With all the talk about SSDs around here it can be easy to forget that notebook users have another, oftentimes preferable option: good old-fashioned mechanical hard disk storage. Solid state technology has been improving at a rapid clip, but mechanical drives aren’t stagnating either. Platter density continues to improve, and with it comes faster sequential

Viking Modular makes a variety of SSDs for enterprise users, based on the powerful SF-1500 controller form SandForce. We recently reviewed Viking Modular’s unique SATADIMM SSD and found it very appealing, so there’s little reason to doubt that we’ll enjoy their 2.5" enterprise SSD; essentially the same specs as the SATADIMM, just in a more conventional form

The Lenovo ThinkPad brand may be synonymous with well-built laptops, but Lenovo has a long series of computing products under the ThinkPad brand, including the secure eSATA 500GB external hard drive (57Y4400). By secure, Lenovo doesn’t just mean standard password protection for the drive; they bring AES 256-bit encryption and an integrated 10-digit keypad to

An aspect of solid state drives that is being explored more recently is the number of form factors into which you can fit them. While mechanical hard disks have a very specific set of dimensions they need to fit into, SSDs have no such problems. The 2.5” SSDs that we get today are really only

ioSafe has long been in the business of providing external hard drives to those looking for a little more physical security for their data. And by little more, we mean protection from fire, water, bear attacks – that sort of thing. Their product line recently received an upgrade to USB 3.0, which along with eSATA

The MB973SP-B is Icy Dock’s latest backplane unit that allows users to install three 3.5″ hard drives inside a computer case’s two 5.25″ device bays. To make life easy on those who make frequent drive swaps, the backplane is tray-less and screw-less. There are plenty of other highlights as well, including individual drive power buttons,

SandForce’s SF-1200 controller has more or less taken the Solid State Drive world by storm, and with good reason. SandForce-based drives provide performance that’s consistently near the top of the heap, and benefits from not requiring DRAM for caching. It’s an appealing piece of hardware to build an SSD around so it’s no small surprise

Samsung has been playing in the consumer SSD space longer than most people know. It was their early SSDs that graced the likes of Sony ultraportable notebooks and found their way in other high-end premium builds from many other brands. But not until recently have consumers been able to trot out to the store to

Western Digital recently released their latest entry in the media streamer space. While the earlier editions of WD’s TV Live family fared well, renewed competition from Apple, Roku, Netgear and others mean that to succeed with a steaming device you have to accomplish several goals, foremost among them a nice interface, ease of use, ease