The long-awaited introduction of Testbed4 has shaken up things on the Leaderboard for the first time in 9 months. Be sure to check out the changes. StorageReview’s unique Drive Performance Database will be updated soon to incorporate the latest figures from the new test system. Stay tuned for that update. Regarding individual drive reviews, first

Seagate today announced shipment of its NL35 series to the channel- a family that some may remember was announced by the firm as early as April of last year. The drive targets the growing nearline sector, drives servicing data that require true real-time random access where capacity and cost concerns outweigh blinding speed. Drives such

One of the key changes in the impending Testbed4 rollout will be the way we deal with measuring the heat generated by hard drives. As we worked behind the scenes to expand SR’s coverage to notebook drives, we knew that power consumption remained a key facet of tests. To satisfy this end, we commissioned the

This time around we’ve released an advanced look at how current drives stack up in the StorageReview High-End DriveMark 2006. While the Office DriveMark examines drive performance with everyday tasks such as word processing and web browsing, the High-End DriveMark subjects disks to the patterns generated by applications such as photo and video editing. Check

It’s been a long time in coming, and many readers have repeatedly been asking for results. The good news is that most Testbed4 figures have been finalized. While the formal write up looms, we’ve started to informally release results to the SR community via the forums. First up is the the replacement for our main

Today Western Digital announces the Caviar WD4000YR, which joins the Caviar WD2500KS as the second of the firm’s native SATA designs. Also dubbed “RE2,” or “Raid Edition 2,” the 400 GB drive sits along the Raptor WD740GD as a product targeted more towards the enterprise sector, though it will likely interest avid enthusiasts as well.

We’ve entered results for Western Digital’s Caviar WD3200JD, Hitachi’s Ultrastar 10K300 and the Ultrastar15K147 into the Testbed3 database. A formal write-up for the Caviar will be posted this week with the Ultrastar’s following shortly afterwards. Keep the SR Performance Database in mind when you have questions about which drive is best for various applications. The

A backlog of drives has accumulated while we work to deploy Testbed4. There’s been demand for reviews of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 as well as Western Digital’s Caviar WD3200JD. On the SCSI side of things, Hitachi’s Ultrastar 10K300 and 15K147 have patiently waited for a review. To expedite SR’s take on these drives, we’ve temporarily

Things have been too quiet here around SR, thanks largely due to continued behind-the-scenes work on our next-generation testbed. When researching the configuration and methodologies associated with our previous test machine, we had the luxury of continuing with prompt reviews of new products in an existing machine. Testbed4 is not as sweeping a change as