Links: (Sort order: Popularity, then added date; newest on top)
Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 300 GB Monster [Review, TomsHardware]
With a behemoth capacity of 300 GB, the DiamondMax is the biggest hard drive so far. Can the 5,400 rpm drive with just 2 MB of cache also deliver the performance for our times? Mon, 13 Oct, 2003 | 50 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Network Direct Attached Storage: Ximeta NetDisk [Review, TomsHardware]
Ximeta's NetDisk can both serve as a USB 2.0 external drive or plug into your LAN via its 10/100 Ethernet port. But does its LAN feature make it an inexpensive NAS device? Read our review and find out. Mon, 13 Oct, 2003 | 184 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Fall 2003: Hard Drives (8MB Buffer) Roundup [Roundup, Digit-Life]
Today almost every manufacturer positions drives with a 8MB buffer as hi-end models. The only exception is WD that makes drives of 40 to 250GB both with 2MB and 8MB buffers. That is why the today's review can be considered as the review of Parallel ATA drives of the hi-end class as they are positioned by the drive makers. The models tested today are Maxtor 6Y120P0, 6Y160P0, Samsung 1614N, Seagate ST3120026A, WD 2500JB. Wed, 08 Oct, 2003 | 331 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
IBM ThinkVantage Technologies: Hard Drive Active Protection System [Article, AnandTech]
Profit margins are getting thinner and brand name recognition has become increasingly important to consumers when buying a system, particularly, mobile systems. For businesses, there are two main ways to go about increasing net profits: reducing production costs and/or reducing operating costs. Keep in mind that often the traditional method has been to go about slashing production costs like price per component, etc. Wed, 08 Oct, 2003 | 30 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
2.5” Hard Disk Drives Roundup [Roundup, XbitLabs]
Today we are going to test 6 hard disk drives of 2.5” form-factor from Seagate, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Toshiba, which can not only be used in notebooks, but are also becoming very popular as mobile storage devices and miniature desktop solutions. Mon, 06 Oct, 2003 | 91 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Seagate's Cheetah 15K.3 hard drive [Review, Tech-Report]
Today, I've snagged Seagate's 15,000 RPM SCSI drive, the Cheetah 15K.3, to see if it can dethrone Maxtor's Atlas 15K from the top of the SCSI hard drive performance pile. Seagate claims the Cheetah 15K.3 is the lowest cost per-I/O drive, ever, but does that lofty claim stand on our benchmarking battleground? Read on to find out. Mon, 06 Oct, 2003 | 24 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Hitachi DeskStar 7K250: A New King of Performance? [Review, TomsHardware]
Starting right away, a third choice in 250GB hard drives will be available in addition to Maxtor and Western Digital: the Hitachi 7K250. The test will show whether it can gain the performance crown. Wed, 01 Oct, 2003 | 109 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Maxtor 80GB IDE Ultra ATA133 8MB [Review, SystemCooling]
Your systems Hard Drive is one of the key components that your computer simply cannot live without. It’s a huge storage bin the can hold millions of documents and pictures, thousands of MP3s and movies, all in a small package measuring around 14.5cm deep, 10cm wide and 2cm high. Wed, 01 Oct, 2003 | 186 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Rocketmate1000 & e.SATA B11 [Review, SubZeroTech]
Over the past year or two external I/O connections have increased greatly in speed and have become easier then ever to use. This revolution originally began with the introduction of the USB port, which allowed users great speed and true plug and play support. It was very simple for the end user to use, just plug in your device any time and it’ll pop right up with the correct driver (in most cases). This was great for things like mice and printers, but external backup a greater speed was needed. So the obvious upgrade was USB 2.0, which was a faster version of the standard USB port. USB 2.0 is equipped with a max speed of 480Mb/sec compared to the 12Mb/sec of the first USB port. Also, another popular high speed external connection available is the IEEE1394 Firewire port, which operates at 400 Mb/sec. With the popularity of these connections growing larger and more computers having them as standard equipment the hard drive community saw a perfect opportunity to start pushing high speed external hard drives. Even though these connections are very fast, they still are no where near the speed of an internal hard drive. So if things weren’t already complicated enough in steps SerialATA with a 1.5 Gb/sec connection. The main purpose of SerialATA is to eventually replace IDE with a faster more practical method of internal conductivity. So you might be wondering why it’s a threat to the external drive market, well its also available in an external connection (e.SATA). It would seem that this would be the best method of hooking up an external hard drive because its main purpose is for connecting hard drives. Wed, 01 Oct, 2003 | 37 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Hitachi 7K250 Serial ATA Hard Drive [Review, EnvyNews]
In this review, we’ll be taking a detailed look at Hitachi’s entry into the commercial Serial ATA marketplace. Hitachi, the owner of the former IBM namesake Deskstar, has provided us with a sample of their new 7K250 drive series. Built around the Marvel bridge chip and utilizing 8MB of Infineon RAM, the Deskstar 7K250 should have the brawn to take on our current top performer, the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9. Before we begin the performance tests, we’re going to take a detailed look at the new Deskstar 7K250 drive, the test system, and the competition. Mon, 29 Sep, 2003 | 207 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Crucial 7 in 1 Card Reader [Review, AseLabs]
