Servers & Storage - Reviews

Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB (WD2001FASS)

Review Date: 27-OCT-2009

RRP: $389.00

Western Digital's Caviar Black internal hard drive offers a massive two terabytes of storage capacity and speedy performance at a reasonable cost.

Hard Disk Drives (External), Media Streamers

Review Date: 26-OCT-2009

LaCie LaCinema Rugged HD

RRP: $349.00

The LaCie LaCinema Rugged HD is one of the pricier hard-drive-based portable digital media adapters on the market, but it's also one of the more capable.

Hard Disk Drives (External), Security Hardware

Review Date: 22-OCT-2009

Western Digital My Passport Essential SE (1TB)

RRP: $379.00

The My Passport Essential SE is Western Digital's largest capacity portable hard drive yet, and it offers encryption to keep your data secure.

Network Attached Storage

Review Date: 20-OCT-2009

QNAP TS-419P Turbo NAS

RRP: $999.00

The QNAP TS-419P Turbo NAS device isn't fantastic value, but it is a versatile server and has a number of features for both homes and small businesses.

LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive (1TB)

Review Date: 16-OCT-2009

RRP: $199.00

LaCie's Starck Desktop Hard Drive has a striking design. However, it only offers a USB 2.0 connection -- it won't be as fast as drives with eSATA and FireWire 800 connections.

NETGEAR ReadyNAS NVX (RNDX4210)

Network Attached Storage

Review Date: 15-OCT-2009

RRP: $2519.00

Netgear's ReadyNAS NVX is a set-and-forget NAS device that provides RAID expansion capabilities, automatic health monitoring and solid performance.

LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive (320GB)

Review Date: 13-OCT-2009

RRP: $139.00

If you're the type to get your hard drive accidentally run over by cars and the like, LaCie's Starck Mobile Hard Drive is for you. This French-designed external drive is extremely durable, and will make sure you get noticed in the workplace.

Review Date: 08-OCT-2009

BEST_BUYS

Apacer A7 Turbo (A7202)

RRP: $309.00

Apacer's affordable 64GB solid-state drive isn't the fastest on the market, but it can match the big boys when it comes to reading data. Frugal power consumption and good read speeds mean this SSD is better suited for overnight backups or as a secondary drive than for tasks involving disk-intensive operations or lots of simultaneous reading and writing of data.

Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2

Operating Systems

Review Date: 01-OCT-2009

RRP: $600.00

Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2, the latest version of Citrix's flagship application virtualization product, offers a host of new features to ease both user and administrative interactions. Simply put, Citrix XenApp is arguably the best example of centralized desktop computing available.

Western Digital RE4 (WD2003FYYS)

Review Date: 25-SEP-2009

RRP: $429.00

The Western Digital RE4 internal hard drive provides two terabytes of storage over four platters that spin at 7,200rpm. It's power consumption doesn't make this an environmentally friendly drive, but it has fantastic read speeds when accessing large files, making it worth consideration if you have large storage arrays.

Astone ISO GEAR 290 (500GB)

Review Date: 18-SEP-2009

RRP: $149.00

Astone ISO GEAR 290 (500GB) external drive enclosure provides an easy way to connect your 2.5in notebook hard drive to a computer, but it doesn't provide much protection from knocks and bumps an external hard drive will be subjected to.

Astone ISO GEAR 288 (500GB)

Review Date: 08-SEP-2009

RRP: TBA

We wouldn’t recommend Astone's portable hard drive for people who will be commuting with it every day, or for people who have a tendency to drop things. However, with a design to rival Apple products and quick file transfer speeds, it is a stylish way to carry around your data and media.

Kingston Technology SSDNow V+ (64GB)

Review Date: 07-SEP-2009

RRP: $445.00

We like the Kingston SSDNow V+ solid-state drive — it's efficient, quick and quite cheap. If you're looking to replace your notebook or PC's system drive, this is definitely a viable candidate.

Synology Disk Station DS409

Network Attached Storage

Review Date: 04-SEP-2009

RRP: $678.00

We weren't thrilled by the design of Synology's Disk Station DS409 NAS device and it doesn't write data particularly quickly. However, the combination of quick read speeds and powerful media browsers make this a viable option for storing and serving audio, photos and video.

Review Date: 28-AUG-2009

Solidata K5-32

RRP: $359.00

Solidata's K5-32 solid-state drive uses single-level cell (SLC) memory, which should suit IOPS-intensive applications in servers and RAID arrays. Unfortunately, real-world write performance is poor compared to other solid-state drives and some conventional hard drives.