Storage

If you are into storage and servers, you may have thought about taking a crack at building your own. Just having a case large enough to home a ton of hard drives isn't enough to do the job right. Your drives need to be accessible. Think about it, you would have to take everything apart to replace or add a hard drive if they were just all stuffed in a case? That's nuts. In the interest of convenience and usability, products like hard drive hot-swap cages are nearly a necessity. Enter the iStarUSA BPU-350SATA hard drive cage

Crucial, the company that impressed us with their M4 series SSD, has expanded their SSD portfolio with a low cost, high performance, MX100 series drive. Their claims of "unrelenting performance" combined with low cost per GB is an attractive marketing campaign. Extreme Energy Efficiency, Adaptive Thermal Protection, and Power Loss Protection mark some of the Crucial benefits on the product page. With all this marketing fluff, the real question is... how does this budget SSD stack up when it comes to spending your hard earned cash?

If you are a road warrior, then you know having only a few GB of space on your mobile device is a complete bummer. Instead of shelling out hundreds more for a device with a few extra GB, what if there was an inexpensive solution that could expand your space to TB instead of just GB. What if I told you that your 16GB iPad or 8GB Samsung could now store up to 1TB of music, movies, photos, documents and more? Well, LaCie thinks they have the answer to your storage needs and they think that their solution, the LaCie Fuel, is the one that should earn your money.

Can you think of a NAS worth buying that costs less than $150.00 USD? I bet you would have a hard time answering that question. I have reviewed a slew of NAS and can't answer that question, until now. Thecus has done what many have considered as the impossible. They may have just set a new standard for affordability, slapped the Thecus badge on it, and dubbed it the N2310.

Have you heard of RAPID? That is the question you need to be asking yourself if you have purchased a Samsung SSD recently. Aside from the speedy little SSD you get in the package, Samsung has a cool trick up their sleeve and it goes by the name of RAPID, or Real-time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data. What is it? And, does it work?

Unless you have been living under a small stone in a field behind Bilbo Baggins' home, you may have heard the term NAS (Network Attached Storage). NAS are becoming more prevalent in the home, the small office, and the Enterprise. These flexible, inexpensive, devices can nearly do it all, which is what makes them so attractive. Well, it seems like everyone and their cousin is producing a NAS of some sort, but only a few have really got their act together. Among that small few, those that have more in R&D than they do in sales, is a company by the name of ASUSTOR. Today, ASUSTOR is no longer just a startup company. Instead, they have been producing some of the best, low-cost, NAS that money can buy. We had the chance to review their AS-302T, as well as the AS-608T and absolutely loved it. Let's see if their AS-204T can live up to our lofty expectations.

We love speed... and after reviewing the Samsung 840 Pro, we were chomping at the bit to get the 840 EVO in the lab. Not only does the newer EVO model use newer 19nm 3-bit Triple-Level Cell vs that of 2-bit MLC found in the 840 Pro, but it also features a much more attractive price-point and an increased IOPS... on paper.

If you are hunting around for your next NAS, you have plenty to pick from. With countless options, NAS makers are hard at work trying to ramp up their products and are jockeying for the number 1 spot on your short list. It seems like only yesterday that QNAP had introduced their X69(L) lineup and already we are being greeted by a more powerful X70 lineup. For the last few months, we have been putting QNAP's TS-470 to work in our office... the real question is, is it worth your dollar?

Thecus is no slouch when it comes to producing affordable NAS solutions. They have been producing some of the best performing NAS at an unbeatable price point for as long as I can remember. With the introduction of their Vision Series, Thecus has put the pressure on. Their N7510 NAS brings some interesting things to the table, 7 bays of storage loving goodness, great looks, and a fantastic price point. Let's see if it delivers more than just an odd number of drive bays.

Having more than one hard drive in your PC not that uncommon for one reason or another. Sometimes, having access to those drives is just as important as having them. The days of locking your drives behind your case's side panel are gone, and products like SATA cages / backplane make accessing your drives easy. For me, having a number of 2.5" SSDs with varying operating systems fulfills my needs for testing, working, and playing. Instead of selecting which drive I want to run through the BIOS, I simply pop that drive in my SATA backplane and I am off and running. Recently our Vantec EZ Swap F4 MRK-425ST-BK 4 Bay HDD rack has decided that its 40mm fan would sound like a bicycle with a baseball card running through the spokes. Can iStarUSA's BPU-124DE-SS unseat our current hardware? Let's find out.