I don’t know about you, but when I build a new PC I basically plan for an SSD for my operating system and then a second drive or more for my Steam and other files. This has been fairly consistent in my builds from the “Fridge” with its double SSD’s and double spinning drives all the way to the most recent “lunchbox 3” with its SSD and hard drive. I even do the same thing on my gaming laptop. Sadly, there are a lot of people who just can’t do this with their laptops do to only having one drive space. Western Digital surprised us late last week with a game changing drive that has that situation in mind without going with a hybrid setup. That drive is their new WD Black 2 Dual Drive, a single drive that houses a 120GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive.

In the past we have taken a look at a variety of different SSD’s of all different sizes and shapes. Today we are going to check out something completely different. Today we are taking a look at a tiny 1.8 inch SSD that uses a PATA ZIF connection. For those of you who don’t know what a ZIF connection is, that is a zero insertion force connection. You typically see them inside of laptops and in this case this drive is normally used on small laptops and in some handheld devices. Being a PATA based (think IDE) these aren’t all about speed, but I wanted to check the drive out due to its size. So let’s take a look.

With the Agility and Vertex product lines from OCZ in their fourth generations it was exciting to see OCZ change things up and introduce a new model late last year. With a unique design and an Indilinx controller inside it looks like it could really shake things up. I’m excited to see how it will perform, especially compared to the Agility 4 and Vertex 4 that we have recently taken a look at. OCZ gave it the Vector name and in some cases that means “a force or influence”, let’s find out if the OCZ Vector will be a force or influence in the SSD market. 

It wasn’t that long ago when we took a look at the OCZ Vertex 4, the first drive sporting the Indilinx Everest 2 controller. The Vertex 4 topped just about everything we put it through. When OCZ asked if we were interested in checking out the Asynchronous Agility 4, we jumped at the chance. With the difference between the drives just being the NAND used, it’s always interesting to see what real world performance difference you should expect when going with a budget drive. Not everyone can afford to get top of the line, especially when balancing capacity as well. Let’s see what you will be giving up and find out if it’s worth the difference in price.

When it comes to storage, there is no question that cloud storage is growing in importance every year. For some this is all that you might need, but if you are like me, you need a lot more than what is available on the cloud. When combined with laptops and multi computer households, adding more storage to just your PC isn’t always the best option. This is where Network Attached Storage comes in: you can have almost endless amounts of storage available in your home. Companies like Thecus have built on that with a collection of features like built in antivirus, Bit-Torrent support, and multimedia support. We are going to take a look at Thecus’s N5550, a 5-bay NAS with USB 3.0.

To say it’s been a while since we have taken a look at a Mushkin SSD would be an understatement. The last time we took a look at one of their SSD’s it was a SATA 2 drive. Things have moved on to bigger, cheaper, and faster things. Mushkin recently introduced their 7mm version of the Chronos Deluxe, a SATA 3 based SSD with advertised transfer speeds of up to 560MB/sec read and IOPS of 90,000. With numbers like that, I had to get my hands on it to see how it performed. How will it compare to all of the other drives with similar advertised performance numbers? Will this be your next SSD?

Earlier this year I had the chance to visit the OCZ offices. While being shown the offices I could sense the excitement. At that time they finally had the Indilinx crew in the office and they were very excited about how having an in house NAND Controller and firmware production would change the future of OCZ’s SSD business. The first drive that Indilinx had a hand in was the OCZ Vertex 4. Today we are going to put the Vertex 4 to the test in our new benchmark suite along with a few other SATA 3 drives to see how they perform. I hope that the same excitement that I saw in the OCZ offices will equal top notch performance from their current flagship SSD. 

By this time, we all should be familiar with the term "cloud" and what it means, and you probably already are using a cloud solution of some kind (either Dropbox, or Windows Live Mesh, or others). What about a personal cloud? A cloud that you can take with you everywhere you go that stores much more data than what you can put up in a Dropbox account. We have previously reviewed a 16GB product from Kingston, but lets take a look at something with a bit more storage. Today we will be looking at the 500GB Seagate GoFlex Satellite external WiFi hard drive, designed to give you access to media, particularly on your mobile devices, wherever you go.

