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Category: Storage
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Published: Monday, 01 November 2021 20:09
One of the features that Nintendo integrated into the Switch that I like was the Micro SD card slot for storage. Past game consoles have proven that integrated storage will almost always not be enough. Especially from the Xbox 360 on were full games and demos have been downloadable. With those consoles, you were limited to what came with your system or if you were lucky a proprietary upgrade option. A portable console like the switch have even fewer options. So going with MicroSD means they kept the cost down and as faster and larger options come out it could potentially support them. The switch does come with 32GB of onboard storage but with launch titles like Breath of the Wild taking up 14 GB each and newer games reaching up over 33GB now. Thankfully the switch does have cartridges as well, but if you don’t want to carry those around with you or If the games that you want to play are only available digitally you will need a MicroSD card. I was looking at options and Lexar’s Play series seemed to fit the bill well without making you pay more for licensed pictures on the card itself so I decided to check one out. So today let's see how the Lexar Play MicroSDXC 512GB performs!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Wednesday, 20 October 2021 19:03
Crucial’s P5 has been their flagship NVMe SSD for a while now and it was pushing the limited of PCIe Gen 3.0 but with AMD having PCIe Gen 4 for a while now and Intel catching up on that as well more and more people can potentially put a faster Gen 4 drive to use so Crucial recently introduced their new P5 Plus drive which has upgraded its interface to PCIe Gen 4. Today I’m going to check out the 1TB P5 Plus drive and see how it performs in our test suite compared to a mix of gen 3 and gen 4 drives then we will see where Crucial has the new drives priced to see how they fit in the market. Is the P5 Plus the drive you should be looking at for your next build? Let’s find out!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Thursday, 13 May 2021 18:10
While PCIe gen 4.0 drives are starting to trickle into the market now that AMD and Intel both support it on their latest chipsets. The reality is that most PCs out right now still use PCIe gen 3.0 so there is still a lot of need for them. So it isn’t a big surprise to still see companies bringing out new gen 3 drives. A good example of this is the NM620 from Lexar which came out a few months ago which pushes gen 3.0 to its limits. Today I’m going to check out the NM620 to see what Lexar has going on and to see how their new drive performs.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Tuesday, 27 April 2021 16:09
Late last year I had an interesting external storage option come in that ran on Thunderbolt3 and also provided dock like functionality with a display connection, USB, and ethernet ports. This was the TerraMaster TD2 Thunderbolt3 Plus and it was the first time I had the chance to check out TerraMaster. They also make a few different NAS models and they recently had a new series, their 422 series which added 10Gb network support which caught my eye. They sent over the F2-422 which is a two-drive model that looks a lot like the TD2 and today I am finally going to talk a little about the overall experience. Is the F2-422 a cheaper NAS option for someone looking for a 10Gb NAS and is the extra network bandwidth worth it? Today I will check that out.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Thursday, 22 April 2021 18:43
Up until Intel’s most recent launch, PCI Gen 4 has been limited to just the most recent AMD Ryzen chipsets which have been very popular. But now with both sides of the line having support Gen 4 devices will be more and more important. The Rocket Q4 that I previously took a look at was a Gen 4 drive, but it was just an updated controller on top of the normal Rocket setup. The Rocket 4 Plus is a PCIe Gen 4 drive like the previous Sabrent SSD I had in the office but this one is promising speeds closer to what you would expect for gen 4.0. Today I’m going to check it out to see what sets it apart and to find out how it performs compared with both Gen 4 and Gen 3 drives to see if it should be on your wishlist for your next build or upgrade.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Monday, 25 January 2021 23:11
Sabrent has been killing it when it comes to pushing the SSD market forward with great prices and high capacity options that almost no one else has been willing to bring out. Along with all of that, they have also been filling out a variety of options like heatsinks for M.2 drives and external enclosures. When they sent over their Rocket Q4 in the 2TB capacity they included the heatsink model. So today along with checking out the performance of the Rocker Q4 1TB we can also get a look at the optional heatsink to see what it is all about.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Tuesday, 12 January 2021 12:12
Corsair has been in the SSD game going all the way back to when it started and while the focus recently has been on PCIe Gen 4.0 drives for most companies. Corsair was early to that back when PCIe 4.0 was first available over a year ago at the X570 launch. With that in mind, they are still launching PCIe 3.0 drives as well to give new options for those who don’t have 4.0 or don’t want/need the extra speed or costs. So they introduced the MP400 this past October. It is available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB options and features 3D QLC NAND. Today I’m going to check out the 1TB model which is Corsair's cheapest 1TB SSD option to test its performance and see how it fits in today's market.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Monday, 07 December 2020 21:43
