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Today’s featured M4 Pro Mac mini user drives a pair of 4K external displays with the tiny new powerhouse desktop. And they keep an array of budget peripherals, including data and power hubs and solid input devices. And in addition, for physical backup, they like portable storage solutions in addition to cloud backup — in this case, fairly affordable hard drives from Samsung and La Cie (and the Samsung is deeply discounted right now — see below).

Seagate unveiled the world’s highest-capacity hard drive Wednesday with its Exos Mosaic 3+ HDD platform, hitting the 30TB mark for the first time, the company said. That’s enough space to store a thousand Blu-ray movies.

The company said it used several new technologies to get there, and its road map shows the arrival of even bigger storage devices in the coming years. And while businesses will certainly go for these megadrives, they will also be available to many kinds of end users and require no special hardware to read.

The Spotify app is killing your Mac’s solid-state storage drive, and you need to update now to prevent it.

For the past five months, a bug has caused the app to write massive amounts of data to SSDs, potentially knocking years off their lifespan.

No matter the size of your Mac’s hard drive, there will come a time when you need to free up some space. Having a full hard drive can make your Mac feel sluggish, and running out of space can be terrifying.

Sifting through your archive of files may seem like a daunting task. But don’t fear — these three super-simple and effective Mac disk cleanup apps can help you out.

Check them out in the Cult of Mac video review below.

When Apple’s all-new iMacs made their debut in late November, a super speedy Fusion Drive was only available as a build-to-order option with the 27-inch models. But that’s no longer the case. Over the weekend, Apple made the 1TB Fusion Drive an upgrade option for the entry-level 21.5-inch iMac, too.

Apple’s new 21.5-inch iMacs are ridiculously thin and gorgeous. They’re also one of least upgradeable/repairable desktop  computers on the market. It’s possible to swap out the RAM on the new 21.5-inch iMacs, but trying to get an aftermarket SSD into the 21.5-inch iMac might be an impossible task.

Teardowns of the new 21.5-inch iMac revealed that in order to get to the hard drive users will have to separate the display from the main body of the iMac. That task isn’t too difficult, but gluing the display back onto the iMac’s body will be pretty tough. On top of that, once you get inside the 21.5-inch iMac there’s literally no room for an SSD and nowhere to plug it in.

Take apart one of Apple’s latest iMacs and inside you’ll find plenty of space for mounting an additional hard drive. Of course, it’s useless if you don’t have the tools for the job, but that’s where iFixit comes in. The teardown specialists have released a new kit that provides you with everything you need for installing an additional hard drive in your new iMac.

For years we’ve heard a lot of hype about SSDs and how they’re going to change computing, but their progress has been slow, and the masses have been getting impatient. Well CES 2012 will be the start of SSDs officially entering into mainstream use thanks to Apple Inc. The best purchase I made in 2011 was when I replaced my MacBook Pro with the new 11″ MacBook Air. Not only is the MacBook Air lighter than any laptop I’ve owned, it’s also powerful enough to do some really awesome things I’d never thought possible on a miniature computer (like playing graphic intensive games like Star Wars the Old Republic). Most of these technological marvels are all thanks to Apple’s inclusion on SSDs in the MacBook Air lineup. Of course, Apple didn’t invent the SSD, nor were they the first company to use them, but they’re responsible for bringing SSDs to the masses at an affordable price.

Review by Jordan Trimas

The Seagate GoFlex Slim Performance Hard Drive ($100) is a compact, sleek, and fashionable storage accessory good for both Mac and PC users. If you’re looking for a sexy and functional piece of computer candy, the GoFlex Slim is the Prada of portable storage solutions.

Apple’s new Mac mini has been available for two days now, and so it’s time for the company’s smallest desktop to get the iFixit teardown treatment. Though little has changed inside its svelte aluminum shell, Apple’s decision to remove the optical drive means there’s plenty of room for to double your storage… or even speed up your Mac mini dramatically.

As we’re probably all aware by now, Apple’s Thunderbolt I/O debuted earlier this year with the new generation of MacBook Pros and threatened to make all other interfaces, like USB and FireWire, seem like stone-age relics — and at the same time, make obsolescent all current external HDDs. All, that is, except Seagate’s line of GoFlex drives.

OCZ has just announced its Agility 3 and Solid 3 series of 2.5-inch solid-state drives aimed at users dying to get their hands on a super-speedy SSD, but with a tight budget to contend with.

Apple’s new family of iMac all-in-ones released earlier this week boast an Intel BD82Z68 platform controller hub that isn’t scheduled for release until May 11th. The Z68 chip, designed for Sandy Bridge 1155, was first discovered by TonyMacx86 and later confirmed in an iFixit teardown.

The Z68 allows for solid-state drive data caching when a system is equipped with a combination of storage drives. So users could install a small, relatively cheap SSD along with their traditional hard disk drive and have the SSD serve as a cache – dramatically increasing access speeds to their files and applications. The new iMacs can be ordered with both an SSD and a traditional hard disk drive installed, and the Z68 can allow users to see this combination as just one drive on their Mac.

Apple’s new family of iMacs launched today, featuring Intel’s latest Core i5 and i7 processors, 4GB of RAM, and 3x faster graphics; all the ingredients needed to bake a super speedy all-in-one. However, there’s one thing missing from Apple’s lineup of four ‘ready-made’ iMacs, and that’s a solid-state drive. Without one your shiny new iMac might not be as fast as you expected it to be.

Is your MacBook’s 250GB hard drive just not cutting it? SeaGate has just unveiled their newly updated FreeAgent GoFlex external hard drive, boasting two huge features that make it easy to recommend to on-the-go Mac owners with large media libraries, or those looking for a beefy and portable Time Machine repository.

First of all, there’s the size: the new FreeAgent GoFlex is the world first 1.5TB portable drive. Better, it’s entirely bus-powered, which means no power cable or dual-USB cable.

Even better, though, is that Seagate’s new drive comes standard with the company’s USB 3.0 adapter… a standard which no Macs support now, but definitely will sooner rather than later. In the meantime, the GoFlex is backwards compatible with both USB 2.0 and — if you snap on an adapter — even FireWire.

The SeaGate FreeAgent GoFlex comes formatted for Windows’ NTFS file system by default, but you can either reformat it with Disk Utility or avail yourself of the included NTFS driver for Mac. The price is quite reasonable too: it’s available now for just $229.99, which is $20 less than the MSRP.