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GetUSB.info started in 2004 with the concept of providing USB information for everything USB related. At the time, USB was gaining momentum and every day new products, articles and news became published. Today, the site is focused on bringing technical information, tricks and hacks to USB related products. The site does publish off topic information as well, to keep the variety up. Please visit the footer area of any page if you or your company is interested in article or product placement via purchased advertising.
Every tech guy I know anxiously awaits the CES trade show at the start of each year. I think it’s the only help for getting us through the vacation blues after a long Christmas break. I’ve seen a bunch of news about USB 3.0 gear from CES 2011. Many of them are USB hard drives and here are the most recent five we’ve read about.
Buffalo
Buffalo launches a complete line of USB 3.0 storage devices. The DriveStation Quad USB 3.0 is a four drive, high speed RAID enabled storage solution offering transfer speeds up to 235 MB/s, twice as fast as USB 2.0. Equipped with four hard drives configured in RAID 5, DriveStation Quad USB 3.0 also supports RAID 0, 10 and JBOD modes for flexibility between data redundancy and available storage capacity
Seagate
Seagate introduces some new ‘super slim’ USB 3.0 hard drives. Seagate’s new ultra-portable GoFlex drive comes in a metal case that’s only 9 millimeters thick, which Seagate says is a full 38% thinner than their previous generation. This is made possible by some 7 millimeter thick 2.5″ drives that still manage to deliver 7200 rpm performance via USB power, and you get a solid 340 gigs for
Continue Reading
The AirStash, in one word, Amazing. This device solves all the problems of lack of storage with Apple products. With the AirStash you can now budget down to purchase the cheapest iPad or iPhone because the AirStash gives you the extra storage you need.
The AirStash, in simple terms, is a wireless storage dongle you carry around which provides unlimited storage.
The AirStash uses self powered WiFi to sync with your iPod, iPad or iPhone. The AirStash uses an SD slot for unlimited storage. The controller on the AirStash will recognize up to 32GB SD cards…from there you just swap out memory and keep saving.
Since the AirStash is wireless you can stream audio or video from the device to your Apple product. This means you can run GBs of music or videos without bogging down all the memory on your iPhone or iPad.
The only drawback I see is that you cannot dump photo’s from your Apple product to the AirStash [I’ve emailed the company to make sure my info is correct]. But you can easily take pictures using a digital camera [that uses SD cards] and simply pull the SD card from the digital camera and upload those photo’s to your iPhone / iPad.
The AirStash [kudos on the creative name] is available for $99 and is well worth the money rather than paying $100s more for a bigger Apple product.
If you’re not convinced yet, watch this 3 min YouTube video and get hooked.
Continue Reading
The iTunes backups for your mobile iPhone device or iPad device will eventually suck up much of your hard drive space. From the source article, this can be as much as 20% or more, depending on the amount of content iTunes is backing up.
To alleviate this problem, you can redirect your iTunes backup location to be an external storage drive, or a 2nd hard drive on your system. By using a Windows symbolic link routine, you can take control of where the backup location will reside.
For this tutorial you’ll need to download NTFS Junction utility [free] and do some CMD prompt edits to bring it all together. If you are not comfortable with the above, yet quest the solution, then I recommend getting someone a bit more knowledgeable with Windows to perform the task.
So to begin, you need to download this free tool to create NTFS Junctions. (This is a tool provided by a Microsoft engineer on Microsoft’s website ironically enough)
When you unzip that file, extract the junction.exe into the C:\Windows folder so that you can run in from anywhere.
Next up, you need to move all of your existing backup files to their new location. This could be secondary hard drive, or another partition, or even an external hard drive. Before we move the files, make sure iTunes is closed.
To move the files, open up a “My Computer†Window and type this into the address bar: “C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync†(without the quote of course) and press enter. This should take you into your iTunes MobileSync Folder where the Backup folder is located.
You need to right click on the Backup folder and select “Cutâ€.
Now navigate to where you’d like your backups to be located. For me, I wanted them on the D: drive in a folder I created called “iTunes Backupâ€. Paste the Backup folder to this location.
Next you need to open a command prompt. To do this, click on the Start button and type in “cmd†(again, no quotes) and then press enter. A black window should open up that looks like this.
Now for the easy part, creating the junction. All you need to do to create the junction is type in the word “junction†then the path to where Windows stores the files, then the path to where you decided to place your backup. So for me, I typed in: Junction “C:\Users\onelson\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup†“D:\iTunes Backup\Backup†(Note that there are quotes around both paths since both paths contain spaces, these quotes are required).
If everything worked correctly, the junction command should indicate that it created the junction
If you decide to use an external storage device be sure the device is powered on before you start the backup process. Ya, some people are knuckleheads and will forget!
GetUSB.info did not write this tutorial, but we’d love to hear your feedback in our community.
Just last week, we reported on a solar panel which rotates with the sun to optimize charging time and power. Today we bring you another method to recharge your life, but this time wearing clothes. Silvr Lining is a start up clothing company which integrates solar panels into your every-day cloths.
The style Silvr Lining embraces is that of a casual fit – as it would be difficult to integrate solar panels into a bikini or fitted top.
The company integrates several 6 x 8 panels into the outside of pocket panels so the lock blends with the style.
The solar panels are the right size to charge most any small USB gadget like MP3 player, phone or PDA device. It also appears the pockets are big enough you might just fit that iPad which is so awkward to carry around.
The solar power pants from Silvr Lining run just under $300. The company is based in Los Angeles and all cloths are made in the USA. Not sure how fashion conscience you are, but if you are
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We hope you find many USB gadgets in your stockings or under the Christmas tree. Merry Christmas to all our readers, bloggers and fellow gadget lovers.
In a concept design only, Eric Strebel and Jim Nogarian prototyped a solar panel which can rotate with the sun. The case has three angles on the bottom, a flat surface for sunlight directly above around noon time, and two 45 degree angle for morning and afternoon sun. It’s a good idea…I think.
After a little bit of research it appears the direct sunlight approach to solar is a thing of the past. New technology allows diffused light to generate electricity through the solar panels and thus maximizes any solar panel even slightly exposed to sunlight.
Putting this information aside, The Solcar Vox does look like a fresh idea on charging your USB gadgets or other devices which charge via USB like the iPhone.
If you like the idea you can pre-order the prototype which is
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Samsung is looking to put a new twist to the classic digital camera with multiple USB ports. The idea is simple, once a picture is taken, the folks in the picture can turn over their thumb drives for a quick download of the picture just taken.
Not a bad idea considering most of us now have USB sticks in our pocket, car or computer bag. I think the wifi SD card is a bit better of an idea, but this too will work.
The concept camera from Samsung has three female USB ports to accept mass storage devices [tech term for USB stick] and a male USB for connecting to a computer for downloading.
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If you are one of the few who rushed out to purchase the MacBook Air, you might have found yourself in a bit of a pinch. How to get the USB Ethernet Adapter working? If this is you, or a friend you know, here is a quick fix until a new Apple update is published.
First, it appears that some have luck plugging the adapter into different ports on the MacBook Air, but it’s not a universal solution.
After a bit of investigative work sifting through the Apple forums, you can do the following for a sure thing fix:
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How to turn off autoplay Windows 7 for USB flash drives.
Some may want to turn off the USB auto play so that when a USB device is connected the auto pop-up window doesn’t appear. I don’t mind the pop-up window as it usually defaults to the area or program I’m trying to get into anyway, but for some, I could see the frustration. So on that note, here is a quick USB tutorial on how to turn off the USB auto run function.
First, click START > RUN and type in gpedit.msc then click RUN.
Next you’ll want to navigate to the location shown below. That would be:
Computer Configuration > Admin Templates > Windows Components Once there you would double click Windows Components
That will take you to the following area where we can select the menu to edit the USB autorun functions. Double click the AutoPlay Policies
Next select the Turn Off Autoplay by double clicking it.
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Bradley Manning was able to download over a quarter million documents from the US government via USB slurping…where by, he downloaded the sensitive data directly to his flash drive, then sent the docs to Wikileaks.
Not a cool move Private Manning.
So as a result, the US Military is banning all USB flash drives with systems connected to, or have access to, the SIPRNET network. The Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, in simple terms, the internet used bye the DOD. Of course it’s much more sophisticated then your office network with internet access.
The US Government has taken this breach of information so seriously that any military who do not comply with the data transfer ban “may be punished under Article 92 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.†The article covers failure to obey orders and dereliction of duty and makes clear that any persons in violation of such rules “shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.â€
If you haven’t noticed, Red Box Movie rental kiosks have popped up all over the place. Most notably are the Red Box’ at the grocery store, which makes perfect sense, you’re going to the store anyway, why not put a movie rental at check-out.
Flix-on-Stix is looking to do the same thing, only difference is the Flix On Stix is renting your beloved movie on USB. The concept is simple, yet peppered with problems. Lets cover the concept first…the idea is having a user insert their USB drive into the Flix on Stix kiosk and download a movie. Great idea…simple, convenient and assuming cheap.
Look just one step deeper and you start asking yourself about transfer times. The Flix-on-Stix is USB 3.0 enabled, but SuperSpeed flash drives have just ‘barely’ come to market, most will have USB 2.0. So to download a low quality video will take at least 10 minutes. Next, what kind of DRM does Flix on Stix use? We know our USB and their is no universal USB copy protection that will work on PCs, Macs and set-top boxes…so how & where will these movies play? The last bit is the type of movies to be offered…we know studios wont sign off on DRM that isn’t proven by CDSA [https://www.cdsaonline.org/] so after all this, I’m not sure where Flix On Stix leaves us. What do you think?Continue Reading
In a day when typing “cougar” into Google yields more pornography then the animal you would expect, it’s almost a shock to hear about Playboy content being available on USB hard drive. Wouldn’t you think it had already been done?
It hasn’t, and that is why I’m here to tell you about the 250GB USB hard drive full of all Playboy magazine content. All of it – back from 1953 when the first issue was published.
The USB Hard drive from Playboy holds 650 magazines and over 100,000 pages of fascinating articles, photographs and interviews.
The hard drive works on any computer, just like you’d expect a USB hard drive to work, but you do need to install
Continue Reading
Buffalo launches a complete line of USB 3.0 storage devices. The DriveStation Quad USB 3.0 is a four drive, high speed RAID enabled storage solution offering transfer speeds up to 235 MB/s, twice as fast as USB 2.0. Equipped with four hard drives configured in RAID 5, DriveStation Quad USB 3.0 also supports RAID 0, 10 and JBOD modes for flexibility between data redundancy and available storage capacity
Seagate
Seagate introduces some new ‘super slim’ USB 3.0 hard drives. Seagate’s new ultra-portable GoFlex drive comes in a metal case that’s only 9 millimeters thick, which Seagate says is a full 38% thinner than their previous generation. This is made possible by some 7 millimeter thick 2.5″ drives that still manage to deliver 7200 rpm performance via USB power, and you get a solid 340 gigs for
Continue Reading
The AirStash, in one word, Amazing. This device solves all the problems of lack of storage with Apple products. With the AirStash you can now budget down to purchase the cheapest iPad or iPhone because the AirStash gives you the extra storage you need.
The AirStash, in simple terms, is a wireless storage dongle you carry around which provides unlimited storage.
The AirStash uses self powered WiFi to sync with your iPod, iPad or iPhone. The AirStash uses an SD slot for unlimited storage. The controller on the AirStash will recognize up to 32GB SD cards…from there you just swap out memory and keep saving.
Since the AirStash is wireless you can stream audio or video from the device to your Apple product. This means you can run GBs of music or videos without bogging down all the memory on your iPhone or iPad.
The only drawback I see is that you cannot dump photo’s from your Apple product to the AirStash [I’ve emailed the company to make sure my info is correct]. But you can easily take pictures using a digital camera [that uses SD cards] and simply pull the SD card from the digital camera and upload those photo’s to your iPhone / iPad.
The AirStash [kudos on the creative name] is available for $99 and is well worth the money rather than paying $100s more for a bigger Apple product.
If you’re not convinced yet, watch this 3 min YouTube video and get hooked.
The style Silvr Lining embraces is that of a casual fit – as it would be difficult to integrate solar panels into a bikini or fitted top.
The company integrates several 6 x 8 panels into the outside of pocket panels so the lock blends with the style.
The solar panels are the right size to charge most any small USB gadget like MP3 player, phone or PDA device. It also appears the pockets are big enough you might just fit that iPad which is so awkward to carry around.
The solar power pants from Silvr Lining run just under $300. The company is based in Los Angeles and all cloths are made in the USA. Not sure how fashion conscience you are, but if you are
In a day when typing “cougar” into Google yields more pornography then the animal you would expect, it’s almost a shock to hear about Playboy content being available on USB hard drive. Wouldn’t you think it had already been done?
It hasn’t, and that is why I’m here to tell you about the 250GB USB hard drive full of all Playboy magazine content. All of it – back from 1953 when the first issue was published.
The USB Hard drive from Playboy holds 650 magazines and over 100,000 pages of fascinating articles, photographs and interviews.
The hard drive works on any computer, just like you’d expect a