TheTechLounge - Recent Reviews: Storage

Western Digital Launches Caviar Black - Three Flavors of Caviar

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:56:35 -0500

Welcomed by all, purchased by few: everyone wants a Western Digital VelociRaptor, but the people who have three hundred bucks to spend on three hundred gigs are... rare.

Without a doubt, Western Digital has wowed the enthusiasts, but they're not slowing down on the consumer and enterprise fronts. It's come to light that the very fast, very quiet, and very cool SE16s aren't the latest in hard disk tech, but the first with just a few of the new tricks up Western Digital's corporate sleeve. Today they are launching an all new desktop brand, Caviar Black, claimed to be "WD's best hard drive ever." The first products in this new line will be 750GB and 1TB models.

Of course, like all press, some of it's real and some of it's release, but Ted Deffenbaugh, Senior Director of Product Marketing, used to be one of the engineers; he doesn't like guile and was frank with me in our interview. He's quite proud of these new hard drives, and I'm, well, I'm actually excited about their new spinning metal.

A major part of this release is branding, which is an excellent idea on Western Digital's part. Even I don't like digging up reviews and part numbers to find out which hard drive might suit me best, and the new Caviar color scheme illuminates things well. Blue is boring. It's mostly for the cost-conscious, looking for a middle option. I don't sit on the fence, so Green and Black are more interesting. Green is, you know, "Eco." A low-power, very quiet option. Black is "Enthusiast," "Fast/Feature-Rich," and now brings with it a five-year warranty.

Western Digital still isn't getting great marks for long warranties, though. Blue and Green are only covered for three years, and five, while realistically greater than the practical lifespan of a hard drive, isn't, say, eight. Better than the warranty are the actual, metal-and-circuit improvements.

1TB Hard Drive Roundup

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:25:36 -0500

Barriers are meant to be broken. As capacities have increased and prices fallen, each company wants those bragging rights of having the "biggest," or at least the fastest. We put three 1TB hard drives through the paces - Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 and Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 (ST3100340AS) as well as their Barracuda ES.2 (ST31000340NS). Which one will come out on top?

Seagate Barracuda 750 GB SATA II Hard Drive (7200.10)

Sun, 20 May 2007 13:45:28 -0500

Just last year, the 500GB hard drive was all the rage, now, in front of me is a brand new 750 GB drive. Yep, 3/4 of a terabyte! Never really thought I would see that word and home storage ever near each other. Honestly, how many wholesome family films can someone store on their computer?

500GB Hard Drive Round-Up

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 20:30:31 -0500

As platter densities have increased, we have watched our drives grow. 20, 40, 80, 120, 250, and now 500GB drives are in the mainstream. Larger ones are starting to show up, but the 500 GB variety is gaining popularity. All the big players are in the market. It is these 500 GB monsters that I have with me today. From Western Digital I have their Caviar SE16 (WD5000KS), from Hitachi I have their Deskstar 7K500 (HDS725050KLA360), and from Seagate the Barracuda 7200.9 (ST3500641AS). Each are SATA II, 7200 RPM drives with 16MB of cache.

Compact Flash CF Card Round-Up

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 02:26:44 -0600

I'd like to answer one question that I think many amateur and even some professional photographers have. What kind of performance can you expect in a real-world situation from various Compact Flash (CF) cards? The reason this issue is important is that the price varies for CF cards of different brands and speed ratings. I will attempt to find out what benefit higher-speed CF cards actually have under various circumstances, and going a step further, I will find out if there is any bottleneck incurred when transferring data via card readers or directly from cameras. I have rounded up 8 CF cards from various vendors with various speed-ratings, as well as 4 different card readers, and I'm ready to put them through their paces.

Infrant ReadyNAS X6

Wed, 7 Dec 2005 17:43:49 -0600

The X6 is the successor to their ReadyNAS600 which utilized standard RAID architecture to serve out storage to the masses. The new X6 utilizes Infrant's proprietary X-RAID technology to allow the user to expand the array on the fly. How well this works is precisely what I intend to find out, so let's roll up our sleeves and dig in!

Silentmaxx HD-Silencer

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 22:52:41 -0500

In the quest for computing silence I've swapped fans, cases, heatsinks, but I still hear something... Clicking? Ah, the hard drive! Silentmaxx's HD-Silencer promises to keep your hard drive cool and your ears happy. But will it deliver?

Maxtor OneTouch II 200GB External Hard Drive

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 12:59:21 -0500

The Maxtor OneTouch II 200GB external hard drive (USB/Firewire version) has both USB and Firewire connectivity for broader compatibility. The large button on the front is used to kick off a pre-configured backup job and also to indicate drive activity. This drive definitely looks nice, but we'll see if it's a worthy contender, or just another pretty face.

Seagate 400GB Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive

Tue, 7 Jun 2005 15:38:05 -0500

The Seagate 400GB Pushbutton Backup drive puts an absolutely huge amount of storage in your hands, free to carry wherever you like. I was actually surprised by the transfer rates I could achieve; copying a gigabyte of files in just over a minute through an external interface is very impressive.

SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 512 MB USB Drive

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 13:45:16 -0600

The Cruzer Titanium is SanDisk's answer to harsh work environments where physical protection of portable data is required. This model has a titanium-coated metal casing which SanDisk claims is "virtually indestructible.'

Crucial Gizmo! High Speed USB 2.0 Drive

Mon, 3 Jan 2005 23:34:14 -0600

The first Gizmo, as most other drives at the time, was a bit bulky and didn't support USB 2.0 speeds. The Gizmo we will be checking out today is Crucial's third revision of the drive which has become very well known for its extremely small size.

Corsair Flash Voyager USB Drive

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 19:12:31 -0600

Already being one of the leaders in the memory market, Corsair's move to flash memory and USB drives was an obvious one. Today we will be taking a look at Corsair's first USB drive, the Flash Voyager. *Editor's Choice Award*

Seagate 160 GB SATA (ST3160023AS)

Sat, 15 May 2004 15:44:19 -0500

Today we will be looking at Seagate's first generation SATA hard drive, the Barracuda 7200.7 SATA; specifically the ST3160023AS, which features speeds of 7200 rpm, an 8.5 ms average seek time, 8 MB cache and 160 GB capacity.

Nu Technologies DDW-081 DVD+R/RW

Sun, 2 May 2004 23:42:54 -0500

The DDW-081 is a single format burner, which burns the +R/+RW format. However, if you are a movie buff, don't give up hope, there is a beta firmware in the making that turns this drive into a dual format burner. This will in turn make it much more attractive for the price.

Ximeta 80GB NetDisk

Sat, 3 Jan 2004 01:39:38 -0600

Ximeta's NetDisk is not only a USB 2.0 accessible hard drive, it is also accessible to a computer or an entire network via a 100Mbps Ethernet port. Is this an external hard drive or pocket sized file server?