. As icing on the cake, however, PowerMax goes yet another step further by offering a full 1-year warranty on the Apple TV, though no hard drive-specific warranty is specified (as I mentioned yesterday, MacService and TechRestore both warranty the drives they install - not the Apple TV itself, however - for up to 3-5 years).
All these upgrade options are fantastic for both new and existing Apple TV owners who are experiencing bouts of 40GB-induced claustrophobia. While I'm glad these companies are doing a great job of picking up the ball that Apple so horribly dropped, I still hope the company pays attention to the market and treats us right with the Apple TV 2.0. Heck, it isn't too late even for an Apple TV 1.5 that offers decently sized hard drives. Hey Apple, *knock knock* - you listening?
Worried about ruining more than the warranty of your Apple TV whilst trying the DIY hard drive upgrade? Then why risk getting your hands dirty - TechRestore and MacService are more than happy to take care of the heavy lifting for you. Both companies have recently debuted overnight Apple TV hard drive upgrade services that begin with 60GB drives and go all the way up to 160GB. While both companies are fairly hush-hush about what this service does to your warranty (hint: say your goodbyes before shipping the device off), the good news is that drives they install do carry warranties of 3-5 years.
Looking through the two services reveals some interesting differences. First, MacService more or less offers all-inclusive packages - overnight shipping through and through, with a single list of prices laid out to keep things simple. TechRestore, on the other hand, offers a couple of shipping options and seems to be slightly cheaper (especially when choosing the full overnight option) in price, though I've never had experience with either company to see if 'you pay for what you get' (a Dave Matthews twist on the ol' adage) holds true.
Both services are live and kicking, so feel free to comment on your experience if you take advantage of the upgrade.
I'll let you in on a little TUAW secret: the reason we rarely post our own takeapart galleries of new Apple gear is that we like the products way too much to break them into little, un-warranty-covered pieces. Not to mention that we pay for them out of our own pockets. Anyway, our main topic of conversation today has been "Who's going to try to upgrade their Apple TV hard drive? Erica? David? Somebody break that sucker open and upgrade it!"
Somebody did. Brave/foolhardy Apple TV owner Jonathan Bare cracked open his shiny pizza box and plopped in a 120 GB hard drive, exact methodology of brain transplant yet to be announced (I would lay money on a Disk Utility or CCC clone). So far, so good; the pictures are here.
Do you feel lucky? Got an iPod with a dead, undersized or otherwise less-than-peachy hard drive? Well, pilgrim, surf your way over to Command-Tab for a detailed, delightful rundown on iPod hard drive replacement. They've got the scoop on every drive that will fit in full-size current and past model players, plus detailed replacement instructions and tool info (careful with that razor blade, Sparky!) for the do-it-yourselfer behind those white earbuds. Now, my inventory of dead iPods includes one Mini that could use new storage; for that I might have to go with this series of tips on upgrading to 4, 8 or 16 GB of Flash RAM.
Ah, the weekend; it stretches out before you like an open field, waiting to be plowed into furrows of laundry, errands, home improvements and recreation. Of course, for us, recreation = new stuff for our beloved Macintoshes! Ready to load up that shiny new Airport Extreme with some capacious shared storage to hold your iTunes library? Let's see... mix one part Staples $140 closeout deal on 500GB Maxtor PATA internal drive, add in one part external FW/USB enclosure with wicked flame graphics for $30... result: one excellent drive that wouldn't look out of place alongside the Mystery Machine. If you prefer the MacAlly cases (rugged!), there's a free shipping deal on those too.
Update: The trend of the comments is decidedly unfavorable towards the reliability of both the Maxtor drive and the Metal Gear case, so: message received. Here's a deal on a cheaper DiabloTek enclosure, which makes up for the extra you'll spend on a Seagate or WD drive. If you'd prefer a SATA drive, there is a Maxtor out there for a strangely low $127, as pointed out by Trojan below.
Our own former C.K. Sample III turned us on to some more sleeper features of Apple's quietly-introduced AirPort Extreme. Specifically, that new USB hard drive sharing feature is called AirPort Disk, and it has a few tricks up its sleeve. First, it can share a drive with both Macs and PCs, but its setup utility can easily set the drive to auto-mount when you login or start up your machine. Not content to stop there, however, you can even set up individual accounts for each machine on the network with access to only specific files or folders. Not bad for a $179 device.
For getting a couple of gigabytes from point A to point B, thereareplenty of onlineoptions. For getting lots of gigabytes from point A to point B... well, never underestimate the bandwidth of a carryon bag full of hard drives. If you're gonna fly that drive, best to go ruggedized and improve the likelihood of all the bits arriving safely at sunny, scenic point B.
If you're in the rugged drive market, RadTech is now shipping its tough line of Impact HDD enclosures for 2.5/3.5" drives. The aluminum casings are listed for crush loads of 4000 pounds and the drives themselves are mounted on flexible bushings to improve shock resistance. The enclosures support PATA or SATA for drive connection, and on the SATA 3.5" model you can use eSATA to connect a host (in addition to the usual Firewire 4/800 and USB2 ports). The company has also updated the Drivemate USB 1" product to include an 8 GB, encryption-enabled pocket drive. Pricing and options available over yonder at RadTech's site.
PC World reports that Toshiba has developed a 1.8-inch 100GB hard drive, suitable for use in portable music devices. Adding a 25% jump over current storage, the new drive is sized perfectly to fit into iPods.
Production should begin next month and the drive itself will be shown at the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The first 1.8" drive developed in 2000 could hold 2GB and cost $740. Today, you can buy an 80GB iPod for about $350.
We aren't sure if this new option appeared today with the newly-updated MacBook Pro, but it's the first time we've heard of it: reader Mark S tipped us off to the availability of a 750GB hard drive option in the iMac 24-inch and the Mac Pro. The massive drive isn't available in any other iMac (they still cap out 500GB), but with 4 available bays in the Mac Pro, they can now be configured with 3 terabytes of storage straight out the gate. That's a lot of iTS movies.
These drives don't come cheap, however: typical of Apple, each 750GB drive (across both machines) is a somewhat expensive $399 upgrade, so that's an extra $1596 just for the bragging rights of having the big bertha of Mac Pros on the block.
Do you need a bus-powered 1 TB hard disk? You're in luck - LaCie announced the Little Big Disk Quadra today. 
Are you looking for a tiny portable hard drive for doing 
UK drive recovery company Retrodata is 
Two days after 
If you've got a MacBook with a cramped hard drive, and you're kind of handy, check out 
WeaKnees is now shipping a do-it-yourself 
Yesterday we found a couple of companies who are offering hard drive upgrade plans for Apple TVs. For those of us who already scored one of Apple's latest gadgets, this post-purchase service is music to our ears (though maybe not to our wallets) - but for potential buyers, 
I'll let you in on a little TUAW secret: the reason we rarely post our own takeapart galleries of new Apple gear is that we like the products way too much to break them into little, un-warranty-covered pieces. Not to mention that we pay for them out of our own pockets. Anyway, our main topic of conversation today has been "Who's going to try to upgrade their 
Do you feel lucky? Got an 
Ah, the weekend; it stretches out before you like an open field, waiting to be plowed into furrows of laundry, errands, home improvements and recreation. Of course, for us, recreation = new stuff for our beloved Macintoshes! Ready to load up that shiny new 
For getting a couple of gigabytes from point A to point B, 
PC World 
We aren't sure if this new option appeared today with the 
