Seagate today announced the availability of its new GoFlex Slim portable hard drive –– a svelte, 9mm, 2.5–inch external drive designed for the latest trend of portable, thin, stylish laptops and netbooks. Initially showcased at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics show in January of this year, the new GoFlex Slim performance drive is now available on www.seagate.com, in–store and at select online retailers. A 320GB version of the GoFlex Slim drive can be purchased for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $99.99 USD.

At an ultra–sleek 9mm—38 percent leaner than the current GoFlex ultra–portable drives—the new GoFlex Slim drive is roughly the width of a pencil. Sliding effortlessly into a pocket, purse or messenger bag, the GoFlex Slim portable drive enables transport, access and enjoyment of personal digital content from anywhere, making it the perfect complement to today’s mobile lifestyle. Equipped with a 7200RPM drive and a USB3.0 interface to accelerate transfer speeds up to 10x faster than USB2.0, this attractive super–slim drive delivers quick access to large, multi–media files such as HD movies and video games. The faster drive speed takes full advantage of the included plug–and–play USB 3.0 interface, while still maintaining compatibility with USB 2.0 ports. The GoFlex Slim portable drive also allows for use between Windows and Mac computers, interchangeably, without formatting or performance loss. Additionally, the drive’s included p remium backup software provides automatic and continuous backups and encrypts files and folders.

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Buffalo Technology today announced the highly anticipated, revolutionary Buffalo CloudStor personal storage solution is now shipping. First revealed at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, 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.

At the center of every CloudStor is the Pogoplug® 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.

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Apacer is proud to announce the launch of the new AC230 USB 3.0 external HDD (hard disk drive). With read and write speed up to 92 MB and 85 MB per second, the newly unveiled AC230 is three times faster than USB 2.0 equivalent models, giving you a boost in performance while backing up all quantities of data and media files, without the hassle of waiting.

With the increasing popularity of high-resolution videos and digital photography, storage requirements for backing up, storing and sharing data can amount to hundreds of GBs. The same can be said about the outrageous expected wait times for handling such important tasks. The Apacer AC230 External HDD, however, exhibits a top data transfer rate of up to 92 MB/s for reading and 85 MB/s for writing, taking only 4 minutes to transfer a 20 GB high-resolution video.

In contrast to the 12 minutes it usually takes with a USB 2.0 hard drive, the AC230 HDD remarkably outperforms conventional USB 2.0 drives by shortening transmission time by three times! This impressive capability makes Apacer proud to say that “while USB 3.0 interface improves data transfer rates and saves consumers time, it is still priced high. Only the Apacer AC230 External HDD addresses the need for both the best transfer speed and an affordable price, making it the best choice on the market.”

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Panasonic announced today that they will begin shipping the first 100GB BD-RE XL media (LM-BE100J) to the Japanese market on April 15th. These new triple-layer, rewritable Blu-ray discs are fully compliant with the BDXL specification and can hold about 12 hours of terrestrial digital HD (17 Mbps) or 8 hours and 40 minutes of BS Digital HD (24 Mbps) video. Panasonic's new BD-RE XL media also features a special coating that helps protect against dirt, fingerprints, scratches and dents.

Panasonic has not released pricing yet. However, the discs are expected to cost about 10,000 Yen ($119US) a piece. Yikes!