Have you ever wondered if mounting a hard disk drive on its side or even upside-down affects its lifespan or reliability? According to every drive manufacturer, it's perfectly acceptable to mount a hard disk drive in any orientation as long as it's not tilted and has sufficient cooling. File this under "now you know"... My new server case, the NZXT H440, has five drive … [Read more...] about It’s Fine To Mount Hard Drives On Their Side Or Even Upside-Down
Toshiba
Apple Brings PCIe SSD To The Masses In The New MacBook Air
Apple's brand-new MacBook Air might not look much from the outside, but a revolution lurks under the hood: This is the first mainstream computer to eschew SATA in favor of PCIe SSD! Long heralded in workstations and servers, PCIe SSD brings massive potential for storage performance. Apple Bets on SSD Apple was first out of the gate in switching to all-SSD storage for their … [Read more...] about Apple Brings PCIe SSD To The Masses In The New MacBook Air
Two Dual-Drive Portable RAIDs Reviewed: Akitio and Wiebetech
RAID is becoming more familiar in the SOHO market, but portable devices using 2.5" drives remain a novelty. I recently tested two such units, and came away with mixed impressions. Although the ToughTech Duo from CRU-DataPort/Wiebetech sports attractive design, it didn't perform much better than the homely Akitio Taurus Mini Super-S. And neither is all that portable. A Tale of … [Read more...] about Two Dual-Drive Portable RAIDs Reviewed: Akitio and Wiebetech
My Incomplete, Subjective List of Enterprise SSD Companies
This morning, Jean-Jacques Maleval posted a “complete list of 85 SSD manufacturers in the world” over at StorageNewsletter. I was surprised to see so many unfamiliar names in the list, and set about doing some research into who all these companies are. It seems that the vast majority focus on military/embedded or OEM markets, with the consumer space accounting for a large … [Read more...] about My Incomplete, Subjective List of Enterprise SSD Companies
Are Hybrid Hard Drives A Good Alternative To An SSD?
Ask a Pack Rat A timely question from a comment on my cheap Momentus XT post and continued in my inbox: How well does [the Momentus XT] perform in a Mac laptop? What I've noticed is substantial slow-down on my older MB Pro when there's a lot of virtual memory usage (e.g. when running several apps plus Parallels.) For my next MBP (hopefully in the next 2-3 months), I'm … [Read more...] about Are Hybrid Hard Drives A Good Alternative To An SSD?