With portability being a big focus, Ultrabooks and almost the entire laptop market except for gaming laptops have traded features like DVD/BluRay drives, Ethernet ports, and expandable storage in the name of keeping laptops thin. This has even pushed some to focus on the newer Type-C connection and with it Thunderbolt for nearly everything including charging. For some this hasn’t been a big deal, but others have leaned on dongles and other adapters to add things back. Even I have been using portable SSDs for supplemental storage on my own laptop, especially now with a lot of laptops even soldering on the SSD. Well, TerraMaster has their TD2 Thunderbolt3 Plus which is at its core an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for two hard drives, but once I started to dig in I noticed it is much more. Let's take a look.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Friday, 04 December 2020 20:23
While I am in the process of building a FreeNAS server to get some experience with it, I wasn’t planning on switching all three of our NAS over to the one system. I’ve been running two Qnap NAS for a while now and I love the flexibility they offer on the software side. So with the move to getting our data storage tucked away better in our rack, it was a perfect time to check out a rack-mounted NAS from Qnap. Specifically, their TS-453DU which has a matching non-rack mounted option in the TS-453D with that version also having 6 and 2 disk models and the rack-mounted version having 8 and 12 disk capacity options as well as a second 4 disk model with a redundant power supply. These are Celeron J4125 quad-core based and feature dual 2.5G network ports. This means we can do some testing to see how the 2.5G network that is coming with a lot of net motherboards can offer in real-world performance. So let’s dive in and see what the Qnpa TS-453DU has to offer for hardware, software, and performance!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Friday, 27 November 2020 12:16
Western Digital just recently expanded their PC Gaming lineup and I don’t mean their introduction of the Call of Duty branded parts. They introduced PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD with the new SN850, an NVMe SSD Game Dock with the D50, and an NVMe SSD add-in card with the AN1500. The AN1500 is an interesting product and a little different than you might normally see from WD as it is actually a RAID add-in card. So unlike the new SN850, the AN1500 stays on the older PCIe 3.0 interface which older Ryzen chipsets and all of Intel’s current lineup have. Offering performance beyond their PCIe 3.0 flagship SN750 without being limited to just the newer Ryzen chipsets like the new SN850. Well, today I’m going to take a look at the AN1500 and see how it performs, check out the PCIe Cards RGB lighting, and see where it fits in the market.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Thursday, 24 September 2020 12:57
Recently Crucial introduced their newest portable SSD, the X6 and at the same time also brought out the new 2TB version of their X8 which I previously took a look at. The X6 is a SATA based drive that was designed with the price in mind which at its 1TB and 2TB capacities bridges the gap between portable hard drives and more expensive NVMe portable drives like the X8. They sent both drives over in the 2TB capacity and when I spoke with them before the launch we talked about the 2TB capacity specifically and why they were focusing on it. For starters, in their research, ¼ of the people looking for external drives are looking for high capacities like this when shopping. Which makes sense really, some people use these to supplement their PC or laptop storage for media downloads and when it comes to digital content creation for storing big video files which take up a lot of space. Those aren’t files you want to wait around at spinning drive speeds waiting to transfer. So today I’m going to take a second look at the X8, now with the new capacity, and check out the new X6 and see how they both perform. Let’s dive in!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Wednesday, 02 September 2020 19:00
I recently took a look at Sabrent’s external M.2 enclosure that can turn any NVMe M.2 drive into a high-speed USB 3.2 drive. But that isn’t the only external storage option they have, nor is it the fastest. Their Rocket XTRM-Q is a traditional external drive, not an enclosure and it supports Thunderbolt 3 as well as USB 3.2 Gen 2. Thunderbolt 3 being significantly faster and fast enough to really put the NVMe drive inside to good use. Today I’m going to take a look at the Rocket XTRM-Q and see what it’s all about then put it to the test both with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 to see what you can expect depending on what technology your PC has as a connection option.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Tuesday, 25 August 2020 15:01
Back in June (god time is going fast) I took a look at the Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB SSD. It was my first experience with Sabrent and I was very impressed with its performance. Well, it just so happens when they sent the drive over they included another. A tool-free enclosure, their EC-TFNE USB 3.2 Tool-Free Enclosure, and after the Rocket Q review I installed it into the encloser and I have been putting it to use. Well, today I’m going to take a closer look at the enclosure. External hard drive enclosures used to be extremely popular back 10+ years ago when LanOC Reviews was new in the game. With drives getting exponentially faster and smaller with new NVMe M.2 drives the enclosures have gotten a lot smaller and much more portable. But are they still useful? Today I’m going to see what features their enclosure has and then run our external drive tests on it to see how it performs as well.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Friday, 24 July 2020 20:37
