| Cult of Mac

What 35 million days of real-world use tell us about which hard drive to buy

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Backblaze shares data it’s collected on failure rates of over 104,954 hard drives running continuously.
Backblaze shares data it’s collected on failure rates of over 104,954 hard drives running continuously.
Photo: Backblaze

Statistics on hard drive reliability just released by data-storage company Backblaze would seem to indicate it’s not a good idea to buy a Seagate hard drive. Of the 104,954 drives it uses, Seagate’s are the least reliable by a wide margin.

On the other side of the coin, this company has found drives made by Western Digital’s HGST to be much more reliable.

AI-powered iPhone photo storage device never forgets a face

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No Wi-Fi, no cloud with this iPhone photo and video storage solution.
No Wi-Fi, no cloud with this iPhone photo and video storage solution.
Photo: Fotofami

You’ve heard my speech from the soapbox: Backup your iPhone photos. A little device called Fotofami couldn’t make it easier.

In fact, it’s shaped like a little thin box that will travel well in a pocket. It works by getting to know the faces of family and friends in those pictures while fiercely defending them from the reach of hackers.

End storage nightmares by creating your own cloud

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The Helixee is a hard drive that, with an app, can give you cloud-like functions for storage and access from any device.
The Helixee is a hard drive that, with an app, can give you cloud-like functions for storage and access from any device.
Photo: novathings

One click and your digital life gets stored in the Cloud. Where or what that is exactly is a mystery to most of us. Two startup companies are producing products aimed at the segment of the computing population that doesn’t want to save pictures, videos and documents to large cloud-based servers.

These products let you create your own cloud to store the personal stuff.

Put an SSD in your pocket and you’ll sail through Boot Camp

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VisionTek's USB Pocket SSD gives you 120GB of super-fast storage. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
VisionTek's USB Pocket SSD gives you 120GB of super-fast storage. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Need bags of speedy storage you can take with you anywhere you go? With VisionTek’s USB Pocket SSD, you get a bus-powered solid-state drive that’s small enough to fit in your palm, and fast enough for almost anything.

I’ve been using one as a Windows drive for my Mac for the past few months; let me tell you why it’s been great.

Cult of Mac Holiday Gift Guide: Mac Lovers’ Edition [Updated]

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mac lovers UPDATEd

Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.

Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.

From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for Mac lovers (not Mac fighters).

WD My Passport Edge, A USB 3.0 Pocket Drive Fit For Your Mac

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The Edge is the hard drive Bono would use.

External hard drives: super handy, but oh-so-slow, especially since Apple put a bullet in the back of FireWire’s head. Thankfully, Western Digital has once again come to the rescue with a neat new addition to its My Passport line of portable drives: The Edge.

These new versions not only look way more high-tech than the previous curvy plastic models, they also support MacBook-friendly USB 3.0.

Seagate Buys Data Storage Company LaCie For $186 Million

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LaCie's 2big drives let you transfer files over a Thunderbolt connection.
LaCie's 2big drives let you transfer files over a Thunderbolt connection.

Seagate has bought French high-quality digital storage company LaCie for a reported $186 million. LaCie CEO Philippe Spruch will become head of Seagate’s consumer storage products division. LaCie makes Mac-friendly peripherals, and Seagate has been a long-time titan in the data storage business.