While card readers are nothing new, there is a problem with today's choice of digital media; How many there are. If you think about it, there are many people with different medias, and once and awhile, you'll need to be able to access more than just what you own. Enter the Crucial 7 in 1 card reader. Is it worth your money? Let's find out. Thu, 25 Sep, 2003 | 27 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Crucial Hi-Speed USB 7-in-1 Card Reader [Review, Bjorn3d]
Crucial's foray into another product line has yielded more success and a great product. It is listed at US$25.99 on Crucial’s website and is a great value for the speed and multi-format support it delivers. Thu, 25 Sep, 2003 | 16 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA Hard Drives Review [Review, Digit-Life]
You might remember that we returned to the parallel Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 several times until the official drive with the v3.06 showed acceptable performance. That is why I didn't hurry to review the SATA version. But I've recently got three drives at once - two 160GB ST3160023AS (one of them is the official sample) and one 120GB ST3120026AS. All have the same firmware - 3.05. It should be noted that Seagate is the only company that doesn't makes SATA drives out of the parallel drives by simply using a bridge. Sun, 21 Sep, 2003 | 189 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 250 GB SATA Edition [Review, StorageReview]
Maxtor's latest ATA drive lines have traveled a somewhat bumpy road. Originally announced last September as the first 80 GB/platter drive, early models of the DiamondMax Plus 9 subsequently shipped with 60 or 66 GB platters. Further, the huge 250 GB and 320 GB MaXLine II models announced around the same time, despite captivating readers worldwide, remained nowhere to be seen. Fri, 19 Sep, 2003 | 157 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Atech Flash PRO 9 USB 2.0 Internal/External 9 In 1 Card Reader [Review, Bjorn3d]
One exciting thing about this Atech PRO 9 model is that it can easily be installed internally or be used as an external reader. Another great thing is that it supports the two newest formats -- xD-Picture Cards from Fuji and Memory Stick Pro cards. Wed, 17 Sep, 2003 | 128 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
SATA Roundup [Roundup, HardOCP]
Serial ATA has finally made enough of a dent in the consumer storage market that it is time to take it seriously. The promise of this new technology was shown early by Seagate with their release of the Barracuda V drives. While not an outstanding performer, it did provide the world with the first glimpse at what cabling and bus transfer speeds would look like in the future. Now, the early promises of better performance have only been met in recent months with the advent of Western Digital’s 10,000rpm Raptor, Maxtor’s Diamond Max Plus 9, and Seagate’s 7200.7 drives. Today, we’re going to dive in to find out what each of these drives is made of and how they perform. Wed, 17 Sep, 2003 | 300 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Successor to Cardbus Being Prepped [Article, ExtremeTech]
If you have a notebook PC, you probably have at least one PC card slot. At 54 millimeters wide and almost 86mm long, a PC card looks increasingly bulky when used in today's thin and light laptops. On top of that, the Cardbus slot, which is what a PC Card plugs into on the notebook PC, is getting long in the tooth. It requires a bulky host controller chip, and the need for parallel data lines requires careful circuit trace routing on the notebook system board. This, in turn, limits the clock speed to 33MHz, which result in a maximum burst data throughput of 133MB/second. Wed, 17 Sep, 2003 | 16 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Coolmax Gemini Aluminum USB 2.0 External Enclosure [Review, OCAddiction]
Would you be interested in being able to take your hard drive containing every song you've ever downloaded with you to a friend's house? Or how about being able to take your 200GB hard drive to any PC in the house and perform a full backup of crucial files for your less than PC literate family members? I'm sure there are lots of other scenarios you can think of that would entail using a portable drive enclosure for the task. Well today I have the pleasure of reviewing the Coolmax Gemini Series 3.5in/5.25in Aluminum USB v2.0 External Enclosure. This device allows you to take any 3.5 inch hard drive or 5.25 inch CD-Rom, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-RW or MO drive and connect it to any PC with an available v1.1 or v2.0 USB port. Coolmax is a Taiwanese company that has been in business since 1992 as a leading manufacturer of DC cooling fans, CPU coolers, power supplies, external enclosures, IDE/FDD rounded cables and data storage devices. So what is special about the Gemini series of external enclosures? Is this a "Wow! I don't know how I got along without this" wonder tool or a "Gee, this kinda sucks" gadget? Let's find out. Mon, 15 Sep, 2003 | 475 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
External, But How? Mobile Storage Solutions Compared [Roundup, TomsHardware]
The number of external storage devices on the market continues to proliferate, but not all of them are user-friendly, flexible and affordable. We compared HighPoint external serial ATA products with both common and unusual USB and FireWire devices from Fujitsu, Maxtor, Western Digital, WiebeTech and Transcend. Mon, 15 Sep, 2003 | 109 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail
Forget about Home Movies: Two Software packages render camcorders into a 15-GB Data Storage Device [Review, TomsHardware]
A few weeks ago DV Streamer launched a software package designed to transform just about any DV camcorder into a tape drive for data storage. The overall concept sounded so intriguing that we decided to run a test straight away. In principle, it comes in two software versions: DV Streamer Lite and DV Streamer PRO. While the Lite version can save one file only on a DV tape without directory structure, the PRO version lets you store up to 10,000 files with a matching directory depth. Mon, 15 Sep, 2003 | 115 Click(s) | Related: Reviews or Talks | Detail