In addition to the P2 which I recently reviewed Crucial announced alongside the P2 their new P5. The P5 is a little different than there P1 and P2 because it is focused more on the higher end of the market. Which is exciting, up until now Crucial’s only NVMe SSDs have been those budget-minded models. Now, this is a PCIe 3.0 drive and they are a little late to that game. But it does have an in house Micron controller. Well, today I’m going to check out the new P5 and see what it’s all about, how it performs, and where it fits in the market as well. So let’s dive in!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Thursday, 18 June 2020 15:36
Crucial’s P1 has been a go-to for anyone looking to build a budget build that still wants the significantly faster speeds than an NVMe drive can offer. I took a look at the P1 back in 2018 HERE and still love the drive. So when Crucial announced their new P2 I was excited to find out what they were doing differently this time around. Well, today I’m going to take a closer look and find out what the P2 is all about then put it through our test suite to see how it performs. Is it still the go-to for budget builds? Let’s find out!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Friday, 12 June 2020 20:57
The SSD market is huge and one of the best things about it is that it isn’t limited to a short list of companies who can manufacture drives, like with the spinning hard drive market. This has allowed brands that we know from other markets to jump into the scene as well as brands/companies that we haven’t seen before as well. Sabrent falls into the second half of that statement. While they have been around since 2008, I personally didn’t see the Sabrent brand until the last year or so, and after seeing promising reviews from a few industry friends I have been excited to see what they have to offer. So today I am going to check out the Sabrent Rocket Q which is an NVMe M.2 SSD, specifically in the 1TB capacity that they sent over which is large enough to potentially run just a single drive even with a long list of games and programs that might need to be installed. So let’s check out what Sabrent has to offer and see how the Rocket Q performs!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Monday, 01 June 2020 18:55
External SSDs have gotten fast enough that they have been pushing the limit of USB 3.2 Gen 2 for a while now. Thankfully USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is a possibility and I was excited to check Gen 2x2 out months ago when Western Digital sent over the P50. Sadly I ran into a major issue, I didn’t have a board that supported it and at the time the only boards that did were the new Threadripper boards which I didn’t have a CPU for. I thought I found an X299 solution but after it came in we found out it didn’t and the specifications for that board were corrected (oops lol). Well one of the side benefits of the recent Intel launch is the possibility of new USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 capable boards and two out of the three motherboards that have come in actually had it. So while in the middle of our Z490 testing I wanted to slip in a look at the WD_Black P50 that I have been so excited to test out. So today I’m going to take a look at what it is all about and put it to the test. Let’s check it out!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Tuesday, 12 May 2020 17:06
While the Lexar name is extremely well known when it comes to SD cards and flash drives. But they do make SSDs. Not long ago they launched their NM610 which is an M.2 NVMe drive and I’ve had the chance to check it out. I’m a little late due to the craziness that has been going on. But today I’m going to take a look at the Lexar NM610 and see what it is all about and find out how it performs. They have it listed as up to 2100 MB/s on the read speeds which would put it in as a mid-range NVME SSD so I’m curious to see if it lives up to that and how it compares to similarly priced drive. Let’s check it out!
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Category: Storage
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Published: Monday, 02 March 2020 14:31
If you have been active in or around the LanOC community, there is a good chance you have heard of Icy Dock. You can go all the way back to May of 2008, just 3 months after we started reviews and see our first Icy Dock review. I met them on our first CES trip that year and they were a dedicated sponsor over the years for our LAN events as well. My first experiences with them were their external hard drive enclosures and their hot swaps for hard drives, but they really hit their stride when SSDs started coming out and most cases didn’t support any 2.5-inch slots with their many creative 2.5 to 3.5 adapters. Well they haven’t stopped with the unique adapters and while I haven’t worked with them in a while they recently reached out and sent over their EZConvert NVMe M.2 to U.2 adapter and today I’m going to check it out.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Friday, 17 January 2020 18:06
The RGB market over the last few years has had just about anyone and everyone adding RGB to their products, even if it doesn’t make sense. One of the main areas which it has seemed to fit well is with RGB memory modules. Even this year we are seeing the last few companies who didn’t get in on the trend early getting out their RGB memory. The SSD market with SATA SSDs has had a few RGB options come out, but they always come off at more pointless than normal considering a lot of cases hide the 2.5-inch drives. But M.2, on the other hand, has been starting to see RGB come into the mix as well. Honestly a lot of boards hide the M.2 as well, but when it isn’t, it is at least right there on your already RGB lit motherboard right? Well, Patriot got in on it all as well with their Viper Gaming lines new drive called the VPR100, get it VPR aka Viper. Well, today I’m going to take a look at the drive, it's lighting, its software, and of course its performance as well!
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