Stories by: Bill O'Brien

If you're contemplating the cost of a new Windows-based computer to catch up with SATA 3.0 hard drives, you might be able to get away with just a $49 investment rather than a complete PC overhaul. Apricorn's Velocity Solo upgrade kit gives you access to SATA 3.0 hard drives and SSDs -- all you need is an x1 PCIe 2.0 slot -- and a SATA 3.0 drive, of course. (The Velocity Solo does not work with Macs.)

Whether you have a Windows- or OS X-based laptop, one glaring flaw in either genre (and in laptops in general) is the capacity of the hard drive. A year ago, it became possible to pump up a desktop computer with a 3TB drive, but your laptop hit a wall at 750GB. And if you are a true media maven, even 750GB could be a bit confining at times for everything you want to store.

Lenovo originally designed its compact ThinkStation C20 workstation for financial markets where both the number-crunching power of the system and the amount of space it saves is important. However, the ThinkStation C20, released in June, can also be considered a graphic artist's tool for running sophisticated software that manipulates 3D graphics and renders video, or as a software development platform.

As we replace and/or upgrade older computers, many of us tend to save the hard drives, until we've amassed quite a collection. For example, I've collected quite a few 2.5-in. and 3.5-in. SATA hard drives as I've upgraded my desktop and laptop equipment over the years.

Solid-state drives have had their share of ups and downs in the past few years. Although SSDs are definitely faster than their mechanical counterparts, they've yet to live up to the performance their specifications suggest. What's more, they can be at least eight to 10 times as expensive as their mechanical equivalents -- putting them out of range for the lower-end consumer market.

Lenovo originally designed its compact ThinkStation C20 workstation for financial markets, where both the number-crunching power of the system and the amount of space it saves are important. However, the ThinkStation C20, released in June, can also be viewed as a graphic artist's tool for running sophisticated software that manipulates 3D graphics and renders video, or as a software development platform.

Network-attached storage (NAS), once only available (and affordable) for enterprises, is becoming more common for small business and even home use. And necessary - if you are looking for secure backups for your data, a single backup disk collecting data once or twice a day is no longer enough.

We are collecting and keeping more information today than ever before. Whether it's video, pictures, music, or just plain old gobs of e-mail and text messages, all that information has to be stored and backed up.

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?

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.