There’s a lot of shiny and flashy gadgets and home entertainment devices that will entice most of the population during the holidays – cameras, music players, camcorders and tablets are sure to be this season’s top sellers once again. But once gift recipients start to create content, listen to music, download apps or record videos, they will eventually need a good, safe and reliable digital place to store their stuff. That’s where storage comes in – it’s not always the sexiest product category, but there’s a lot of new innovations in storage that we think will make good gifts as well:
Watch a slideshow version of some of these products.
Products reviewed in this category
NUS2000 Network USB Storage Link+, by Cirago
CDD2000 Hard Drive Docking Station USB 3.0, by Cirago
ioSafe Rugged Portable hard drive, by ioSafe
My Passport Essential (500 GB) hard drive and Nomad rugged case, by Western Digital
1T Wireless External Hard drive designed by Neil Poulton, by LaCie
LaPlug, by LaCie
GoFlex Turbo, by Seagate
GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage, by Seagate
GoFlex Slim external hard drive, by Seagate
GoFlex Desk external hard drive (4TB), by Seagate
DataTraveler 109 with urDrive, by Kingston Technology
SuperHero Backup & Charger for iPhone, by Iomega
The reviews
NUS2000 Network USB Storage Link+, by Cirago
Network-attached storage is the way to go for many enterprises – but the rest of us can also benefit from reliable storage provisioned on a network and thus available to multiple users, client PCs and other devices. One of my personal wishes for some time has been for a little box that can connect any USB storage device to a network, instantly adapting a USB drive to Ethernet, while in no way preventing it from easily shifting back to pure USB.
The Cirago NUS2000 achieves exactly that, providing a SAMBA server in a small box, coupling USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet. While file system support is limited to NTFS, FAT32, and EXT2, that should be plenty for most applications.
Setup was a piece of cake – you just need to connect the NUS2000 to the network, access setup via HTPP or UPnP, and that’s about it. I tested the NUS2000 with a USB thumb drive, but any USB external storage device should work. Configuration options are plentiful, and NUS2000 can even function as an iTunes or media server, or even as a BitTorrent client. Remote access is supported, as is a WebDAV client. There’s also a print server – all in all, a lot of value beyond basic file serving.
As mentioned earlier, I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, and I love the solution. Can I keep it, Keith? Can I? (Ed. Note: We’ll see). For your favorite techie, this is a great gift, whether or not begging is involved. Top marks!
Cool Yule rating: 5 stars
Price: $79.99 (list)
Reviewed by C.J. Mathias
CDD2000 Hard Drive Docking Station USB 3.0, by Cirago
If you’re a techie like me, you’ve got a ton of hard drives in various states of disrepair lying around. Some of these need to be bulk erased before donating to a good cause (the local schools get mine), some need diagnostics and maybe just formatting, and some have lots of old data on them that just needs to be consolidated. Anyway, the usual problem is how to connect a raw drive to a computer to do all of this. My traditional method was to use the guts of a USB 2.0 drive housing, but this is clunky, with lots of exposed electronics and opportunities for, um, error.
Enter the Cirago CDD2000, and this is really cool. Basically, you just drop your 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA I or II drive into the top-loading slot, connect to a USB 3.0 port (although it’s also backwards compatible, of course, to USB 2.0) on a PC, and there you go – a local drive should appear with very little effort. USB 3.0 is a big plus, obviously, in this application. The CDD2000 is a very elegant solution to a problem that all techies worthy of the name have, and it’s a simple, elegant solution that just works. It’s also, by the way, quite useful for testing initializing new drives before they get bolted into that latest cool but tight-fit custom build.
If there’s a computer hobbyist, computer technician, hard drive collector, PC fan, or similar person on your gift list, this will be most appreciated. It’s also a great value – even the required USB 3.0 cable is included.
Cool Yule rating: 5 stars
Price: $39.99 (Amazon)
Reviewed by C.J. Mathias
ioSafe Rugged Portable hard drive, by ioSafe
The ioSafe Rugged Portable was a shining star for the 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. It’s a great little hard drive. The external drive is beautifully crafted from solid aluminum (or titanium), is small, and it doesn’t require an external power source (it’s run off USB 2.0/3.0, or FireWire, if you have that version).
The Rugged Portable is designed to withstand extreme conditions which would cripple an ordinary hard drive. IoSafe bills it “like an aircraft black box for mobile data”, and offers the following guarantees: Crush protection up to 5,000 pounds; drop protection up to 20 feet; and immersion protection in up to 30 feet of water for three days. To back that up, they offer data recovery services up to $5,000, if your drive is somehow compromised. The drive is compatible with both PC and Mac computers (tested to verify), and I can vouch for the following: It will indeed survive being immersed in water, provided you allow it to dry before plugging back in. And it survived, data intact, on being dropped from five feet onto hard carpeted surfaces.
The device I tested was a 750GB drive version spinning at 7200 RPM; it offers HDDs ranging from 500GB to 1TB, which spin at 5400 or 7200 RPM. There are also SSD versions available, ranging in size from 256G to 512GB configurations. You can purchase them in aluminum or titanium configurations, but from what I can gather, the metal type doesn’t seem to affect the warranty or other operational specs (?). I was unable to gather pricing specs from the company's website, which didn’t allow me to configure SSD options.
There are cheaper external hard drives available with higher capacity, but the ioSafe option is the most rugged I’ve tested to date. Coupled with its compact size, modern design and the fact the drive will run without an external power source, the Rugged Portable is an excellent option for travelers and home users prone to dropping things. Highly recommended.
