Toshiba software suite

Toshiba’s Basics range of drives don’t actually come with any software, but if you step up to the higherend models then there’s a decent selection of third party apps. The included NTI Backup Now EZ software nicely takes care of the automated backup tasks and basic interactions with your PC, and you also get PogoPlug to access the drive from your Android or iOS device. Set this up on your PC and leave your drive connected and you can access all your fi les remotely through the smartphone app or even a browser, which is a handy little bonus feature. A HDD Password Tool means you can fully encrypt the drive with a password. If software is a deal-maker for you, then this comprehensive package available with some Toshiba drives may just take the cake.

Toshiba Canvio Aerocast 1TB Another impotent wireless hard drive for mobile and PCs

Sometimes, we get tech that seems as though it was designed by a group of people, each with their own design document and ideas. Say hello to a capable piece of hardware that is crippled by inconsistent and unintuitive software. Pictures can be sent from a phone to the Aerocast without issue, but the UI differs for copying music, movies and documents. When the drive is tethered to USB 3.0, it’s as quick as the bulk of the drives we tested, with the added bonus of wireless capabilities and a very handy SD card slot, all without blowing its physical dimensions. Our best advice? Avoid transferring anything to this one from a tablet or phone, because it’ll leave you fuming.

Seagate Dashboard

Unlike WD’s ‘three-pack’ software approach, Seagate’s bundled all its up into one app called Seagate Dashboard. Dashboard initially pushes you towards a specifi c backup schedule, so that once you have confi gured it, you won’t have to think about it again. While that should suit the majority of users, it does mean you sacrifi ce some versatility, as Dashboard makes it more diffi cult to actually change the backup structure later. Though it’s easy enough to manually reformat an external hard drive through OS tools, it’s worth noting that Dashboard doesn’t include a built-in formatting features. You can also use Dashboard to schedule backups from your desktop or smartphone using third party cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.

ZUCKERBERG IN GERMANY: NO PLACE FOR HATE SPEECH ON FACEBOOK

Mark Zuckerberg conceded Friday that Facebook didn’t do enough until recently to police hate speech on the social media site in Germany, but said it has made progress and has heard the message “loud and clear.”

German authorities, concerned about racist abuse being posted on Facebook and other social networks as the country deals with an influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants, have been pressing social media sites for months to crack down.

The Facebook CEO talked personally about the issue in September with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and met her chief of staff during a visit to Germany this week. The Merkel meeting “really highlighted how much more we needed to do in this country,” he said at a town hall event in Berlin.

“Hate speech has no place on Facebook and in our community,” he said. “Until recently in Germany, I don’t think we were doing a good enough job. And I think we will continue needing to do a better and better job.”

Zuckerberg pointed to efforts, including funding a team to work with police to combat hate speech on Facebook. He said learning more about German law has led the company to expand its view of “protected groups” there and “to now include hate speech against migrants as an important part of what we just now have no tolerance for.”

“There’s still work to do,” he said. “We want to do that, but I think we hear the message loud and clear and we’re committed to doing better.”

Zuckerberg, meanwhile, faced other issues at his own company headquarters in Menlo Park, California. He lashed out in an internal memo this week at employees who crossed out “black lives matter” on Facebook’s signature walls and replaced the words with “all lives matter.”

The incidents apparently continued although Zuckerberg told employees they were unacceptable.

“I was already very disappointed by this disrespectful behavior before, but after my communication I now consider this malicious as well,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter published by the website Gizmodo and confirmed by a Facebook source who demanded anonymity because the issue was an internal matter.

“There are specific issues affecting the black community in the United States, coming from a history of oppression and racism,” Zuckerberg wrote. “’Black lives matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t - it’s simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve.”

In Berlin, Zuckerberg praised Germany’s approach to Europe’s migrant crisis. Merkel so far has maintained an open-door policy for refugees, seeking an elusive diplomatic solution to reduce an influx that has prompted an increasing number of countries to impose national border restrictions

“German leadership in the refugee crisis, I think, has been inspiring and is a model for the world,” Zuckerberg said. “I hope the U.S. follows Germany’s lead on this.”

Seagate Wireless 500GB Portable streaming for mobile and PCs, but there’s a catch

This friendly-looking drive is made for dumping files that can be shared by both PCs and tablets/ phones. It does technically handle this – but without much grace. On the plus side the battery should last for around six hours; enough to let you watch a couple of movies. That’s where the praise ends though, as the mobile app (which we tested on Android) is rudimentary and a bit slow, while the desktop software is a nightmare. An 800MB file took close to 10 minutes to transfer via Wi-Fi, and once the file’s started transferring there’s no option stop it. After files have been uploaded, the folder they’re sent to needs to be refreshed to see them

WD SmartWare, Drive Utilities & WD Security

Apple computers already come with system backup software (Time Machine), but for Windows users Western Digital drives include a backup suite called SmartWare that can help fi ll the gap. SmartWare is

reasonably standard, providing options for scheduled backups, specifi c retrieval processes and software updates. WD drives also come two other apps: WD Drive Utilities and WD Security. The Security program will encrypt your drive so it can only be unlocked using a specifi c password – and you’ll have to completely reformat it if you happen to lose or forget the password. Drive Utilities lets you diagnose any problems with the drive, manage the RAID confi guration (on applicable models), set a sleep timer and reformat the drive for optimal performance on the device you intend to use it with. As a whole, these three apps give you an extremely effective toolkit for tackling basic external-storage tasks.

There’s more to today’s external hard drives than just tacking on extra terabytes. Joel Burgess and Paul Taylor investigate.

Physically, external hard drives have continued to shrink over the last decade, and they’ve almost reached the point where their size is starting to be limited by the constraints of having a mechanical spinning disk. But just because external hard drives aren’t signifi cantly reducing in size doesn’t mean that the’re not developing in other ways.

USB 3.0 is now basically commonplace and the additional power it can deliver (along with faster transfer rates) means that larger, more power-hungry drives can run without needing a dedicated power cord. Testament to this is the new 3TB My Passport Ultra from Western Digital – a pocket-sized portable which offers as much space as entry-level desktop drives. This newfound capacity for portable drives has been eating into the external desktop drive market, making dedicated ‘wall powered’ drives harder to come by – despite putting an open call out to all the major drive vendors, we only received one of the latter for this feature.

Another complicating factor in the external-storage equation is the emerging wireless hard drive category. These are targeting smartphone and tablet use as much as PCs and laptops. As our mobiles become more important to us and streaming home media technology becomes more attainable, hard drives that can back up data from a range of devices are taking more of the spotlight from plug-bound options.