Storage Product Guide

Patriot Xporter Magnum 64GB Flash Drive – Review

Carrie Smith — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:29:36 +0000

Patriot Xporter Magnum 64GB Flash Drive really is a great all in one drive no matter what data you have to store, and you can be sure you will have enough speed and space. Its price is the only big downfall of this drive. With a MSRP of $150, you can buy a 1 TB hard drive for less than this. Though it is a fair margin larger than other flash drives, its not overly large.

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Patriot Viper PC3-12800 6GB Memory Kit – Review

Carrie Smith — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:52:57 +0000

Patriot’s Viper PC3-12800 6GB Memory Kit boasts a speed of 1600MHz along with 6GB capacity and 8-8-8-24 latency timings. Also, the modules operates at 1.65V which is the maximum recommended memory voltage. The kit features Intel XMP (Extreme Memory Profiles) and contains detailed settings stored on the SPD chip, found on each module. The settings consist of frequency, timings and voltages. The kit performed admirably in every category and hit a home run in the one that matters most – price.

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Intel X25-M SSD – Review

Carrie Smith — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:53:03 +0000

Intel X25-M SSD costs a lot and the capacity is nothing compared to much cheaper hard drives, but that’s always been the case with SSDs – you should only ever buy them for their speed. While the X25-M does itself no disservice, it’s quite clear that if game loading times and windows boot times are your priority then buying an SSD doesn’t really gain you that much, if anything. All in all, this drive probably strikes the best balance between price, performance and capacity to suit most enthusiasts’ needs.

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Western Digital VelociRaptor – Review

Carrie Smith — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:10:37 +0000

Western Digital VelociRaptor is the fastest SATA hard drive in the market and it even surpasses the performance of the fastest SSDs, in some cases. No longer is the Raptor a conventional 3.5in hard drive, instead the mechanics are stored inside what looks like a standard 2.5in notebook hard drive chassis with the rest of the VelociRaptor’s bulk being made up of an enormous heat sink. Add to this the fact it has a capacity of 300GB and costs only £150 and we can’t recommend it highly enough.

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Iomega StorCenter Wireless Network Storage – review

Carrie Smith — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:26:48 +0000

Iomega’s latest StorCenter delivers both wired and wireless networking making it quite unusual as no other NAS appliance offers these facilities as standard. Considering its low price, the appliance offers a reasonable hardware package as you get a quartet of 250GB Western Digital IDE hard disks and these can be configured as a JBOD, a stripe, a RAID-10 striped mirror or a RAID-5 array. It’s easy enough to install and use but performance isn’t great and why the firmware upgrade removes the wireless access point mode is beyond us.

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IronKey Secure Flash Drive

Carrie Smith — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:13:54 +0000

IronKey’s USB flash drive easy to open and very likely to protect the IronKey from obscene amounts of potential damage during transport. Like many of its competitors, IronKey lets you backup or store your passwords and other vital data securely online using Password Manager and Secure Backup. If you want a relatively cheap and portable way to make your sensitive data as secure as possible and surf the web privately and securely from almost any computer, the rugged, waterproof and fast IronKey flash drive is currently your best option.

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Enermax Jazz 2.5in Hard Drive Enclosure – Review

Carrie Smith — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:27:04 +0000

Enermax Jazz 2.5in Hard Drive is probably one of the best enclosures. The build quality is admirable. Admittedly there isn’t anything in the package that you wouldn’t think would be there, but neither is anything missing that you would expect. Performance is definitely acceptable as well. Vista SP1 transferred from the drive in 22 seconds, for a transfer speed of 33MB/s and was written to it in 26 seconds, at a speed of 27.9MB/s. The multiple small file tests showed similar figures of 31.5MB/s read and 26.7MB/s write.

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OCZ 64GB SATA II SSD – Review

Carrie Smith — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:59:10 +0000

The OCZ 64GB SATA II SSD is undoubtedly very expensive and won’t even be worth considering for most. However, if you do have deep pockets and want the ultimate performance from your desktop or notebook, then this drive is the way to go. Shock resistance is first rate as the drive can still operate, even when a force of 1500G is applied to it. It looks quite nice in its brushed aluminium livery but essentially this is a functional bit of kit.

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Buffalo LinkStation Mini NAS Appliance – Review

Carrie Smith — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:58:32 +0000

Buffalo’s LinkStation Mini may not be as fast as larger boxes sporting 3.5in hard disks (it took around one minute 30 seconds to write a 1GB file), and it may not offer quite as much RAID flexibility either. However, it does offer something that no other NAS appliance does – 1TB in a truly tiny chassis. It’s also reasonably priced, considering the amount of storage on offer, and that Buffalo has used 7,200rpm SATA notebook drives. It can sit in the palm of your hand and warrants a whole hearted Recommended.

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Freecom FSG-3 Storage Gateway WLAN- Product Review

Carrie Smith — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:58:45 +0000

Freecom’s FSG-3 Storage Gateway WLAN is a compact NAS appliance offering a whole heap of features at a reasonable price. Performance is on a par with similar appliances in this price range and security has been improved over the previous model although the documentation could be a bit more helpful with many of the services. Appliance installation won’t take long as the bundled FSG Assistant locates the Gateway on the network for you. The web management interface has been redesigned and it does provide easy access to all the functions.

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