Storage
Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe family of budget SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs that, among other things, adds a 4 TB model. Being budget drives, the SN5000 series is not going to be a performance monster, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular both among casual buyers and among enthusiasts looking for relatively cheap bulk solid-state storage. Western Digital's WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are based around an in-house WD controller (the company rarely discloses their codenames these days). WD's controller is a 4 channel, DRAMless design, which is what we typically see for budget and mainstream...
Promise Pegasus J2 Review: The Smallest High Performance Thunderbolt Drive
Promise was the first to get us a Thunderbolt chassis with the Pegasus R4/R6. Not only was the Pegasus the first shipping Thunderbolt storage chassis, but it continues to...
25 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/2/2012
OCZ Agility 4 (256GB) Review
For the last few years, OCZ's consumer SSD lineup has primarily consisted of two models: Vertex and Agility. The history of these two goes all the way back to...
41 by Kristian Vättö on 9/1/2012
Plextor M5 Pro (256GB) Review
Plextor has been making steady progress in becoming a real player in the SSD market. As we saw with the M3 Pro, they have a firmware team capable of...
37 by Kristian Vättö on 8/31/2012
Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo Review
With Thunderbolt ports available on both Macs and PCs, as well as Thunderbolt controller costs dropping thanks to the introduction of Intel's Cactus Ridge, the Thunderbolt storage space is...
30 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/30/2012
Synology Launches DS213 and DS213+ 2-Bay NAS Units
Synology's 2-bay NAS units have consistently performed well in our tests. Today, the latest additions to the 2-bay lineup have been launched in the form of the DS213 and...
9 by Ganesh T S on 8/28/2012
Corsair Releases Neutron/Neutron GTX SSD Pricing
When we published our Neutron/Neutron GTX SSD review this morning we didn't have official pricing from Corsair. That's not all that unusual as pricing for many components can be...
3 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/20/2012
Corsair Neutron GTX SSD Review (240GB): Link A Media Controller Tested
Not interested in diving headfirst into a market full of teething pains, Corsair held off on its first SSD introduction. Even after it entered the market, Corsair remained conservative...
36 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/20/2012
Western Digital Red Review: Are NAS-optimized HDDs Worth the Premium?
Western Digital (WD) introduced hard drives specifically targeted towards NAS systems under the Red branding last month. We had some initial coverage at launch time, where WD claimed a...
87 by Ganesh T S on 8/17/2012
Intel Brings TRIM to RAID-0 SSD Arrays on 7-Series Motherboards, We Test It
In an unusually terse statement, Intel officially confirmed that the ATA TRIM command now passes through to RAID-0 SSD arrays on some systems running Intel's RST (Rapid Storage Technology...
41 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/16/2012
OWC Announces 480GB SSD Upgrade for MacBook Pro with Retina Display
In our review of the MacBook Pro with Retina Display I mentioned that the base $2199 configuration is near perfect, save for its 256GB SSD. With no room for...
12 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/14/2012
The Intel SSD 910 Review
The increase in compute density in servers over the past several years has significantly impacted form factors in the enterprise. Whereas you used to have to move to a...
39 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/9/2012
Plextor Releases M5 Pro SSD: Say Hello to Marvell 88SS9187 and 19nm Toshiba NAND
This is an announcement we have been waiting for. In our Plextor M3 Pro and M5S reviews, we mentioned that the limits of Marvell's 88SS9174 controller have more or...
23 by Kristian Vättö on 8/7/2012
OCZ Vertex 4 Review (128GB), Firmware 1.4/1.5 Tested
When OCZ released the Vertex 4 in April, it brought us excepionally great write performance. Based on OCZ's Everest 2 controller (Marvell IP with custom firmware), the Vertex 4...
60 by Kristian Vättö on 8/4/2012
Mediasonic Probox 8-bay 3.5" USB 3.0 / eSATA DAS Review
Prior to the rapid rise in popularity of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, consumers used to store large amounts of data on Direct Attached Storage (DAS) units. While USB...
48 by Ganesh T S on 8/4/2012
Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt Review - An External with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt
Back when Thunderbolt (then Intel Lightpeak) was optical, I was actively involved in covering the interface, partly out of professional curiosity due to my optical background, partly because I...
61 by Brian Klug on 8/1/2012
The Intel SSD 330 Review (60GB, 120GB, 180GB)
Earlier this year Intel introduced its second SandForce based SSD: the Intel SSD 330. While Intel had previously reserved the 5xx line for 3rd party controllers, the 330 marks...
64 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/1/2012
Crucial's v4 SSD: Affordable 3Gbps SATA SSD based on Phison's PS3105 Controller
Crucial's m4 SSD has been extremely popular. It's priced very competitively and although it's not the fastest SATA 6Gb/s SSD, its performance is still very good. Crucial has now...
20 by Kristian Vättö on 7/31/2012
Plextor M5S Now Available
Plextor launched the M5S SSD about two weeks ago and we were among the first to review it. Plextor did not have a specific release date at the time...
10 by Kristian Vättö on 7/27/2012
Netgear NV+ v2 and LaCie 2big NAS: A Second Look
Last November, we reviewed the Netgear NV+ v2 and came away quite satisfied with the price to performance ratio. However, we had some reservations about the absence of NFS...
8 by Ganesh T S on 7/18/2012
Plextor M5S 256GB Review
Plextor is one of those OEMs who have quietly been making their way into the SSD market. They haven't been aggressive with marketing. Their drives are not featured on...
43 by Kristian Vättö on 7/18/2012
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