September 24th, 2012 by Josh Linden
Samsung SSD 840 Pro Review
Samsung has announced its latest 2.5-inch, 7mm SSD solutions, the SSD 840 and SSD 840 Pro. StorageReview has been working with an SSD 840 Pro review unit in our lab to see whether Samsung has continued to build on the accomplishments of the SSD 830 and SSD 470. Like the SSD 830 and SSD 470, the SSD 840 Pro is designed entirely with Samsung components, with purported benefits of durability, compatibility and product support. The SSD 840 Pro is intended to be competitive in the enthusiast, prosumer, and entry enterprise space.
September 14th, 2012 by Brian Beeler
WD My Passport Edge for Mac Review (WDBJBH5000ABK)
The 500GB WD My Passport Edge portable hard drive for Mac users picks up on Western Digital's revised design for their portable drives. Over the last year Western Digital has been busy redefining the design of their entire external portable hard drive line, none more evident than the sleek new metal bodies given to their My Passport Studio drives designed for Mac users. The 1TB Studio and the slightly more rotund 2TB My Passport Studio have lead the way, now complimented by the My Passport Edge for Mac, which brings the polished ID to a strikingly slim 500GB USB 3.0 portable.
September 13th, 2012 by Lyle Smith
Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo Review
Western Digital has started shipping a high-performance external hard drive solution: the My Book VelociRaptor Duo. As the name indicates, the biggest difference in this Duo version is that it uses a pair of Western Digital's 1TB 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor hard drives in the My Book enclosure. Incorporating these high performance drives allows for throughput of almost 400MB/s. We previously reviewed Western Digital's My Book Thunderbolt Duo which boasted surprisingly fast speeds to Thunderbolt-capable systems for those needing a combination of big capacity and fast throughput in a local external hard drive solution. The VelociRaptor Duo takes external performance one step further, dramatically increasing read and write speeds over previous Western Digital external storage solutions.
August 20th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
Corsair Neutron GTX SSD Review
Corsair is nothing if not flexible when it comes to selecting the best available components for their consumer SSD lines seen with the new Neutron SSD family. Already using SSD controllers from SandForce and Marvell, Corsair has launched the Neutron and Neutron GTX today based on the Link A Media (LAMD) controller. Corsair's ability to move with the market to create industry-leading SSDs highlights the benefit of investing in an engineering team with the capabilities of understanding and integrating with a variety of components. In this review we take a look at the GTX version of the Neutron, which features a LM87800 6Gb/s controller and 24nm Toshiba Toggle NAND to deliver read and write throughput of 559MB/s and 511MB/s respectively.
July 30th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
Plextor PX-M5S SSD Review
While Plextor doesn't have an extensive range of SSD offerings in the consumer space, the drives they do bring to market have historically been very good. In fact, Plextor has eeked more performance out of the Marvell 9174 (which at this point, if not old is certainly near end of life with the successor announced a few months ago) than anyone else using that particular SSD controller. Plextor also boasts industry leading internal validation and other testing to make sure their SSD reliability is top of market. The new PX-M5S continues the Plextor mantra of delivering incremental improvements over time. While not a revolutionary change, the M5S SSD is a perfect example of progressive SSD engineering, delivering an end product that's expected to be a step better than prior generations.
July 25th, 2012 by Dan Volkens
CalDigit T1 Thunderbolt Drive Review
The CalDigit T1 is an aluminum drive enclosure that comes complete with either a hard drive or SSD inside. The drives are mounted to 3.5" drive sleds that make it easy to swap out drives at will. The Thunderbolt interface actually makes an external SSD viable from a performance standpoint, CalDigit included both a 3TB hard drive and 480GB SSD for testing purposes. What's more, the package includes the $50 Apple Thunderbolt cable, which is a first, none of the Thunderbolt solutions we've reviewed to date have actually included the cable. CalDigit has another trick up their sleeve too, an iOS application called ThunderView that provides drive info and tools geared toward workflows for creative professionals.
July 10th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive Review [WD30EFRX]
It's an interesting decision - WD is expanding their low-power 3.5" hard drive offerings with a second line at the same time Seagate exists the "green" market, claiming low-power drives aren't really all that beneficial or quite frankly, special. The Western Digital Red family of hard drives is designed for the 1 to 6 bay SOHO NAS space, which is about as specialized as it gets. WD has several features that they're touting as critical for the NAS user including; NASware specialized firmware, Intellipower low power spindle, robust NAS compatibility list, three year warranty and a dedicated WD Red 24x7 customer support line (1-855-55-WDRED if you need them).
July 3rd, 2012 by Josh Linden
Icy Dock MB994SP-4SB-1 4 in 1 SATA Backplane Review
The MB994SP-4SB-1 is Icy Dock’s latest quad-bay 5.25” bay RAID cage, successor to the MB994SP-4S we reviewed. The backplane hosts up to four 2.5" 6Gbps SATA drives and provides SATA connectivity. The MB994SP-4SB-1 represents an evolution of previous Icy Dock designs, adding a fan power switch to provide more cooling flexibility in environments that use both hard drives and SSDs as well as dropping the power input to a single connection.
June 19th, 2012 by Josh Linden
WiebeTech ToughTech Secure mini-Q Review
WiebeTech’s ToughTech Secure mini-Q offers 128bit or 256bit encryption in a portable 2.5” SATA enclosure that uses key fobs to grant access to encrypted volumes, avoiding common social hacks that can compromise passphrase-based encryption. The mini-Q provides whole disk encryption to protects the entire drive, including boot sector, file allocation tables, and swap files.
June 14th, 2012 by Josh Linden
Western Digital My Net N900 Review
Western Digital has just announced its first line of consumer networking products, the My Net family. WD provided us with a My Net N900 wireless router, effectively the top-of-the-line until the arrival of the My Net N900 Central with integrated storage next quarter. Our first impression is that the My Net series adds a few distinctive WD touches to the typical home router concept, so it will be interesting to see how a storage company with an established consumer brand will continue to make room for itself in the consumer networking market.
