January 22nd, 2013 by Josh Linden
Netgear Centria Multifunction Wireless Router and NAS Review
Netgear’s Centria is the company’s latest multifunction home and small home office router. Like other recent high-performance home and SOHO wireless routers, Centria features dual 450Mbps transceivers capable of a theoretical maximum throughput of 900 Mbps and consolidates routing, switching, NAS/backup, and media streaming functionality into once device. Unlike previous Netgear routers which allowed users to add storage exclusively through external USB interfaces, the Centria provides an internal SATA bay for hard drive storage.
January 22nd, 2013 by Doug Crowthers
LaCie 2big NAS 6TB Review
LaCie and beautiful design intuitively go together, thanks to years of LaCie regularly pumping out great looking storage devices. The LaCie 2big 2-bay NAS system is no different, sporting solid-aluminum body. It features LaCie's NAS OS 3.0, which makes NAS management easy. Out of the box, the 2big NAS comes configured in RAID 1, but has support for RAID 0 configurations.
January 14th, 2013 by Doug Crowthers
Kingston DataTraveler Workspace with Windows To Go Review
The Kingston DataTraveler Workspace is a bootable USB 3.0 flash drive designed to be used with Windows To Go, a feature of Windows 8 Enterprise. The DataTraveler Workspace is one of the few flash drives that are certified for Windows To Go, giving users on-the-go Windows experience. The USB 3.0 drive incorporates SandForce SSD controller technology to produce a high-performance, low-latency drive. It's factory configured as a fixed drive so it boots through USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 ports on compatible hardware.
January 13th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
LaCie Blade Runner by Philippe Starck Review
The LaCie Blade Runner is a 4TB external hard drive that's unlike any other on the market. While the tech specs feature big capacity and USB 3.0 connectivity, the real story is the drive's design and designer. When LaCie went to Philippe Starck to design an external drive, he indicated that beyond anything else, he didn't want it to look like an external drive. Mission accomplished. The end product is as much functional tech as it is desktop artwork; a combination that will appeal not only to Starck enthusiasts around the world, but anyone who's willing to invest a little more for a stylish piece.
January 7th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD Review
The SanDisk Ultra Plus is a mainstream SSD designed for client system use. The Ultra Plus uses a standard 2.5" 7mm form factor with SATA 6Gb/s interface and is powered by a Marvell 9175 controller with in-house SanDisk firmware and SanDisk's 19nm MLC NAND. The combined package nets sequential read and write performance of up to 530 MB/s and 445 MB/s respectively. Like most SSDs though, the bottom line isn't just about top speed, it's also about smarter features that let users get more out of their drives while maintaining high levels of reliability.
January 4th, 2013 by Doug Crowthers
WD My Net N900 Central Review
In June, Western Digital announced the release of its first line of consumer networking products, the My Net family and we got our hands on the Western Digital My Net N900 router for an early review. Now, Western Digital has provided us with their My Net N900 Central router with integrated storage for us to review.
December 28th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
WD My Passport Enterprise 500GB Portable Hard Drive Review (WDBHEZ5000ABK)
The WD My Passport Enterprise is a 500GB portable hard drive designed to be used with Windows To Go. The My Passport Enterprise is the only hard drive certified for Windows To Go, giving users a capacious 500GB of storage space for their portable Windows experience. WD includes the Compass utility for easy configuration, providing users with a secure and portable Windows environment, with no trace of files left on the host system.
December 27th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
WD Black 4TB Review (WD4001FAEX)
The 4TB WD Black is Western Digital's top-capacity and top-performing 7,200 RPM client system hard drive. The standard 3.5" form factor is designed to provide bulk storage for desktop use, while still offering top class performance. WD is using their standard five platter design for the 4TB Black (note: Caviar has been dropped from the branding) that is also highlighted by a 64MB cache, SATA 6Gb/s interface to deliver 154MB/s throughput.
December 24th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD Review
The OWC Mercury Accelsior is a PCIe SSD designed for the enthusiast and creative professional market who crave the fastest storage available within a client workstation. OWC uses a unique design, essentially leveraging a PCIe PCB with two host slots for their gumstick-shaped SSDs and a management controller that ties the drives together. The architecture itself isn't novel, but OWC's implementation is, using in-house components and engineering to make the Accelsior come to life. OWC also provides options for the user which are unique. By default the drives ship in a RAID0 configuration which offers throughput around 800MB/s; users also have ability to switch to RAID1 for data redundancy, or JBOD mode to access the individual drives.
December 24th, 2012 by Lyle Smith
Icy Dock ToughArmor MB994IPO-3SB Review (3-in-1 with Optical)
The ToughArmor MB994IPO-3SB is Icy Dock’s newest full metal dual bay 2.5” SAS/SATA hard drive/SSD mobile rack cage built with a Slim Optical Disk Drive (ODD) slot for use in a single 5.25” device bay, specifically designed for a small form factor system or server such as IPC, HTPC, NAS, Home Servers and All-In-One computers. The MB994IPO-3SB is a really effective and unique device as it is equipped with not only two integral 2.5” drive bay caddies, but also a slim optical drive caddy so that two 2.5″ SAS drives or SSDs can fit in the same space.
