Vinpower announced the recent release of its Hard Drive (HDD) Duplicator, boasting the exceptionally fast duplication speed of max 150MB/sec. That’s all well and good, but what does that mean in real time duplication and will it really make a difference in the time it takes to duplicate a HDD?

When you look at many of the competing HDD Duplicators, you’ll find that most of them top out at around 90MB/sec. So if you look at it more closely, that means the Vinpower HDD Duplicator can copy approx. 9GB/min, while the competition can only copy at 5GB/min. So, if you extrapolate that out over a now standard 500GB HDD, in theory, the Vinpower duplicator can copy the entire HDD in less than 30 minutes while the competition will take nearly an hour to complete. Take that further to a 2TB HDD and the time gap between the two becomes even further apart. The Vinpower unit, using the same criteria, could take less than 4 hours to copy while the competition would take nearly 7 hours to complete.

I don’t know about you, but I can think of much better things to do with my 3 hours than wait for a duplication job to finish. So if your time and money is important to you, I would recommend you read the specs carefully and judge for yourself which type of HDD Duplicator you’d rather use, the one that saves you time or the one you’re constantly waiting on, I know what I’d choose.

Recently, I inadvertently launched a particularly nasty viral assault on my office desktop computer. What I quickly and painstakingly discovered, was that this virus not only cleaned out my hard drive, but also followed the data stream back to our server and wiped out the entire back-up data as well. I’m not an overtly technical person, so I never even imagined this was a possibility. I assumed that once you create a back-up file away from the primary computer, the files would be safe. To my chagrin, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The saving grace in this case, was that our company, in its infinite wisdom, also keeps a hard copy of all back-up files from our server on optical discs. Optical discs (like DVD (especially archival grade) or Blu-ray) are the only true back-up solutions that are impervious to viral attacks, accidental or deliberate deletion, hacking, etc. If we didn’t have the foresight to use optical discs to back up our back-up, I would have completely lost nearly 8 years’ worth of painstakingly laborious content including reports, pictures, proposals, templates, email history, and so much more.

I thought, what if this happened to my home computer where I don’t have the back-up systems in place I have at work. All of my family photos and videos would be gone forever. Irreplaceable memories wiped out with a single keystroke. That is not something that you can put a price tag on, or could even be replaced for that matter. I went home and backed up my entire hard drive’s irreplaceable files, especially the pictures and videos on our new archival M-Disc media. I dodged a bullet this time, will you be so lucky?

In the recordable optical media world, price is often king. There are plenty of those that still care about the disc quality and also realize that paying slightly more for a better disc will cost you less in the long run when you factor in the number of failed discs that are wasted from the cheaper brands. So when rumors started flying that one of t preeminent media manufacturers, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), is looking to close their manufacturing plants, it makes enough sense for reporters and bloggers to take the rumor and run it as factual content.

That happened recently, where it was reported that Mitsubishi Chemical (MKM’s parent company) was indeed shuttering its doors in a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun on Monday. That story was quickly refuted by MKM to which they reported to remaining vigilant in their dedication to manufacturing their continued lines of recordable DVD and Blu-ray media.

For more details on this story, please click on the below link:
In the recordable optical media world, price is often king. There are plenty of those that still care about the disc quality and also realize that paying slightly more for a better disc will cost you less in the long run when you factor in the number of failed discs that are wasted from the cheaper brands. So when rumors started flying that one of t preeminent media manufacturers, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), is looking to close their manufacturing plants, it makes enough sense for reporters and bloggers to take the rumor and run it as factual content.

That happened recently, where it was reported that Mitsubishi Chemical (MKM’s parent company) was indeed shuttering its doors in a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun on Monday. That story was quickly refuted by MKM to which they reported to remaining vigilant in their dedication to manufacturing their continued lines of recordable DVD and Blu-ray media.

For more details on this story, please click on the below link:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=32245

For the last few years, all I have been hearing, when it comes to the CES trade show, is that it is declining and destined to go the way of Comdex. Based on my experience as an exhibitor for numerous years, I was inclined to agree. That was until this year just created a frenzy of people. According to records, an estimated 153,000 people attended the show. I can’t say whether it the show was as successful as other shows, but I can say that we were on our feet a lot and the flow of people to and around our booth was at times overwhelming.

Looks like CES is not ready to be a relic but a viable, healthy featured electronics trade show which will continue to set the mark for a durable trade show.

Apparently the release of Avatar last year, which became the highest selling DVD and Blu-ray movie of all time, spurred a rash of Blu-ray player purchases. In fact the number of homes with Blu-ray players rose 52 percent from a year ago, to 33.5 million in the United States. Whether this was directly related to the release of Avatar or not, it does show that more households are attracted to the high definition experience and that they are willing to pay more for it, even in tougher economic times.

