CES 2011: Seagate's "Data "Lunchbox" Prototype Hard Drive

[Jason Dunn]

<p><object width="600" height="360" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/ttStkIXfW9Y&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ttStkIXfW9Y&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" /></object></p><p>While at CES 2011, one of the more interesting things I saw was a <a href="http://www.seagate.com" target="_blank">Seagate</a> product that's in the prototype phase - it's affectionately called the "Data Lunchbox" product. In short, it's two 7mm Seagate Momentus hard drives (320 GB or 500 GB capacity) in a single external USB 3.0 drive chassis, along with a RAID controller chip. When configured in RAID 0 for speed, the product - remember it's still in the prototype stage - can hit 235 MB/s read and 228 MB/s write speeds. That out-guns the Intel SSD they were benchmarking it against, which hit 203 MB/s read and 154 MB/s write speeds. If you've ever needed to move big files in a hurry, you'd appreciate that level of speed. Alternatively, the product can be configured for RAID 1, which would mean as you put data onto it, you'll have a duplicate of every file.</p><p>What's particularly exciting to me about this product is that it's exactly what I've wanted for quite a while - when I travel and I shoot photos and HD video, hard drive space runs out quick...especially when I only have a 128 GB SSD in my laptop. The ability to put that media content on an external drive, and have it backed up to a second disk, would be fantastic. Add in Seagate's GoFlex technology - which allows you to swap out different cables for connectivity - and you have a solution that I think a lot of photographers and videographers would be excited to purchase.</p><p>Want to see this product come to market? Send a message to <a href="http://twitter.com/seagate" target="_blank">@seagate on Twitter</a> and tell them that you want to see the Data Lunchbox product get released. Let's make this happen!</p>

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Uhhh... RAID 0 is something I'm not going to trust my data to. Even RAID 1 is a bit primitive these days. The idea is interesting, but I think it'll gain more traction with me when HDDs get even cheaper and there's a 4-drive option to implement the more sophisticated versions of RAID.

PS. As a photographer, I've never really worried about space on my notebook drives. :P

[Jason Dunn]

Uhhh... RAID 0 is something I'm not going to trust my data to. Even RAID 1 is a bit primitive these days. The idea is interesting, but I think it'll gain more traction with me when HDDs get even cheaper and there's a 4-drive option to implement the more sophisticated versions of RAID.

I'd be willing to trust RAID 0 short term - making a copy of a big file and moving it around - largely because hard drive failure is so rare nowadays. It happens, but so rarely that I feel like I can trust hard drives short term...as long as I still have a backup. ;) I'm surprised you'd say RAID 1 is primitive - I'd say it's a mature, stable technology that works rather well. Is it really practical to think of a 4-drive enclosure option that would be portable enough to carry in a messenger bag? I suppose if you doubled the size of the Data Lunchbox it would still be fairly small, but that seems like needless overkill to me - we're not talking about this portable drive being a backup of your whole network...?

PS. As a photographer, I've never really worried about space on my notebook drives. :P

Well that's either because you haven't transitioned over to SSDs yet, or you're so filthy rich you have 256 GB+ SSDs in your notebooks. :D Or maybe you don't shoot video...video clips really chew up the storage space.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Whoops, I got the impression it was something like that, a small data centre you carry around with. Otherwise I can just carry two drives.

I don't shoot much video, I guess. My notebook still has a 160GB HDD! :D

[Jason Dunn]

Otherwise I can just carry two drives.

Yeah, but that's kind of the point of this product: instead of carrying two drives and manually copying your data to both drives, you just copy once and RAID 1 takes care of the rest. You don't see an advantage in that? :)

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I'm geek enough to write something that'll handle that, and cheap enough to not want to pay the premium for it. :D

[Jason Dunn]

I'm geek enough to write something that'll handle that, and cheap enough to not want to pay the premium for it. :D

Haha. OK, fair enough. :D For those of us who value simplicity and performance and are willing to pay for it, this is a great product idea. :cool: