Storage

Two SSD kits make disk upgrades easy

With solid-state disk (SSD) drives becoming more popular for laptops, users may find themselves in the position of upgrading the hard disk drive (HDD) in an older machine to get the reliability and speed that comes with flash memory technology.

By Lucas Mearian | 09 September, 2009 09:22

Tags: SSD, storage, upgrades

Sun storage system delivers high performance

Sun's latest addition to its high-end enterprise storage repertoire - the iSCSI-based Sun Storage 7410 Unified Storage System - is certainly a high-performance offering, but we found some usability and some integration issues.

By Logan Harbaugh | 06 May, 2009 11:16

Tags: iscsi, storage software, Sun Microsystems

Review: Toshiba 500GB USB external hard drive

Toshiba Corp. recently sent in its new 500GB USB external disk drive for review. While the 2.5-inch device is a slick-looking drive with its diminutive size and shiny-black plastic case, I took issue with a couple of things after using it.

By Lucas Mearian | 19 March, 2009 09:34

Tags: hard drives, toshiba

Samsung's 256GB SSD offers capacity, speed

But tests yield slower read speeds than Samsung claims

By Lucas Mearian | 02 March, 2009 08:48

Tags: samsung, SSD, storage backup

Review: Sun's stellar NAS in a can

The Sun Storage 7210 Unified Storage System's combination of 48 drives, SSD log storage, broad protocol support, ZFS, and amazing GUI make for one great filer

By Paul Venezia | 20 February, 2009 08:16

Tags: storage, sun

A terabyte in the palm of your hand: Buffalo's LinkStation Mini

Size doesn't matter, or so the old adage goes. Yet obviously it does matter -- or else we wouldn't have both towering desktop PCs and petite portable netbooks. But how about something like a network-attached storage (NAS) device, which is basically a box that sits on a shelf or a desk and never travels, never moves -- does size matter there?

By Bill O'Brien | 24 October, 2008 08:52

Tags: nas, network storage

Western Digital's home NAS array

While RAID 5 isn't exactly the Holy Grail of desktop NAS, it is a very attractive option that combines the speed of striped RAID 0 and sufficient data protection without a humongous loss of storage capacity (as with RAID 1) in the trade. That's what makes Western Digital's ShareSpace NAS array an attractive option. Still you'll need to dig a little deeper to ferret out all that makes up ShareSpace and whether or not it's right for you.

By Bill O'Brien | 07 October, 2008 10:57

Tags: network-attached storage

Seagate drive taps eSATA for 'XTreme' speed

USB 2.0 is the most popular connection technology for external devices, with FireWire (either 400 or 800) a close second. However, if you really want extreme speed, eSATA is the way to go, as Seagate Technologies' new FreeAgent XTreme drive proves.

By Rich Ericson | 01 October, 2008 10:26

Tags: seagate

DataSentinel -- a backup service with issues

To be truly effective, a backup application must let you easily choose what you back up, simplify recovery and not slow down your work. So I was looking forward to evaluating DataSentinel, a combination of hardware, software and storage service.

HADR offerings bring resiliency to virtualization

Virtualization is becoming increasingly important in the datacenter as a way to respond quickly to the varying server demands. Depending on time of day and day of the week, as well as events in progress and many other factors, loads on any given machine may vary by factors of 100 or 1,000 or more. Giving a server more or less computing power, running multiple instances of the same server for load balancing purposes, or allowing failover from one virtual instance to another are increasingly important capabilities.

Apricorn 160GB Aegis Mini hard drive

How much would you pay for a portable hard drive that lets you tote around 160GB in a shirt pocket -- with no need for a power brick? Apricorn is betting you'll be willing to spring for upward of US$260 for its 160GB Aegis Mini. However, it remains to be seen how many are willing to pay that price for portability.

DriveStation Combo 4 is very well connected

These days, you never know what connections you'll need to add to an older system -- or, for that matter, to a new one. (How many ports does that Macbook Air have again?)

My Book Mirror Edition RAIDs your data

There's no such thing as too much protection for your valuable files. Although external hard drives can provide backup copies of files on your hard drive, what if you use external drives for primary storage? Sure, you can use yet another external backup drive, but a better solution might be a RAID array with two drives. Western Digital offers such a system with its new My Book Mirror Edition ($AUD699).

How StuffIt stacks up against WinZip

If you want to squeeze the greatest amount of data onto your hard drive, compression is the way to go -- and the ZIP format has long been a trusted method that nearly any Windows user can invoke. SmithMicro's StuffIt Deluxe 12 is a file-compression utility on steroids: it can archive and compress files of all types (to the Stuffit format and even to ZIP itself). The real question is: How well does it hold up against a well-known and popular application such as WinZip?

Unix tip: Rescuing files from lost+found

The lost+found directory included in (Unix) file systems is usually empty. Only used when fsck doesn't know what to do with files that have lost their place in the file system, they stand as a temporary holding place for those rare instances in which fsck can't put everything back together after file systems have become corrupt in some way.

Apple's little big iron

If I'm not otherwise engaged next Thursday morning, I just might spend my economic stimulus check to enter the PC server business. I could go shopping for a wholesale 1U bare-bones rack server, with my primary criteria being that it boot DOS from a floppy and require you to take your server off-line to change basic system settings. I'll stuff that two-socket black box with RAM, CPUs, and disks; charge you for your choice of Windows or Linux; and unless you're buying these things by the gross, stick you with desktop-grade support. Since I had no involvement in your server's design and engineering, I'll rely on BIOS and driver updates from my volume motherboard supplier. I'll selectively pass these on to you, flagged with warnings about how they may render your system unusable if you misapply them, until my supplier stops issuing them. Don't worry, you'll have a solid year before that happens.

Infortrend EonStor B12S delivers big with small-form-factor drives

For years now, 3.5 inches has been the reigning size of disk drives for enterprise storage arrays. Now, however, smaller, more efficient 2.5-inch SFF (small form factor) drives are proving viable challengers to their larger brethren.