So this is encouraging to the duplication market as well as sales trends for movie formats tends to also cross into increased demand for duplication equipment and media for the same format. So as long as the number of households with Blu-ray players increases, then the number of options for Blu-ray content will follow suit. Another reason to appreciate James Cameron!

Even though researchers generally agree that older generations (30+) have become accustomed to physical media and are more likely continue using it. It’s also a common belief that the younger generations, especially children will become accustomed to maintaining content in a digital realm. But current research has shown that not to be the case.

New research from The NPD Group found that 79 cents of every entertainment dollar spent by kids aged 2 to 14 was used on CDs, movie discs and video games, compared with 21 cents on content downloaded from the Internet. This shows that even when given the option of purchasing and storing digital content, young children are still more interested and comfortable with owning tangible items.

So when people want to pronounce the end of physical media, you’ll know that the evidence says differently.

Apple had a press conference today to announce the release of their latest generation of iPhone – the 4S. But during that conference, they took the opportunity to discuss all of the Apple products with a great deal of emphasis on their “Cloud” computing. Of course this is a great instrument to be able to store any amount or type of digital content that can be accessed from anywhere in the world one has internet access.

But I ask, what happens when the “Cloud” encounters a major storm! Say for instance, there is a glitch that causes information to be accidentally deleted or relocated into someone else’s cloud? That brings up the point of security, what if a hacker breaks into the cloud and releases personal or confidential material to the public. Think it can’t happen, what about all the cell phones of celebrities that have been hacked and photos leaked to the public? Will there’s a will there’s way.

The only secure way to store important or sensitive content is on an optical disc. Flash devices like USB can be altered or erased, only optical discs cannot be altered and with the latest archival grade discs on the market now, they can be stored safely for in some cases hundreds of years. So, do you really want to trust your precious memories, confidential information, critical research files, or anything that matters to you, to a cloud or on a disc that gives greater protection and assurance?

Being in an industry that is centered on physical media, you constantly hear about the death of the CD or how streaming is going to make physical media a thing of the past. But in reality, physical media is the most secure and cheapest method of storing data and content. If you take into account the price of media these days in comparison to flash or the recurring monthly expenses paid for the opportunity to get online content from one’s hard drive, there’s a huge discrepancy. Physical media like optical discs (CD’s, DVD’s, and Blu-ray) cost just a few cents on average, while the alternatives cost considerably more. So why spend the extra money when it’s so easy to produce your own copies of nearly any material on these discs. So, in my opinion, the future is not bleak for optical media, but I see it as being just as in demand as any other storage option!

Jack Nicholson had an iconic line in the movie The Shinning where in his altered state he declared, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Well even though Vinpower and our staff have not gone insane, (which, I guess is up for debate), we are looking for something less dangerous than traipsing around an abandoned haunted hotel but every bit as exhilarating. What we found was a hobby outside of duplicators to throw in our collective excitement, car racing.

The below video shows some of the utter exhilaration from a recent “drifting” car race staged in Taiwan. Vinpower helped sponsor this event in collaboration with Torco Oil, a popular high end racing brand of motor oil. Check out for yourself why Vinpower is so excited about this latest venture and how what looks like insanity behind the wheel, can put us in a more relaxed frame of mind.

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Since the introduction of the CopyConnect feature a few years ago, customers have been clamoring for an enhanced version of this feature. Vinpower Digital listens and last year, with the release of our new 3-series controllers, we introduced Multi-File CopyConnect.

With the standard CopyConnect feature, customers can drag and drop an ISO data file from the hard drive of a computer to the hard drive of the duplicator and begin making copies, all without having to make a master disc. This is an extremely useful feature but somewhat limiting, in that the only recognized file type is an ISO 9600+Joliet formatted file. Some customers have requested a version of the CopyConnect feature that is even easier to use. In response to these requests, Vinpower Digital has introduced an enhanced version of CopyConnect, called Multi-File CopyConnect. This allows a user to drag a file folder to the hard drive of the duplicator and use this to burn discs. With the advent of this enhanced feature, users do not need to know how to make an ISO file, sometimes a difficult concept for non-technical users.

The user drags over a file folder, loads the duplicator with discs of the appropriate size, and begins making copies. If a user copies a file folder with more than 700 MB of data and attempts to burn this data to CD, they will be informed that there is a size mismatch. This is true because they need to copy this much data to a DVD. So with Multi-File CopyConnect enabled on a 3-series controller, the only thing a user needs concern themselves with is whether or not they have inserted blank media of the appropriate size in the duplicator to make copies.