With SSD’s becoming more and more affordable they are slowly starting to reach the hands of eager enthusiasts and gamers. In fact, we are just now starting to see a few pop up in rigs at our own LAN parties. One of the biggest brands in this market is OCZ and they have a variety of models including the reasonably priced Agility series. One of which we will be looking at today.
Storing and backing up your files on a USB or eSATA hard drive is an important part of computer use today. If you are like a good portion of computer users today, you have multiple computers. Wouldn't it be great to be able to backup your files from all of your PCs and access them from any computer on your network? That is where NAS (network attached storage) comes in to the picture. Today we are looking at Seagate's BlackArmor NAS 110. We have already been impressed with Seagate's storage products in past and I am curious to see if they can uphold that standard with their NAS product line.
The other day we took a look at Western Digital's 2TB offering, it's only fair that we see what Seagate has to offer as well. Seagate offers both the Barracuda XT and Constellation drives in 2TB capacities. Today we will be taking a look at the Constellation. In the past we have reviewed a 2 1/2 inch Constellation drive, I'm curious what four times the capacity and a larger form factor has done to its performance.
Hard Drives continue to get larger and along with lager capacity the they also continue to get faster. What that means for us is that Western Digital's recently released 2 TB Caviar Black Hard Drive is not only one of the largest drives on the market it's also one of the fastest. Today I will be taking a look at the 2TB Caviar Black and testing it to see how it stands up against SSD's, High RPM Enterprise class drives, and Western Digital's own Velociraptor. Considering the performance we have seen out of 1TB and 1.5TB drives in the past, it will be interesting to see how the numbers come out.
A while back I took a look at a BluRay drive from Plextor, a well known manufacture in the disc drive market. Today I have the chance to take a look at another BluRay drive from them. This time we will be looking at the B320SA with a speed of 8X in comparison to the 6x speed of the B310SA I reviewed before. 2x doesn't seem like that drastic of a change but will it make a noticeable difference? Read more to find out.
Hard drive docks can come in handy in several instances: home or office data transfer, back-up files or switching hard drives, or even at the LAN scene. Most models' convenience ends with one external and one internal hard drive. Imagine, however, the possibilities if you could have two docks in one, allowing for data transfer from not only an external to internal, but external to external, and being able to read and write two hard drives simultaneously. Even more impressive would be if both docks supported 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives. Thermaltake had those very ideas in mind when designing the BlacX Duet, and has sent us the end product to try for ourselves.
If the 500 gig Seagate BlackArmor we reviewed a while back isn't enough space for you, you now have other options. Amazingly you can pick up a drive up to a full 1Tb! Still using a USB 2.0 interface I'm curious to see if it will be limited by its transfer speeds more than its capacity. Of course even if that is the case, you can always just brag that your portable hard drive is bigger than anyone else.
We have looked at Seagate's FreeAgent Go series a few times in the past and were very impressed with the Free Agent Go Dock that goes along with them. You wouldn't think Seagate would be able to improve on a simple dock too much but surprisingly they did. With the new Dockstar, they included an Ethernet port to help share your files over your network and over the Internet. What kind of difference can one lowly ethernet port make? Read more to find out.
An external hard drive is great if you're looking for something to interchange between computers, but what if you're looking for a more permanent solution to your 2.5" hard drive problems? Sure, you can take a dock with you pretty much anywhere you go, but it is another piece of equipment to worry about, and at times you may find your LAN bag about to bust open the way it is. Regardless of the reason, making the jump to an internal SATA rack is a reasonable option, but how and where do you start? VIZO has offered us an answer with their 2.5" hard drive rack from the Arius line, the Arius II.
Hardware limitations are a problem that are often encountered in any media PC environment. That limit could be a memory capacity or perhaps running out of hard drive bays in your case. Or maybe you're just sick of constantly removing a side panel to swap hard drives. The perfect solution in all the cases above is an internal hard drive rack. These convenient pieces of expansion hardware allow a user to spend a 5.25" bay and convert it to an additional 3.5" hard drive bay. VIZO Technology Corp has sent us their 3.5" contender in the Arius line, the Arius EX, to test.
This spring I took a look at the 15k RPM Savvio drives from Seagate, a 2.5 inch high speed hard drives designed for server use. I also found that they were perfect for enthusiast use as long as you are willing to pay the premium. Today I have the chance to test out Seagate's Cheetah hard drives, 10k and 15k RPM 3.5inch drives. With four times the storage space in a bigger package how will it affect our original thoughts.
When an industry gets to the point where there are countless models of any given product available, its only natural for consumers to look for those that have a certain appearance, are easier to install and carry around, include extra accessories, and have a certain speed. Icy Dock has sent us their latest contender in the 2.5" external hard drive battle, the MB668US-1SB, to see how it performs in the areas detailed above.
Over the past few months we have taken a look at a full selection of Seagate’s business and home external hard drives. Seagate took a note from the late 90’s with the latest drive we are looking at. The Free Agent Xtreme is a personal desktop drive with a 2Tb capacity. So what does Xtreme stand for? Maybe the drive is made for extreme conditions? Or maybe it skydives? I’m going to dive in and find out what it’s all about, how it performs, and how extreme it really is.
Over the last few weeks we have taken a look at a variety of Seagate external solutions. Another big part of their business is workstation or business class products. Because of that its no shocker that they have an entire line just for that, it’s called BlackArmor. BlackArmor stands out from the FreeAgent line with a all black product line, business grade software, and high quality hard drives all designed specifically for business applications. Today I will be taking a look at the BlackArmor WS110 3.5 inch workstation external drive. How well will it compare to their FreeAgent line of externals?
I recently took a look at the WS-110 and was surprised by all of the features of the BlackArmor series. Of course the WS-110 is a little large and has a power cord, not something you would want to travel with. That’s where the PS-110 comes in, considerably smaller than the WS-110 it is designed for portability. But does it have the same high performance and great software that the WS-110 came with? Seagate was kind enough to let me get my hands on one.
When it comes to gaming hard drives there really has only been one. The Raptor series from Western Digital has dominated the market for some time now. Their most recent Raptor is the 300Gb 10k RPM Velociraptor may be a little aged at over 1 1/2 years but still is a force to be reckoned with. Today I have the chance to see how the Velociraptor performs against other solutions including the SAS drives we have tested in the past and SSD's. Will the top name in gaming hard drives still hold its weight?
The most interesting thing about technology is how quickly it advances. It wasn't that long ago that we reviewed a 16Gb drive from Super Talent called the PICO. The PICO's size was very impressive considering the compact size. Of course with technology always moving that 16 gigs looks small compared to Super Talents newest 32Gb PICO drive. Today I have the chance to compare the two.
![ammo_pics 027 [lanoc_sm]](http://lanoc.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ammo_pics-027-lanoc_sm.jpg "ammo_pics 027 [lanoc_sm]")
I've had the pleasure of reviewing a lot of external enclosures, a product that not too long ago was considered a luxury in owning for the average consumer. Nowadays, with advancing technology and lowering prices, its almost odd to see a user without. Naturally, there is an enormous selection of models out there, all (for the most part) sporting the same data transfer rate. So what is it that causes model A to sell more than model B? In-Win knows, and has sent us an example known as the Ammo, to find out for ourselves.
![IMG_5447 [lr] [lrsm]](http://lanoc.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_5447-lr-lrsm1.JPG "IMG_5447 [lr] [lrsm]")
In the hard drive market there are just a few big names. With the introduction and growth of the SSD market it has opened up the market for anyone who wants to try their hand. Intel and OCZ have dominated the SSD market but that hasn’t stopped others from jumping in and bringing out their own. Crucial being well known in the ram market decided to jump in with a few SSD’s in the past. When we were at Million Man LAN, you could tell how excited the Crucial guys were about their upcoming SSD’s. Today I have a chance to take a look and see how well they perform against some of the fastest standard hard drives for your gaming rig.
In the external hard drive market, there’s no shortage of products available looking to separate your Benjamins from your wallet. Today I’ve been given the Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac external hard drive to inspect. Digging for information leaves me a little confused – as the page that references the drive on Seagate’s site only allows you to select the 2tb model, although it supposedly comes in 500gb, 640gb, 1tb, 1.5tb, and 2tb variants. Those sizes are pretty standard in the external hard drive market.