In the beginning, there were platter hard drives. They would spend their lives spinning away into a data driven oblivion. Google has even authored a study on hard drives, and their reliability. For awhile, there were drives called RAM drives. They would use some of your system memory as a temporary hard drive (temporary because they were volatile) as a means to store and access data. This process was very quick. Recently, solid state hard drives (like a RAM drive, but not really) have become popular. They access data very quickly, and although they are small in size, they do pack quite a punch. Today we will be looking at the Samsung 830 Series SATA 6Gb/s drive (128GB capacity). How does it compare to other SSDs on the market, and does its performance warrant installation in your PC? Read on to find out!

It’s really crazy to think that it’s been over 16 years now since USB 1.0 was released. Even looking back to USB 2.0 in April of 2000 it’s been 12 years that we have been living with that 60 MB/s theoretical speed.  I can’t even imagine how many hours, days, maybe even weeks; I have spent waiting for files to transfer in those 16 years. When USB 3.0 was introduced in 2008 I literally couldn’t wait for the day I would finally be able to fully take advantage of the speeds that USB 3.0 brought to the table. Today for the first time I can say that I am taking full advantage. I’m going invite you all in to see what I am using to do this.

So you do the smart thing, you backup your data from your laptop and your home PC to an external or network drive and go on with life feeling confident that you have gone well and above what most people do. For the most part, you did. What about when you’re traveling, have you seen how much abuse a device can take when on the go? For some people, and I know I’m one of them, some of the data you carry with you while traveling is more important than the laptop or device that you actually carry it on. In that situation you need a way to not have to worry about your data, no matter the situation, and to have a guarantee to back it up as well. The folks over at ioSafe focus specifically on this crowd. Not only do they offer products that are according to them build to handle almost anything, but they back it up with data recovery if something does happen.  Today we are going to take a look at that Rugged Portable hard drive to see what all of the fuss is about, without any more buildup, let’s dig in.

I remember, early last year, thinking to myself; "Self, it would be totally awesome if they made an external hard drive that was battery operated and could connect to a WiFi network. No more USB cables!" Well, that time has arrived with several new products that have recently hit the market. Today, I would like to take a look at the Kingston Wi-Drive 16GB unit and see how it works, and more importantly, is it worth the money.

Earlier this month Star Trek: Online went the Free To Play model, meaning anyone can have their own starship and participate in one of the best science fiction franchises of all time! Why is that significant to this article?  It is significant because I am a Trekkie. I openly admit it. When HornetTek contacted us to do some reviews on their products, this product definitely caught my eye for two reasons. One, I like hard drive enclosures and external storage solutions. Two, it is named "Enterprise". There is even a glimpse of the good 'ole 1701 on HornetTek's website.

The question is; is the HornetTek Enterprise 4X an enterprise-level device that performs like the Federation flagship would, or is it just as useful as a self-sealing stem bolt? Read on to find out!

With internal Blu-Ray players starting to become normal and prices becoming very reasonable it’s no surprise that Plextor would look at other options to continue to grow their product line. They have had an external Blu-Ray drive for some time, but it would be hard to call it portable. With the introduction of the PX-B120U they could finally call their external Blu-Ray drive portable. Just like the PX-610U it doesn’t require external power making it much easier to take with you on the go. Let’s take a look and see if the PX-B120U is as portable as it looks.

When you first visit RunCore's website, you'll have to chose what sort of consumer you are: professional or 'prosumer'. For those unfamiliar with the latter, it's a hybrid word to describe a 'professional consumer', or if you will, an enthusiast. Today we look at a solid-state drive, a piece of hardware any PC enthusiast drools over, provided by RunCore, a China-based manufactuer focused on the production of high-end solid-state storage options.

When you hear the word Hybrid you may have images of Prius’s or maybe even the south park episode where they called all Hybrid owners fart sniffers. You may be surprised to find out that you can get hybrids in the computer industry, specifically in storage. With SSD’s gaining popularity it’s not a surprise that manufactures are looking at ways to bring SSD performance with a normal hard drives capacity and price. Today I have the chance to take a closer look at the Momentus XT from Seagate. This is a 2.5inch laptop drive with 4 gigs of SLC NAND (solid state flash) attached to the PCB to give you just that.