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Vantec NexStar SE Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Rack Review
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 “Solid state drives are all the rage right now. The most common form factor for solid state drives is the 2.5-inch form factor. Many new cases have support for 2.5-inch drives, but many cases, even newer ones do not. No one wants to go out and buy a brand new case, just for a hard drive. Vantec knows this and has a whole line of hard drive racks that support 2.5-inch drives. Today we will be taking a look at the NexStar SE Dual 2.5-inch hard drive rack, which is a 5.25-inch bay device that supports two 2.5-inch drives. Let’s take a look…"
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Western Digital's Caviar Green HDD Bug Reported
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"It has come to our attention that Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs suffer from a critical design flaw caused by an aggressive power-saving feature. Western Digital has developed a new technology called Intellipark (aka Idle 3 mode) and it is designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the HDD's heads in a park position and turning off unnecessary electronics after 8 seconds of inactivity.
According to an in-house investigation and user reports', some software and operating systems are incompatible with the Intellipark feature causing endless head parking movement as the HDD continuously goes in/out of idle mode. This abnormal behavior creates stress on the HDD and that could lead to the following issues:
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OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 120GB Solid State Drive Review
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"In 2010 we were introduced to Other World Computing (http://www.macsales.com), a reseller specializing in Macintosh products. At the time OWC was moving beyond that of a simple retail / e-tail outlet and venturing into manufacturing their own solid state product line. Over the last few years we've seen many companies manufacture their own SSDs; some have been established in the SSD market and others have been a one product wonder. You would think those with history in the SSD marketplace would be the first to market when a new controller becomes available, but OWC proved that theory wrong when they released the SandForce SF-1200 based Mercury Extreme right at the beginning of the product cycle. To show that OWC was serious about their solid state product line, they also priced the Mercury Extreme at a competitive point and even held the crown on and off in 2010 as the lowest priced SandForce SSD on the market.
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OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD Review
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The performance oriented controller used by the Vertex 3 known as the SandForce SF-2281 includes support for the SATA 6Gb/s interface, while boasting read and write speeds of 500MB/s+, a mind blowing figure when compared to previous generation chips.
For now it appears solid state drives will continue to get faster, but not any cheaper. OCZ has set the list price for the Vertex 3 120GB version at $249, while the 240GB version will cost $499. Compared to the current Vertex 2 models - 120GB ($229) and 240GB ($429) - it translates in a small price premium for the smaller drive while the larger model is getting hit a bit harder for a noticeable performance increase.
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Kingwin DM-2356 Dockmaster II Review
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"Consumers who like to upgrade their computer(s) often, or even upgrade once for that matter, have a need for a product like the one I'm about to show you here. Have you ever had a computer crash on you and you lost all your data? Sucks huh? There is nothing more gut-wrenching then losing a decade's worth of your irreplaceable children's pictures because you didn't take the few minutes once in a while to back them up."
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Thermaltake Max 5G USB 3.0 HDD Enclosure Review
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oday we take a look at an excellent addition for the USB 3.0 user. One thing many people don't realize, is actually how dangerous it can be for you if your hard drive overheats. A large amount of hard drive failures are caused from hard drives overheating. So Thermaltake brings you a snazzy looking enclosure for your HDD that you can trust to keep your HDD cool with its to sleek and quiet 80mm fans. And, with the addition of USB 3.0's capability, you're looking at an amazing product. Let's check it out:
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Intel 320 Series SSD 300GB Review
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"Today we have one of the 320 Series SSDs connected to our test system and will find out what it offers and whether it can compete with its main competition, a SandForce based model of similar capacity, in a selection of real world and synthetic tests."
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Seagate Constellation.2 2.5” 1TB SATA
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In today’s review/comparison we put the latest Seagate Constellation.2 1TB Serial ATA drive up against its Serial Attached SCSI brother for the sole purpose of determining which type of interface is faster, more reliable and most suited for your needs.
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Intel 320 Series 300GB SSD Review w/ 25nm Flash
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As a follow-up to their very successful X25-M series of drives, Intel has launched their 320 Series drives which feature a host of new features while being driven by their own proprietary controller. With the SATA 3Gbps SSD market being so crowded, can Intel tempt consumers to look their way? See the outcome of the testing and judge for yourself.
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We’ve got an Intel SSD 320 series 300GB drive on hand
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Intel officially announced the new SSD 320 Series drives yesterday, which feature proprietary Intel SSD processors paired to cutting edge 25nm NAND flash memory. This new family of drives, however, isn’t geared for ultra-high performance. While still fast, the overarching goals with the Intel SSD 320 series were increased reliability and security. In fact, despite being released after the SSD 510 series which we took a look at a few weeks back, these technically newer 320 series drives do not feature support for the faster SATA III interface. The Intel SSD 320 series drives are SATA II only.
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Crucial M4 / Micron C400 256GB SSD Review
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Crucial, best known for their memory products, was the first to put an SSD on the market with a 6Gbps interface way back in early 2010 with the C300 drive. Back then, we ran some tests and found it to be impressive when compared with what was on the market at the time. Since then, a lot has changed and there are a number of 6Gbps interface drives on the market now so competition is definitely stiffer this time around. Will it hit them mark using the same controller with firmware and NAND updates? Read on and see.
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Western Digital My Book 3.0 1TB USB 3.0 External HDD Review
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"The Western Digital My Book Series is one of the longest running product brand names in the storage market. Western Digital has done very well with My Book and all of the products in the group have turned out very well. In 2011 Western Digital is raising the bar for My Book by adding the new My Book 3.0, a new USB 3.0 connected enclosure to the series.
The Western Digital My Book 3.0 is a sleek enclosure around two inches wide and seven inches tall. The top, bottom and back are vented to allow air to flow over the internal drive, but the front and sides have a matte black finish. When the drive is powered a tiny white LED glows to show that the system is actually powered on. Western Digital needed some way to show that the drive was powered on since the My Book 3.0 is silent from just a few inches away. On the back you will find a single button to power the enclosure on and off."
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File Transfers Over 1Gbit/s Ethernet: SSD vs. HDD
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Utilizing Intel's I340 server NIC on one end, and a Realtek on the other, a transfer from SSD to SSD (Corsair F160 to Corsair F160) proved to be about 111MB/s for a solid file, and 56.75MB/s for a folder, which consisted of 6,353 files of varying sizes. At around 111MB/s, we found our network to be pretty-well maxed-out, even with the Intel server card involved (and for what it's worth, we found pretty much the same in Linux, except it was 1MB/s slower on average).
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Seagate GoFlex Slim 320GB
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"The Seagate GoFlex Slim 320GB portable drive caught us a little off guard when it arrived. We weren't sure what to expect, but in the end we found ourselves pleasantly surprised to find a portable drive that was fast, lightweight, small and looked good. Usually, you can't find a way to blend all those features together without making sacrifices along the way, but that doesn't appear to be the situation we have here today. In order to take full advantage of this drive you really need to have a USB 3.0 interface! With CrystalDiskMark we saw the GoFlex Slim 320GB drive peak at ~120MB/s read and ~118MB/s write, so if you've been using a USB 2.0 drive and are stuck at ~31MB/s write speeds you'll see nice performance gains!"
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Thermaltake Max5G USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure
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"Hard drive enclosures can be play an important role in our computer centric lives, they’re great for taking stuff with you. You can get them in big and small sizes and they certainly come in all shapes and designs. Today for review I’ve got the latest enclosure from Thermaltake called the Max5G that uses USB 3.0 so you get the best performance. The Max5G also features two 80mm cooling fans and it looks good too. "
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| The best Guides by the best writers on the internet; PCstats Beginners Guides explain computers, software, and all those other wonderful things that cause you frustration.
Learn how to use your computer better, master the internet while protecting yourself, and know what to do when your hard drive kicks the bucket.
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"Get the 'Stats and Stay Informed!"
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Beginners Guides