Cool Yule rating: 5 stars
Price: $199 to $399, depending on capacity
Reviewed by Dan Hunt
My Passport Essential (500 GB) hard drive and Nomad rugged case, by Western Digital
I’m a fan of this little hard drive, but I’m partial to slim and light. The company says that you can transfer files 3x as fast to this device via USB 3.0, and it comes with its own 3.0 cable that’s also compatible with USB 2.0 systems. The drive is quick, light and easy to use, requiring no setup as long as you have a Windows 7, Vista or XP computer; some formatting for Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard (and, Lion, one assumes) is required. Like many portable drives on the market, the Passport Essential can automatically back up your files and they can be password protected.
The main part that I like about this hard drive is the associated case (sold separately). The Nomad rugged case – it’s tough, durable and pretty lightweight – WD says it can allow the Passport to safely sustain a fall from 7 feet, as well as protect it from dust and moisture.
I walked around my house dropping the case and drive from various heights onto various surfaces, and the case didn’t show any damage. I also left the case and drive on the carpet next to my cat beds for more than a week, where it would be certain to be near dust and cat hair. You’d never be able to tell. It works just as well as when I first took it out of the box. As technology gets smaller and lighter, I often worry about damaging the gear as it gets more fragile – so I love anything that will protect my technology from me.
Cool Yule rating: 3 stars (hard drive); 4 stars (case)
Price: $94 (for the drive); $17.66 (for the case) – Amazon prices
Reviewed by Jennifer Finn
1T Wireless External Hard drive designed by Neil Poulton, by LaCie
In addition to storing a very nice 1TB of data, the unique feature on this external hard drive is that it’s wireless – using your router, you can allow all of the computers in your home to access shared storage on the drive.
Its speed could use a little boost for my tastes, but I know I shouldn’t be so judgmental because it does have to go through a router first. This hard drive took about one hour to upload 4GB of files from a computer. If directly plugged in to your computer, it claims it will transfer 480Mbps (we’d recommend you transfer your initial files via the PC instead of wireless) You can also set up regular backup for the PCs within the home.
The initial setup wasn’t simple, but it also wasn’t overly complex. It would be nice if LaCie provided a quick start guide with some dummy diagrams. Instead, though, the quick start guide just instructs you to plug in the machine and then follow the pages of instruction on the installation CD.
This hard drive is completely worth the price, however. Plus, the wireless feature makes it very sweet for any household with multiple computers. I know I’m personally excited to get access to all of the music that my boyfriend has been storing on a variety of small hard drives that I’ve never even seen. It’s nice to see the fruits of a full family network in the home.
Cool Yule rating: 4 stars
Price: $90.14 (Amazon)
Reviewed by Jennifer Finn
LaPlug, by LaCie
I love the idea of being able to take any USB storage drive and connect it to the network, and that’s exactly what Lacie’s LaPlug does – with one interesting twist: in addition to Gigabit Ethernet, this unit also has 300Mbps 802.11n – yes, it can provide a bridge between a drive and the network wirelessly. I’ve done this in the past by integrating a network-ready (NAS) drive and a separate wireless bridge (often called a game adapter), but that’s kludgy and expensive. LaCie provides an all-in-one solution that’s convenient and effective – and astonishingly easy.
How easy? Take it out of the box. Connect it to Ethernet and power. Fire up the Network Assistant software, which serves as a management console, and that’s it. There’s not really very much to manage here – just connect a USB drive to the LaPlug, and you’ll see it right away. Anyone looking for the easiest possible way to connect USB drives to the network need look no further.
OK, it doesn’t have as much flexibility, configurability or features as some similar products, but if all you want to do is get a USB drive on the network, this is the product for you. And all that simplicity makes the LaPlug a great gift indeed.
Cool Yule rating: 4 stars
Price: $98.79 (Amazon)
Reviewed by C.J. Mathias
GoFlexTurbo, by Seagate
The GoFlex Turbo portable hard drive features a 7200 RPM drive, USB 3.0 interface and a free data recovery attempt from SafetyNet should users lose their data. The drive can handle transfer speeds up to 40% faster than its USB 2.0, 5400-RPM counterparts, and comes with the same GoFlex design and cables as its other products in the GoFlex line. This means users can swap cables for different interfaces (eSATA, FireWire, etc.) without needing to purchase a different drive. The unit also lets users swap files between PC and Mac systems without a need for reformatting (although some Mac applications may require reformatting).
The Turbo lives up to its name, it is slightly faster than previous USB 3.0 drives I’ve tested – in my tests, I got a blazing 101.6 MB/sec of read speeds, and between 53M to 58MBps of write speeds. This was up from the 90 or so MBps speeds of tests, which also used USB 3.0 cables but were 5400 RPM drives.
The SafetyNet data recovery service is free for two years, and will cover one recovery attempt on the drive, and specialists will let you know whether a remote or in-lab service is the best way to get back data if a mishap occurs, Seagate says. It’s a nice added bonus for users worried about losing any data on the drive.
Cool Yule rating: 4 stars
Seagate continues to innovate and make storage sexy -- with the GoFlex Satellite, it's another one of those "Why hasn't someone done this before?" moments. The Satellite is a 500GB external hard drive that can wirelessly stream multimedia files (movies, music, photos) to any mobile device (but especially the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch).
Price: $130 (for 500GB); $140 (for 750GB)
Reviewed by Keith ShawGoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage, by Seagate
The Satellite has its own Wi-Fi network -- when you connect your iPad (or other device, including Mac, PC or Android device via a Web browser), you can stream media stored on the Satellite to your iPad. This can free up a ton of space on your iPad -- instead of transferring media to the iPad itself, you can keep it on the much larger GoFlex Satellite. If your media library extends past the 64GB capacity of the top-end iPad, the 500GB capacity makes even more sense.