Storage: Reviews

I continue to be very impressed with Synology's small business storage products, and the new DS1010+ is no exception. In fact, it elevates my opinion even more. This feature-packed, speedy, and remarkably affordable five-bay storage array supports just about every file sharing protocol available, can scale up to 20TB of raw storage, can be expanded on the fly, and has a great GUI. It can be purchased for $1,750 with 5TB of raw storage, and it can push 100MBps streaming writes and 110MBps streaming reads. Sure, it's not an enterprise-class device, but look at the price. What's not to love?

There's storage and then there's storage: There's storage that's really just backup, and there's storage of the stuff you work with frequently. The reason I'm making the distinction is that many of us are now backing up to the cloud. And that's a good thing; in some ways, cloud options can be more secure and more convenient than backing up to hardware.

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.

While many external drives now come with a physical push-button backup option, a new genre of backup devices is emerging: one-touch USB flash drives that combine the convenience of small size with relatively sophisticated backup applications for data protection.

But tests yield slower read speeds than Samsung claims

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

Network-attached storage (NAS) devices are usually the realm of the tech-savvy, with confusing interfaces, lots of associated technical jargon and complicated maintenance. For those who want extensive storage without the complexity, the Iomega StorCenter Pro NAS ix4-100 Server comes to the rescue. This NAS device is easy to set up and easy to use.

The Iomega Prestige Desktop Hard Drive is a well-built and good-looking external hard drive that is simple to use but slower than competing drives from Seagate and Western Digital.

Last month, Kanguru Solutions announced the first USB flash drive that also offers External Serial ATA (eSATA) connectivity. This month, OCZ Technology also announced an eSATA-enabled flash drive with up to 32GB capacity, as did Advanced Media's Ridata-brand.

If you're looking for a fast network attached storage (NAS) device for home, or for a small office, and you want one that has lots of storage space, then the Western Digital ShareSpace 2TB, with its Gigabit Ethernet connection and three USB 2.0 ports, could be for you.

HP StorageWorks MSA2000i

Network-attached storage (NAS) devices have traditionally been a labyrinth of networking protocols and port-forwarding features, making them the domain of expert users.

HDS AMS 2000

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?

Sun StorageTek VTL Prime System

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.

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.

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.

Recently, Western Digital has come to market with three drives aimed at increasing the performance of both 2.5- and 3.5-in. drives: the Caviar Black, the Scorpio Black and the VelociRaptor. Nothing about them speaks to "green power." Rather, the "black" lineup is aimed at enthusiasts who want performance and let their power supplies be damned if they can't handle the load.

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?)